A friend wrote to me last night: I will tell you, Craig, I was so utterly horrified by the dolphin video (that she had shared on Facebook, re: Japan’s considering dolphins pests and slaughtering them wholesale) I doubt I will ever sleep well again.
I wrote: I completely get it. I’m sickened beyond words by things like this. I used to think we were making progress towards civility and reason as a species over the last 800 years, starting with the Magna Carta, followed by the Renaissance, the Age of Reason/the Enlightenment, the U.S. Constitution, the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, civil rights, environmentalism, etc. But I’m not at all sure anymore.
When she responded: We aren’t. We probably ought to just accept it, as opposed to being hopefully delusional, I left it at that.
Imagine my surprise when I read today’s edition of The Writer’s Almanac and learned that my favorite author, John Steinbeck, who was born on this date in 1902, had said: “A writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.”
I might have replaced “perfectibility” with “improvability,” but who am I? In any case, that’s quite an inspiration for all of us.
