Apologies to the Grandchildren

As many of you know, I have seven grandchildren. The oldest celebrated her 38^th birthday in January, so I have been a grandfather for 38 years now. In 2022, two of my granddaughters became mothers, so now I also have two precious great-grandchildren, the first born a year ago last month.

I have been thinking about my grandchildren in a new way because of reading two books written to or for grandchildren. Those books are closely related to my January 28 blog post.

Larry R. Rasmussen’s book The Planet You Inherit was published last year. Its subtitle is Letters to My Grandchildren When Uncertainty’s a Sure Thing. I had the privilege of writing a review of that book for The Englewood Review of Books, and you can read that review here.

Rasmussen (b. 1939) is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics, emeritus, at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Among his published books are Earth Community, Earth Ethics (1996) and Earth Honoring Faith (2013).

It is no surprise that the letters written to Eduardo and Martin Rasmussen Villegas (b. 2015 and 2018), his two grandchildren, are primarily related to his many years of ecotheological teaching and writing.

While the letters clearly express the writer’s love for his two young grandsons, it will likely be 2035 and beyond before they will be able to comprehend the meaning and significance of those letters.

Maybe, though, the writer’s intention was to say important things to us adults who read those letters now, as well as to Eduardo and Martin, who will be reading them much later.

One of Rasmussen’s most important letters is titled “Responsible by Degrees,” written in August 2020. There he broached the possibility of “widespread civilizational collapse”—and asserts that “we know we must put an end to a growing, extractive economy running on ecological deficits.”

Rasmussen, though, has hopeful views about humanity’s ability to confront the current and coming ecological crisis effectively, and those views need to be pondered thoughtfully.

Still, this challenging book written for the author’s young grandsons needs to be balanced with careful consideration of more realistic views about what is most likely to occur in Eduardo’s and Martin’s lifetime.

William Ophuls’s Apologies to the Grandchildren is a 2018 book of essays, the first one bearing the same title as the book, which does give a more realistic and less hopeful view of the current ecological crisis.

(I first learned of Ophuls, born in 1934 and with a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1973, from the video by Michael Dowd that I introduced in my January 28^th blog post linked to above).

Ophuls begins his essay with stark words: ”Civilization is, by its very nature, a long-running Ponzi scheme. It lives by robbing nature and borrowing from the future, exploiting its hinterland until there is nothing left to exploit, after which it implodes.”

He continues by saying that civilization “generates a temporary and fictitious surplus that it uses to enrich and empower the few and to dispossess and dominate the many. Industrial civilization is the apotheosis and quintessence of this fatal course.”

He goes on to write these blunt words to the grandchildren, “A fortunate minority gains luxuries and freedoms galore, but only by slaughtering, poisoning, and exhausting creation. So we bequeath you a ruined planet that dooms you to a hardscrabble existence, or perhaps none at all” (p. 1)

What Can We Say/Do? While I would like to embrace Rasmussen’s hopeful view, I have become convinced by Ophuls and by Dowd—as well as by William Catton, whom I plan to introduce in later blog posts—that my grandchildren and their children will experience a world of increasing gloom.

Perhaps there is still time for necessary changes to be made, but that is doubtful—and there is little evidence to indicate that such changes will likely be made. Perhaps, sadly, little can realistically be done other than to offer deep apologies to the grandchildren.

Yet, surely, we can work toward pushing the impending collapse farther into the future and encourage the grandchildren to find ways to flourish now in the present, regardless of what looms in a future that, unfortunately, may not be as uncertain as Rasmussen thinks. 

Realism Triumphs Over Idealism

About the same time I was making my last posting (on Dec. 10), President Obama was giving his Nobel Lecture in Oslo. “A Just and Lasting Peace” was the title of the President’s 36-minute speech as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, and I assume all of you have heard all or at least part of that talk.

In responding to an e-mail from one of my “thinking friends,” I said that I thought the speech “showed the triumph of realism over idealism, which is probably the necessary position for any President to take.” When I told June what I said, she disagreed; she thought the President still holds good balance between realism and idealism.

I agree that the talk itself showed idealism as well as realism, and maybe a good balance between the two. But the speech came on the heels of the President’s decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. It was because of that decision that I maintain that realism has triumphed over idealism.

The President’s “lecture” was given partly to justify his decision to deploy more troops to combat terrorism, with the goal of creating a just and lasting peace. But can war ever do that? Since the time of “the Great War” (WWI), which was to be “the war to end wars,” every war this country has been engaged in, with perhaps the exception of the war against Iraq, has been for the express purpose of creating “a just and lasting peace.”

As a pacifist, I do not believe war can or will lead to peace. As a Christian pacifist, I do not believe war is consistent with the teachings of Jesus Christ. In this regard, I think the Swiss Anabaptists had it right. They maintained that Christians should not be magistrates, for that inevitably demands compromises. One such compromise springs from the necessity of replacing idealism with realism.

As several commentators have pointed out, President Obama’s speech seemed to reflect the influence of theologian/ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971). In the late 1930s Niebuhr rejected pacifism and propounded “Christian realism.” He became one of the main Christian ethicists to urge the U.S. to become involved in the war against Hitler in Europe. Mennonite theologian/ethicist John Howard Yoder (1927-97) was a strong and vocal critic of Niebuhr. But politicians have almost unanimously agreed with Niebuhr, which perhaps they inevitably must.

When there was question about his ability to serve as Commander in Chief, Jimmy Carter made reference to his agreement with Niebuhr’s views. When he was still a candidate for President, Barack Obama referred to Niebuhr as his “favorite philosopher.” Niebuhr probably had more influence on national politicians in the twentieth century than any other theologian, and his influence continues to be seen in President Obama's talks and actions.

So, as Niebuhr was a strong advocate of realism, there is ample theological/ethical support for realism triumphing over idealism in the combination of the words and actions of President Obama. But the question still remains, will that, in fact, bring about a just and lasting peace? I hope so, but I am afraid not.