October 24, 2005
Knowledge
I was at some Naval Air Station near Treasure Island getting exposed to Link aerial navigation trainers when across the bay in San Francisco, the United Nations was being formed. On my first “flight,” I missed Hawaii by more miles than the trainer had “gas” left in the tank. Fortunately, it was only practice.
The United Nations, whose founding we celebrate today, was — and remains — about as real as it gets when it comes to a way to navigate the perils and the changes and chances of this mortal life of international relations. It’s not for practice, you better believe.
It was created, I’ve always thought, on the premise that if we could just find a way to invite everybody to the table to talk things over, we’d discover that any communication is better than none and that telling the truth is better than lying and that in every war there are always two losers and that getting over ourselves and getting a life is really maybe why we are here.
Addendum: So far, one of the truly rare times we’ve come closest to making the UN work like we’d hoped and planned was back in 1960 when Nikita Kruschev wisely chose bamming his shoe on the podium over bamming one of his nukes down the throats of the rest of us.* Too few seem yet to realize even with that goofy example how ludicrous we are and how easily still we could shut down the planet. From the way things look, we probably will sooner or later, more than likely simply by ingloriously running out of air.
(*It is rumored that there’s no photographic proof of this, nevertheless, just the mere idea beats the bomb. There’re very few snapshots from biblical times lying around, either.)
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