Couldn't happen Did:
Garvey, John
John Garvey COULDN'T HAPPEN. DID LEARNING FROM THE UNEXPECTED This last year has been astonishing-so much so that it is by now quite commonplace to say what I just said. A friend of mine, someone...
...That need is sometimes confounded...
...We act, though, as if the creator of the universe had set it in place and wandered away, allowing the cosmos to run on its own, according to a set of unchangeable laws...
...The poisoning of our environment is the most obvious and, I'm afraid, the most likely to be seriously threatening...
...The Reagan administration's celebration of the unfettered free market and consequent greed-driven economics has turned the United States into the world's largest debtor nation, something his apologists are still too short-sighted to notice, or perhaps too frightened to contemplate...
...a bad idea no longer appeals even to French intellectuals or American academics...
...What interests me is not so much what will happen-it can't be known yet, at all-but our present reaction...
...The likelihood of a nuclear war between the superpowers has diminished to nearly nothing, removing a lot of assumptions about what we had to fear most for ourselves and our children...
...However, the fact that Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union face economic hardships that will make our Great Depression look like the days of the Gold Rush ought to worry us about the future...
...Look at what's changed, now: the cold-war focus of the standard espionage novel will never be the same, unless it is presented as historical fiction...
...Overpopulation is another, not unrelated to the first...
...Free enterprise is not going to rush in and fix all this...
...Our assumption is that things will usually be more or less the same, day in and day out, and we build our lives on that assumption...
...Muslim struggles that have characterized parts of Eastern Europe since the sixteenth century are with us once more...
...The natural sciences are based upon this sort of predictability, and so are our political calculations...
...Future historians will trace various fault lines and surface cracks to show how foolish all of us were to have failed to notice the signs of the times- how, they will ask in the exasperated tones of people who were not there, could we not have seen that this was in the works...
...He meant everything happening in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and South Africa...
...How refreshing it is when something completely unexpected happens...
...We expect water to come out of the tap when we turn the faucet...
...We claim to believe that the universe exists because, instant to instant, it is willed into being by God...
...Our rejoicing should be tempered by wariness...
...What fascinates me, though, is the fact that what this time has left is an array of broken emotional shells, shattered expectations of good and bad things, replaced by new expectations...
...People on the right will need to find new villains...
...On a secular level we have seen something amazing happen in our time, something no one expected...
...what happens is always something of a surprise...
...It is humbling and wonderful to have lived through this time, because it teaches something important about the unexpected, and the unexpectable...
...The resurgence of nationalism that will be the result of the break-up of the Soviet empire, and uncertainty about the ugly forms it may take, is another...
...There are people whose job it is to look for clues that will illustrate why this was all really inevitable...
...There are new fears to replace the old ones, of course...
...There are lessons to be learned here, but they are not necessarily lessons about missed clues...
...we expect the sun to rise in the East...
...I think most of us do not really believe this, although it was a central part of Jesus' teaching: "I say to you what I say to all: Watch...
...It was an important part of his teaching that we do not know the time of his coming...
...One thing can be said with certainty: those who think they can confidently say what will happen as a result of this remarkable shift in the political and moral climate of the world are terribly misguided...
...There is rejoicing at the end of the cold war, and there should be...
...We have already seen ancient hatreds revived...
...The anti-Semitism that was for so long Christianity's evil accompaniment has resurfaced in parts of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and the Christian vs...
...Before they arrive at stable economies, whether they seek to base them on an American model or (more likely) something like the mixed democratic socialist/market economies of the Scandinavian countries, the hardships Eastern Europeans endure will have their effect on the political climate, and the result is not likely to be a happy one...
...Some clues to the future are beginning to appear...
...This is a refreshing lesson...
...We have a need to know what to fear and what to trust...
...Some of this wariness should apply not only to what might yet happen in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, but also to our former habits of thought...
...It might be a worthy subject of meditation for us: at this particular moment we have no reason to expect that Christ is about to come again-but we do have his word that he will, and we have an example that what we don't expect to happen, can indeed happen, and quite suddenly...
...It takes what refuge it can find, however inappropriate, as long as it is vaguely shell-like...
...Nobody knows...
...One form of tyranny is dead...
...This is seen by some as a clear vindication of the free market, rather than the exhaustion of an unworkable idea, but it is hard to see how this follows...
...One reason very small children have such a constant sense of wonder and delight is that they have not yet learned to expect things...
...And more lessons lie ahead, if we will pay attention to the fact that there are things we cannot now know...
...The metaphor that comes to mind is the hermit crab, which loses one shell and seeks another, almost any other...
...We have learned that things will not necessarily be what we think they will be...
...Christians profess a belief that Christ will return...
...We have something profoundly important to learn from the very fact that we do not know what to expect...
...I called him, and his first words were, "What do you think about everything that's been going on...
...Islamic fundamentalism is likely to be high on everyone's list, and it will do handily, since most Americans are so thoroughly ignorant of Islam that they will believe almost any scary story about it...
...There is an important lesson here for believers, I think...
...it's hard to see how or where this will end...
...A friend of mine, someone I hadn't been in touch with for a long time, recently had surgery...
...We may begin to learn not to depend so much upon our usual expectations...
...What has happened politically during this past year is almost as astonishing as it would be if one morning the sun were to rise in the West...
...It is as if whole bloody agendas, put away in body bags and frozen to stillness with World War I, were alive again, or as if the legacy of the Ottoman Empire hadn't died, but only sat out a few decades while Western Europe went mad...
...The rejoicing that accompanies this is in some ways entirely appropriate, and in other ways premature...
...He didn't need to say what he meant...
Vol. 117 • March 1990 • No. 6
