A few weeks ago a great old friend from my childhood
traveled up from Florida to NY with his family and together we barbequed with
my family in the backyard. Talk of
Independence Day reminded me of how my friend was a fireworks aficionado. When we were kids, in the late sixties, he
would often remind me that 1976 was gonna be the big one. I remember him foretelling of an all night
celebration with crazy amounts of rockets everywhere.
My father was a fireworks heckler. One year when I was a teenager, perhaps it
was 1976 (though full clarity escapes me on this), my father remarkably agreed
to let me shoot off some firecrackers in front of our house. But there were rules. I could only do one at a time—and what fun was
that?
Well…he devised some sort of pipe that he angled into our
front garden. Again, like the single at
a time rule, he was opting for maximum control.
Oddly enough, each crack was magnified and sounded like a mini
cannon. If I sit quietly I can still hear
the ringing in my left ear. I’m sure the
resulting effect was not what my father had planned.
Over planning has its own set of pitfalls. When overdoing something, I sometimes think
about Isaac Newton and what he said about every action having an equal and
opposite reaction. Then I begin to think
of moderating the course of action a bit.
Not that I can promote moderation as having any glitz or special
attraction, I can’t. But when thinking
about equal and opposite reactions, and without knowing a time frame, avoiding
the outlying choice of gluttony and the opposing choice of deprivation seems to
be wise. Gluttony let to run amuck can
be about as devastating as deprivation winding up to backfire.
When a government feels entitled to gather all the metadata
it wants and the people just shrug their shoulders I see both gluttony and
deprivation in play.
When not enough people favor closing the loophole on
background checks and too many people think the second amendment simply grants
hunters the right to own a gun I see gluttony and deprivation in play.
When the NYPD thinks there is no need to independently
monitor their stop and frisk tactics and some people get detained on a regular
basis I see gluttony and deprivation in play.
When one day, instead of a salad, I may want to order bacon,
egg and cheese on something hydrogenated and I might not be able to wash it all
down with a Big Gulp….I will think of gluttony verse deprivation.
Prohibition didn’t work for good reason. We need to learn for ourselves.
Is that easy? Of
course it is not. And as a society it
requires great cooperation because we need to balance my freedoms, his
freedoms, her freedoms and their freedoms.
Perfect and pure can be thrown out the window. They will never reign.
It is disappointing though to see how often we work to chip away
and gnaw off one another’s freedom. Especially
for a nation that tops off a building’s spire at the 1776 foot mark to
celebrate its freedom.
Someday it may be hard to read the whittled away bottom
line. Perhaps as difficult as it would
be to read the bottom of the bent and battered license plate of an old pick-up truck
driven through the dirt back roads and rugged terrain in the White Mountains of
New Hampshire for several years.
We may have to get down on our hands and knees with a
magnifying glass in hand in order to read about what we build towers to proclaim
….”Live Free or Die”.
I hope that never happens.
If it does, then all those grand pyrotechnic shows will ring out just about
as loud as a single dud.
© 2013 Christopher’s Views
