Tuning out of the mass meditation

Dec. 12, 2002

Dear Ken,

Last year when my sister and her family came back to Cape Girardeau to visit, we learned that my nephew Kyle had a girlfriend who already was in college. According to my sister, the college girl and the student council president at his high school both wanted his attention.

He was a junior in high school, was playing guitar in a rock 'n' roll band and drove a Volkswagen Jetta.

The men in the family had one piece of advice for Kyle: It doesn't get any better than this.

When Kyle and company visited this year we were briefed on his new girlfriend. She's also in college. He still plays guitar and sings in a rock 'n' roll band. A few weeks ago when they played at a dance at his high school, a girl in the crowd threw her bra and panties at Kyle.

On New Year's Day, the high school marching band he plays in is performing at the Super Dome in New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl game. Bourbon Street supposedly is off-limits. When he graduates in June he means to study filmmaking.

We may have to amend that advice. Maybe there are no limits to how juicy life can get.

Kyle's biggest care is figuring out which film school to attend. Meanwhile, other boys his age and just a little older are entering the military, readying for the big fight you'd think is inevitable if you watch TV news broadcasts. Even the most competent networks are treating war with Iraq as a probability, interviewing retired generals about war scenarios and aftermaths.

That may seem to make sense, to think about what the results of war might be. But television is like a mass meditation. Often we're watching a skilled orchestration, the wagging of the dog that has become the way public opinion is formed anymore.

It is more and more curious, isn't it? The United States went to the United Nations demanding inspections and now that they have just begun we are discrediting them as worthless.

The consequences of trigger happiness are too well known.

Last weekend, 1,800 people gathered in the Centenary Methodist Church in St. Louis to speak against war with Iraq. A national peace group called MoveOn is running newspaper ads urging that the inspections be allowed to work. The National Council of Churches, the NAACP, the Sierra Club and NOW support MoveOn.

These days in Cape Girardeau, a group of people go to the federal courthouse building every Thursday evening to hold a vigil against the war. We say "the war" as if it already exists.

This is harmful thinking. John Lennon urged imagining peace. He and Yoko Ono wrote the song "Happy Christmas (War is Over)" while the Vietnam War was still storming. "A very merry Christmas/And a happy New Year/Let's hope it's a good one/Without any fear."

Likewise, to imagine another war with Iraq is to step closer to making it a reality. Fear is a magnet that attracts darkness.

Boys who ought to be thinking about bras and panties instead are concerned about killing and dying.

Maybe peace on Earth seems impossible, but I don't believe in the inevitability of war.

The only inevitability I do believe in is enlightenment. Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed all showed us the way. We will all get there eventually. Some days the light just seems brighter than others.

What do we want? Enlightenment. When do we want it? Now.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.