The Family of Man - From an American Perspective
John Krieg
Editors’ Comment: We are publishing in serial form, John Krieg’s book that he submitted to us titled The Family of Man - From an American Perspective, starting with the last chapter first, to give you an idea where he ends up. Next issue we will then start from the beginning, one or two chapter each issue. We know this is unusual but we think it will provide time to digest John’s ideas. We invite you to give it a try.
Chapter Nine
If Not Now, Then When?
Will the Family of Man Ever be a Reality?
Unquestionably, however, something else is at work, something that cuts deeper into the American psyche. We have a profound hatred for the weak and the poor, and a corresponding groveling terror before the rich and successful, and we’re building a bureaucracy to match those feelings. Matt Taibbi The Divide: American Justice in the Age of the Wealth Gap (copyright 2014).
Is all this “family of man” business a dream, or a pipe dream? When you look at the deep divisions amongst Americans who represent a mere 5% of the world’s population, and then compare them against the even deeper divisions amongst the world’s remaining population, it is easy to feel that the whole situation is hopeless. But, all there is – is hope. Therein lies the future of the entire planet. The complete disregard for the sanctity of human life is the biggest hurdle to guaranteeing that it will continue on into the future.
The complexity of the human body itself is nothing short of miraculous, and yet there are so many people that feel that they can take human life with impunity either because they don’t believe what you believe, or worse yet, won’t do exactly what you tell them to do. Complete and total domination of the human spirit for personal gain has been a characteristic of mankind ever since our various renditions of our various species started walking upright on the land.
Considering our ignoble and deplorable history, why should this moment in time, right here, right now, be any different? Because it has to be, or humanity is doomed. Because momentum to finally recognize the rights of all people has risen to the tipping point. That is why the George Floyd murder sparked worldwide protests. No human being should just have their life as nonchalantly snuffed out as one would crush a cigarette butt under the sole of their shoe. There was just something so viscerally wrong about it that no one could condone it, no one could ignore it, and no one could look away. Floyd’s human rights had obviously been stepped upon; figuratively and literally, and anyone possessing a shred of humanity found themselves questioning themselves; why him and not me?
If the family of man is to ever truly be a family the transformation has to start with a deep abiding respect for human life and human rights. In actuality, this realization is nothing new. On December 10th, 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was ratified at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris France when the then 58 members of the recently formed United Nations (1945) cast 48 votes in favor, eight abstentions, with two countries declining to vote at all. Pictures ran in American newspapers of our nation’s queen of compassion, Eleanor Roosevelt, the driving force behind this historic document, proudly holding the English language broadsheet in her hands. It served as the defining document for the humane treatment of all the peoples of the earth until (no surprise here) the United States Supreme Court ruled that the UDHR, “does not on its own force impose obligations as a matter of international law.”
Predictably, the high courts of other nations around the world followed suit. The spirit of the document lives on, however, in the worldwide celebration of its creation every December 10th, and the impact of the document birthed Amnesty International in 1961. Elements of the UDHR have been adopted through the years by other organizations such as The International Federation for Human Rights, Quaker United Nations and American Friends Service Committee, American Library Association, and Youth for Human Rights, to name but a few.
So the precedent has been set and has been in existence for a long time, but just as with anything else involving totalitarian governments, it’s not what humanists encourage them to do, but what somebody can force them to do. Fortunately, the government of the United States is not (as of yet) a totalitarian government, and we as a people have to get our own house in order before advising the rest of the world on how to run theirs’. The future of the family of man has to start on the individual level. Every citizen has to do an honest assessment of their conscious and see if they can behave in a more humanistic manner towards their fellow human beings.
The videos coming out of Portland, Oregon disturbed me greatly. That cop visciously striking a Navy veteran four times with his baton, that cop charging the wall of moms with his shield and knocking them back, those cops throwing people into unmarked vans – those cops are Americans too, and I wonder when they lay their heads to sleep at night; do they really get to sleep very well at all?
Do any of them, now far removed from the heat of the moment that sparked those actions, lament that they did indeed take those actions? Anyone can claim that they were just doing their job, but sometimes the dictates of the job are inhumane, and a person of conscious knows it, wrestles with it, and has to reckon with it. Anyone can change when they come to the realization that what they are doing defies what they know to be right and just. If any of those cops do have a change of heart, let me be the first to nominate them for inclusion into the family of man.
(Next month Chapter One)
John C. Krieg is a retired landscape architect and land planner who practiced in the Southwestern desert. He is also a retired licensed arborist, contractor, and engineer. He has written a college textbook entitled Desert Landscape Architecture (1999, CRC Press), as well as pieces published in numerous literary magazines. Mr. Krieg completed a two-part documentary film entitled Landscape Architecture: The Next Generation (2010), with filmmaker/photographer Charles Sappington. In some underground circles John is considered a master grower of marijuana with a lifelong goal to see marijuana federally legalized. To that end, he has two books coming out this year being published by Ribbonwood Press, Marijuana Tales and More Marijuana Tales.