The Conversation
“All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.” Stephen Hawking, in a 1993 British Telecom commercial, and sampled by Pink Floyd on their 1994 album, “The Division Bell”.
Monday afternoons, when I work the second-shift on the only double-shift day in my work-week, are the most-challenging, especially loading and unloading 48-foot tractor-trailers in our new, climate-change Summer reality. This particular afternoon, I had steeled myself for another five hours of back-breaking, sweat-pouring manual-labour, the very definition of the blue-collar existence, when I was joined by my partner of the day for the task. We nodded a “hello” to each other, and got to heaving heavy cardboard-boxes. Not five minutes in, he turned to me and asked, “What does your generation think of my generation?”
These moments are what I have come to call “Robert Reich moments”. Reich, Secretary of Labour under Bill Clinton, professor at several universities, and political-commentator and blogger, has been chronicling at-length the present collapse of our form of government from his educated, experienced, determinedly-progressive perspective. Often on his site, he tells tales of how people will come up to him in public, thank him for his continuing work, and ask him in various ways how he manages to keep up his spirits, and not sink into socio-political despair? (He does despair, but he soldiers on, as many progressives of his generation do.) The clearly-unfiltered, boldly-honest, almost-pleading tone of voice and desire for an equally-honest answer coming from the heart of this young man presented me with a Robert Reich moment, and, for once, I was ready. I am not nearly as ready with a quick, intelligent response as once I was — the synaptic-connexions of this aging cranium are not nearly what they were — but this young Black man, young enough to be my grandson, deserved an honest response from an old, white guy.
I turned to him and replied, “Anyone of my generation with a shred of conscience left wakes up every morning and drops to their knees, begging forgiveness from your generation for everything we have done to fuck up your future.”
The young man almost smiled as he said, “I am so glad to hear you say that.”
(I have made remarks in a similar vein before, but this was one of the few times I was able to address someone who was the subject of the thought itself. When in the presence of groups of people my age, or most-anyone over forty, when the “these kids today..” rant starts, I clap back with my own rant.
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(“These kids today, always on their phones, always playing video-games…” they begin, to which I respond, “Yeah, they are. They’re young, their whole adult life ahead of them. What do they have to look forward to? A government knee-deep in its own fascism? An economy with no room for them to flourish, even to survive? A planet collapsing one environmental disaster at a time? Sure, they’re on their phones, their computers. That virtual world, those games, those alternate realities: they’re a lot more-inviting, a lot more-comforting, than the real-life hellscape we’ve handed them. If were their age, I’d retreat too.” It’s a cynical, nihilistic view, I admit; it holds no hope for anyone’s power to change what is into what should be, but it shuts the “these kids…” rant down cold.)
For the next five hours, one weighty package at a time, the accompanying conversation stayed just as weighty. Did we solve the world’s problems? No. Did we agree on every point, on every nuance of opinion? Not on every, but on most. Did we find a reason to laugh, even to hope, just a bit, in the darkness? Yes, now & again, yes. Most-importantly, though, did we listen, truly listen, to each other? Most-emphatically, yes.
“All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.”
It is said by many the time for talk has passed. Talk is cheap, actions speak louder than words (even from within their cliché), and their time is now. There is a truth in that; however, actions without thought, actions without the ideas, the ideals, the reasoning, the understanding behind them will often produce the most-horrific of consequences. Human history is littered with examples, and indeed, we live with many of them now.
The bumper-sticker version of Stephen Hawking’s quote is well-known. The complete version offers more:
‘For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then, something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk, and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human-beings to work together to build rhe impossible. Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All wee need to do is make sure we keep talking.”
His remarks lay the entire history of humanity, indeed of the planet, open for discussion, and from that discussion comes our best hope. Our fears will arise as well (as just one example so-relevant to our present reality: active technological advance without sufficient thought behind it), but without communication, our hopes will fade, our chances wither, and we will pay a price none of us can afford.
All we need to do is make sure we keep talking, even — perhaps especially — in the belly of a 48-foot cargo-trailer on a sweltering Summer afternoon.
