The old codger again. (More about the moniker later.) We’ve talked before about how essential it is for us as human beings to sit down and work together to create a saner, more functional society and world. That goes for issues both material and spiritual. That hit home last week at a hearing of the Missouri House Education Committee on our legislation to create a State Civic Seal of Recognition and on a beautiful Easter Sunday connecting with those reaching out to embrace a positive, collective faith in these chaotic days for our nation and world.
The early Greeks and Romans put together a problem-solving system of collaborative governance until they let dictators run their republics into the ground, and those feisty Angles, Saxons and Normans wound up doing it on a little island in the North Atlantic. Think Parliament. And our forefathers worked from that template to create a Congress mandated to represent the voices of all our nation’s citizens. Throughout 250 years of our republic, collaboration resulted in solutions to many tough issues. A major exception, slavery and its corruptive offshoot, racism; the old codger’d argue still haven’t been resolved. Fact is, you could argue that the ripples of our failure to excise that cancer have been purposefully amplified to drive us away from real, productive collaboration our society, country and world damned well need.
What’s it take? We pretty much need to be willing to open ours e l v e s — hearts, m i n d s a n d y e s , souls — to p o s i t ive, thoughtful, solution-focused ideas, whoever’s putting them forward: locally, at the state level and in our national and international politics. Why souls? As we’ve noted before, we’re fallible, fear-filled “varmints” who have a darned hard time doing anything productive together without opening ourselves up to faith in something beyond ourselves.
That especially applies to three core issues:
■ Climate change, threatening our national and world economy and political stability short-term and long-term, the very existence of an ecosystem and social structure in any way resembling ours.
■ A functional, rational and productive use of social media.
■ Artificial intelligence, which, much more quickly than most of us can imagine, may become an inexorable, avalanching, out-of-control force over our lives.
■ And while the above items are the elephants in the room, they overlay a constellation of others:
■ Ingrained and often undiagnosed racism corrupting and defiling our society.
■ A functional immigration policy focused on the needs of all human beings.
■ A functional tax and health care policy addressing avalanching inequity of incomes and our very capacity to function as viable human beings.
■ The aggressive public education reform required to ensure functional and productive citizens.
■ Radical reform addressing our constitutional right to a swift and fair trial.
■ An open and honest embrace of the potential for faith to make us fearlessly and joyfully whole.
If we set aside catchwords, preconceptions, BS and “butt talk” and sit down and talk with courageous faith, we can fix pretty much anything. Think Elon Musk. God bless him. What a heap of ego and hype in that résumé! See X, self-medicating and DOGE. But the character’s put together a strategy and staff at SpaceX who’re knocking it out of the park getting us back on the path to meaningful space exploration. Maybe the applicable difference is the old saw, “garbage in, garbage out.”
What gives with the epithet “Old Codger,” you might ask. Hey, I’m old and not gettin’ any closer to the mean on our collective behavioral curve. Webster might say “grumpily amusing” or “curmudgeon.” Hey, whatever. The Codger has faith in the collective, fearless “us.” A couple of days ago, a group of us gathered together in joyful preparation, and we’re focused on a celebration of collaborative, future-focused faith June 6 right here in Perryville. There are big things coming as we gather here under the River Tree.
