I’m reading “1968” by Mark Kurlansky, and this quote really struck me:
“We will find neither national purpose nor personal satisfaction in a mere continuation of economic progress, in an endless amassing of worldly goods. We cannot measure national spirit by the Dow Jones Average, nor national achievement by the gross national product. For the gross national product includes air pollution and advertising for cigarettes, and ambulances to clear our highway carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and jails for the people who break them. The gross national product includes the destruction of the redwoods, and the death of Lake Superior. It grows with the production of napalm and missiles and nuclear warheads . . . It includes Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the broadcasting of television programs which glorify violence to sell goods to our children.”
“And if the gross national product includes all this, there is much that it does not comprehend. It does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of public officials . . . the gross national product measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile; and it can tell us everything about America — except whether we are proud to be Americans.”
– Robert Kennedy, 1968
Hi, it’s John, I couldn’t help feeling this was a statement of faith. Without reading the book I can’t say how religion played out in Bobby’s life, I’m reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, and seeing it through that lens, what it’s talking about is the separation of the stuff, the material things from our spiritual selves. That which we express through poetry, and connecting with others like family, spouse, those we work with, and meet on the street, and engage in friendly debates.
This book I’m reading starts with C.S. Lewis’ take on mankind conforming to Natural Law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law although he is not referenced in the wikipedia link. The book is a transcription of war time radio broadcasts, an interesting juxtaposition takes place between the teaching of a God who loves his children and the death and destruction of the combat that was unfolding.
Bobby was easily the most religious of the Kennedy brothers, and he may very well have been thinking in spiritual terms when he wrote that. But still, on the face of it, he makes no mention of God or Faith. I think that means it has to be taken as closer to a statement of humanism than faith. Whether it would qualify as natural law or not seems like a matter of how universal you feel the truth of the statement is. He doesn’t limit it to his own view by saying “my view is” or “in my considered opinion”, so it seems like he might feel he is stating a universal truth, which would make it natural law, right?
BTW, here’s another quote from him. At his announcement of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Kennedy quoted these lines from Aeschylus in a speech which was to become one of his most memorable moments:
“He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart. And in our own despair, and against our will, comes Wisdom by the awful Grace of God”.
I think this is an amazing speech from the sixties. It predates the current thinking on Contraction and Convergence by 3 decades and more. Superb stuff.