The Peril of Short Timer Syndrome

#142, May 12, 2004

 
The road goes on forever, vanishing into shimmering heatwaves. I’m eastward-ho, on US 50, the loneliest highway, don’t you know.
 
Thirty five years ago, driving across country, my dad pointed to the emptiness of Nevada to make his point.
There’s no population problem, look at all this room! Grrr…didn’t he get it? What about food? And water?! My dad was an intelligent man. Was it just his pre- Earth Day paradigm, telling him that humans could do *anything*: make light from rocks, make rivers run backward, put a man on the MOON for God sakes! But fill the desert wall-to-wall with subdivisions? Maybe he was just kidding me. He was like that.
 
Decades later, the arguments between preserving and using continue. And who shall judge which is right?  Ultimately, history is the judge. Not the his-story written by men, or even her-story. It is the physical evidence of what survives. Hoakam tribesmen, from the pre-Colombian American southwest, might have argued amongst themselves about whether or not farming was right. But apparently a shift in the climate passed judgment, and the civilization of the Hoakam is now only an archaeological relic. What will become of our civilization 500 years from now?
 
 “All history gets measured by outcomes,” said journalist Bob Woodward when he was interviewing President Bush for Woodward’s new book. When BW asked WB about how history would measure the Iraq war, Bush reportedly smiled, shrugged, and said, 'History. We won't know. We'll all be dead."
 
Was this simply an acknowledgement of the advancing age of interviewer and interviewee? Was it another example of the President’s kidding, like when he pretended to look in vain for weapons of mass destruction at the podium of an event earlier this year? No, I think it’s more troubling than that. Mr. Bush is a self-proclaimed born-again evangelical Christian. He considers evolution an unproven theory, which, to me, demonstrates an ability to rearrange or ignore facts in order to fit one’s beliefs (think: Saddam’s WMD threat and Al Qaeda connections.) 
 
What truly disturbs me is the concept of the “Rapture”, a literal removal to heaven of the Christian believers from the face of the earth. This view is held by perhaps as many as 100 million Americans who call themselves evangelical Christians. These people are generally not content to keep their faith out of politics. They gave strength to the Christian Right, the Moral Majority, and in the 2000 election provided Bush with 40% of his votes. They are responsible for the unprecedented commercial success of the “Left Behind” novels, a dramatic depiction of the biblical apocalypse. They have buoyed the box office take for “The Passion of the Christ”, another graphic look at flesh mortification.
 
Christians should be free to believe in the literal Rapture, just as fundamentalist Muslims should be free to believe in their heavenly afterlife. But doesn’t it bother anyone that the person leading the most powerful armed force and economy in the history of the planet, believes, in effect, that our species is approaching the evolutionary equivalent of an early retirement? Should we worry that George W. Bush has a short-timer attitude?
 
As I have written here before, a person’s paradigm, or underlying worldview, has a profound influence on their behavior. For example, I loved my old job and co-workers, but after the boss gave me a one month layoff notice—once the ax started falling -- I just couldn’t approach my work with the same commitment. I was too preoccupied with the afterworld (getting the next job) to work on perfecting this world. [PULLQUOTE} So I’m worried that the Rapture may subconsciously be Mr. Bush’s exit strategy for Iraq, for nuclear proliferation, for global warming. 
 
As we fight to establish democracy in Iraq, let’s remember this: it’s profoundly undemocratic for the believers of *any* religion to deny the future to any others. I respect the right of Mr. Bush and his neo-conservative colleagues to hold a short timer view of the human race… but the American people should make them short timers in the White House.