Time Will Tell.

DATELINE: Friday, March 21, 2003
Conway, Arkansas

By Todd Marshall

The Voice of Reason constantly seeks to engage humankind in discussions that she believes could lead to peace and understanding.

Mostly, she unhurriedly whispers harsh truths and solemn certainties. It's best this way. She offers humans the one thing they believe will solve their problems: time. Give us time to listen, digest, ruminate, and reflect. However, when the clock strikes twelve, and there are still no answers, then Reason begins to raise her Voice in hopes that all might hear.

Now that war has once again tainted the world's illusionary dream of peace, the Voice of Reason speaks to us in her strongest, loudest brogue. Who's listening, anyway? She sounds like a worn old vinyl record with a lifetime of scratches on the faded surface. Since time has nothing more to tell, the Voice is left to preach alone to an empty parish.

Homo Homini Lupus, she shouts as a warning. Man to man is a wolf.

Time Heals All Wounds?

Humans do not need time as much as they think they do. If time were the answer to all of our problems, we would have eradicated racism, sexism, child abuse, slavery, class systems, and the other wicked ills that plaque our frayed society.

The Voice cries in vain, "Where is justice? Where is impartiality? Where is mutual understanding?" Her questions are not new. She has asked them for centuries, but the answers are not forthcoming because, according to the great philosophic thinking of world leaders, we still need more time.

Time could heal all wounds if the world's many peoples, tribes, and nations would stop beating each other up.

Time could heal all wounds if the hunters would stop hunting, the killers killing, and the haters hating. Time doesn't heal wounds when wounds are not allowed to heal.

Only a Matter of Time?

Where does conflict began? With rebellious kings and disgruntled peasants? With uncooperative nations and prideful rulers? No, my fellow humans: It starts way before then, long before the earth is tilled and the ground is watered. The seed of conflict is planted in us long before we are aware of its presence.

Conflict begins with the selfish two-year old who won't listen to his parents — and ends in totalitarianism.

Conflict begins with sibling rivalry and playground fights — and ends in armed conflict.

Conflict begins with divorce between loved ones — and ends in war between arch enemies.

War is not the result of conflict. War is conflict's quintessential prototype, conflict's crowning glory, and its pièce de résistance!

Why do we pretend to be so shocked when conflict ends with the outbreak of violence, with the death and destruction of war? Isn't that exactly what we have prepared for? When the second-hand with the finger pointed at the 'others' ticks, relentlessly and without compromise, to a point of no return, then war becomes the only answer.

The deep, dark, dirty secret is that is that the world is always at war. We wage war with our loved ones. We war against self. Conflict is so common to daily life that we don't even recognize its destructive power until it is manifested in its unadulterated version, the one that makes some cheer and others moan, the one that rouses the same primitive grunts that humans have offered to one another since the dawn of the race.

It is dusk now. Where is the solution?

Take Time Out?

How many sides to a disagreement? Clearly, always more than one — and most often, many. Arguments are multi-dimensional exercises. They are not black and white, but a mesh of colors that change with the shifting of sunlight, like a light at the end of a slight turn of the kaleidoscope. Their roots run deep, then shallow. Their branches strong, then weak. Their leaves verdant, then brown.

Seeing eye-to-eye is not the danger. The danger is refusing to look directly at one another. The danger is fear that the other side is much too different from you.

Terror of the unknown is a much greater risk than facing the unknown. Can you obey the inner Voice of Reason, telling you that it is alright to listen to the others? They are not going to convert you, but you might learn something about them.

We just don't want to hear the Voice of Reason. We prefer to listen to the shrill and familiar chant of propaganda, the derision of the inebriated soothsayer, who warns us: "Beware! Don't even consider the other side, liars all! They might just make a believer out of you!"

Time of the Essence?

Urgency joins the Voice of Reason at the onset of trying times. Twins of hope, they understand that the last straw may soon be placed upon the stack, and that the candlewick is almost completely burned to ash. Do they have a chance to persuade us?

What are we thinking? Can we really rule ourselves? "It is not given to man even to direct his own steps," says the Bible, and perhaps, in some way, the Koran and other sacred writings. So why do we press on believing that we really can do the job by ourselves? Even the best intentions come to a bitter, fruitless end when pride, greed, and power overcome the good souls among us.

Give it time, you say? Respectfully, I say to you that time is running out.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Todd
can be reached by E-mail at
toddm@mail.uca.edu

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