No Matter how far afield we may grope, our more serious
speculations seem to follow a pattern that arises from the conditioning
of our lives. That conditioning, in its starkest simplicity, is that we
enter the world of the living, we exist in it for a period - and then we
pass on.
Therefore we are concerned with where we came from,
what we are doing and why, and where we are going. All the philosophies
of mankind have been built about these three questions; and it is
significant that we are always more interested in looking backward and
forward - reliving the past and projecting the future - than we are in
understanding, using, and enjoying the present.
It is sad that we spend so much time and energy, both
physical and emotional, in retrospect and anticipation, and so little in
the conscious savoring and utilization of the present moment. Some
scholars explain this by citing the legend of the Golden Age - the
concept of a far-distant time when all mankind was happy, and of a
future day when they shall be happy again. Thus the Garden of Eden, the
Expulsion, and the hope of Paradise Regained. Thus the Heaven and Hell
of nearly all religions.
Some other psychologists have their own explanation,
which they call the theory of intra-uterine blessedness. They argue that
the only time of perfect peace and comfort known to man is the period
spent within the warm, protecting, nourishing body of his mother. That
period, they say, was the Golden Age, and all our groping toward a
future state of bliss - toward tomorrow's happiness -is but the vague
hope of attaining once more the perfect contentment of the prenatal
period. They have a point.
Facing the Present
The poet Swinburne, in one of his better moments,
penned a significant phrase: "From hope and fear set free." In it he
came close to the understanding of our constant backward-and-forward
looking. If the demands of rhyme and meter had permitted him to add
"regret" he might have completed the trilogy of emotions that keep our
minds away from the present. For we regret only that which is past. We
fear only that which may happen tomorrow - or this afternoon. And we are
not hopeful about the present, only about the future - whether it is to
be ten years or ten minutes hence.
But we live now, in this present moment. To be sure,
the bit of existence called "now" extends infinitely across time, both
into what we call the past, and into what we term the future. Warm
memories of the past are pleasant things; hopeful anticipation of the
future is part of our soaring optimism. But today, this hour, this
instant - that is the moment of living. If it has its dark side, it
comes usually from either regret or fear. But regret is of yesterday;
fear is of tomorrow. Neither can touch today, save as a man thinketh in
his heart.
Of course it is only the rare soul that can set itself
free (as Swinburne phrased it) from hope and fear. It is only the
near-to-God who are released from regret. Yet it is in the attainment of
these perfections, or the close approach to them, that we come nearest
to perfect peace.
But in the external, practical sense, there is another
reason for being concerned about the present. There is much talk these
days about the future of our country. Air waves and news columns are
full of it. What about the dollar - is it safe? What about education -
is it adequate? What about Social Security - is it solvent, and indeed,
"secure"? What about our long-continued inflation? The increase of
crime? Juvenile delinquency? Drug addiction? What of our relations with
the rest of the world - NATO, SEATO, OAS? What are we going to do about
... ?
Going to do! Future action! Actually, it is what we are
doing now, today, this minute, that will determine our fate, rather than
what we are planning to do. We are charting the future, not in our plans
for it, but in our present actions. Man, said Emerson, is where he is by
repeated choice. The present is explicitly the result of the past.
Society, like life, is a continuous flow. Every act and decision of
today will determine our tomorrows.
To put it concretely, if we want to have an economy and
a society that is based on freedom, we shall have to begin now to talk
and think in terms of freedom, rather than in the cliches of continued
and increasing statism, for the one is the negation of the other.
Political candidates who profess to favor a free society and a free
economy will have to talk and think about insuring freedom, rather than
bidding for votes by promising first one and then another segment of
society that each will be given special benefits and privileges not
accorded to others, but paid for out of the common treasury. Businessmen
who proclaim themselves as being for the free market philosophy will
have to learn what underlies and under-girds such freedom, and stop
saying, in effect, 'I'm for freedom - but.
Today Sets the Future
Plans for the future are fine if they are based on the
concept of freedom. But the best laid plans of today may not be
important when they are finally (if ever) brought to completion. But
what is done, now, what is done now - this will determine what the
future will be like. And surely no crystal ball or particular prescience
is needed to predict a future that is based on insolvency- - on a
long-continued program of spending each year more than is taken in,
going constantly in debt through borrowing, and printing more and more
paper money on the basis of the artificial credit thus created. The
history of nations tells the story.
And if disastrous inflation should come, as it has
elsewhere in the world under similar conditions, the first to suffer
would be the people of small means and limited income, for whose
imagined "benefit" most of the big--spend programs are supposed to be
initiated! If present-day legislators and other political leaders
continue to pile debt on debt, with no thought of how that debt is to be
discharged or even reduced, and if the weight of that debt, hanging over
the economy, continues to undermine the value of our money - who will
have benefited?
Is there a connection between the vision of a safe and
beautiful future and the dwindling value of our money? Yes! Repeat - . .
yes! And this is not to put a dollar tag on happiness or security or any
of the other "human" values that are so glibly recited - and so little
understood. Man does not live by bread alone, but the price of bread can
be of great symbolic and practical importance. Ask any elderly German
who remembers the bleak period between the wars when, because of
inflation, a loaf of bread cost a million marks or more. Ask any citizen
of Argentina who has had the value of his life savings wiped out by the
inflation that country experienced as a result of big-spend-never-pay
policies.
We can and should "live in the past" to the extent that
we are willing to study history and profit from its lessons. We can and
should "live in the future" to the degree that we understand it to be
only an extension of the present, profoundly influenced by what we do
today.
But Now is the moment of life. Paradise may indeed be
lost through the sins of ignorance, selfishness and indifference. It can
be regained through sacrifice and self--denial and the exercise of
wisdom. But it is better not to regret a Paradise that is lost, or
anticipate one that is to be regained. Just as there is something of God
in every person, so there is something of Paradise in every moment, if
only it can be realized and cherished.
Today, this hour, this moment - this is the Golden Age.
At the time of the original publication, Mr. Bradford
was well-known as a writer, speaker, and business organization
consultant.
Reprinted with permission from The
Freeman, a publication of the Foundation for Economic Education, Inc.,
September 1978, Vol. 28, No. 9.
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