In the world of quantum mechanics, when you take a measurement the probability wave collapses and you get a quantifiable reality. Of all the possible outcomes of the prior moment, one becomes real and all the others are relegated to the half-world of "might have beens". In much the same way, in a large society of individual human beings, all of the various influences have their effect and at any given moment you have a consensus reality. I am grateful to the Dalai Lama for teaching me that violence never solves anything. I am also grateful to the State of Israel for teaching me that sometimes passive resistance is not a viable solution.

Was that too esoteric? What I'm trying to say is that the world we see is the result of many influences, with the extremes rarely getting a chance to manifest themselves directly but having their effect on the consensus result. I was a college radical in the 60s. Now I have a mortgage, a divorce, and a modest investment portfolio. I see no contradictions. I'm a member of the Sierra Club and the NRA. I want to save the whales and save free enterprise. I meditate and read "Scientific American". I program computers for a living and call upon nature spirits to keep the ants out of my house. My religious preference is "Jewish Buddhist Pagan Agnostic".

I was delighted when, in a recent commentary on this station, Steve Kagen complained that NPR presented "a wide diversity of views, all the way from the extreme right to the center". Steve felt it necessary to balance this by presenting his view from the left. In my version of reality, the views presented were from the center to the left and I wanted to add my perspective from the right. Steve reminded me of a unversal truth: how it looks always depends on where you're standing.

Growing up isn't a matter of discarding all of your youthful ideals and taking on the selfish burdens of working for a living and raising a family. Growing up is about expanding your world view to encompass more than you could see in the past. That often means that things you once took to be absolute ideals and final goals become stages on the way to a vision that includes the conclusions of greater experience. The radical social utopia that I espoused in the 60s would have worked no better than the failed experiments of Cuba, China, and the former Soviet Union. Enforced equality suppresses ambition and innovation. The unalloyed social policies of the extreme right would have fared no better. In my view, the greatest danger to the survival of the American way of life is the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a tiny percentage of our population.

The future of a free society lies in the knowledge and involvement of its citizens. We need to hear the views of all political streams. More than that, we need to think about what we hear and apply our reason and our emotions and, most of all, our efforts to bringing about the future that we want. My greatest fear for American democracy is not that the Republicans will sell out the country to Big Business or that the Democrats will give away the store to the undeserving poor. My greatest fear is that our political system has become a form of entertainment and that our elections have become an exercise in advertising psychology. If you don't take an active part in the democratic process, you have no one to blame but yourself.

With a commentary for WCPN, this is Marc Myers.

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This page last changed 10/11/98