Alfredisms
The Polk Progress was a Nebraska treasure that ceased publication in late 1989 after 82 years as a weekly newspaper. From 1955 until its last issue, the editor and publisher was the late Norris Alfred. In its last few months, the Progress had 900 subscribers in 45 states. Alfred was a remarkable Nebraskan with an uncanny eye for connecting the present with the future. Prairie Fire has collaborated with the Alfred family, the University of Nebraska School of Journalism and the Nebraska State Historical Society to locate and archive many of Norris's writings. We are capitalizing on our good fortune to present many of the Norris Alfred writings to our readership. We believe that his observations are as fresh and relevant to today's world as they were when originally written. -W. Don Nelson
Some thoughts on violence and peace October 25, 1973
“You don’t bring people together by violence.” The Prime Minister of Ireland knows whereof he speaks. We tucked that statement away for future reference while continuing to wonder at a world that talks peace and relies on violence. It is an awful paradox that peace depends on war and those advocating peace are advocating war. The concept of peace is not possible without war. Perhaps the time has come to disregard such terminology. The rational world is suspect when Dr. Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
We watch loads of grain brought to the Polk elevators during this wonderful harvest season with its clear, warm, dry days and know that neither thoughts of war or peace are paramount in farmers’ minds. Yield, price, weather, fuel, machinery repairs dominate. If there is a moment to think about the war in the Middle East, it relates first to the possibility of a fuel shortage, second to the dangers of increased United States involvement and probably third to the why of war. Yet it is the why that is most important.
War is the result of failure. Seemingly, no one wants war. We state “seemingly” because every nation claims to be peaceful though relying on war to solve their failure to coexist. Leaders assert war is necessary to bring peace without realizing what a dreadful paradox they are espousing.
Hughes Rudd, a TV news commentator we listen to in the morning, stated, apropos to another subject: “Man’s emergence from the cave has been three steps forward and two steps back.” We suspect at times it is two steps forward and three steps back. No one has ever speculated that ancient cavemen had the capability to kill a hundred thousand people with one weapon. They had their weapons—club, stone, spear—and modern man has his: guns, bombs, missiles, chemical sprays and electronic horrors which no one thought the human mind would ever conceive. The difference between modern man and caveman is one of degree.
Man never emerged from the cave. He enlarged it.
We have been critical of the military mind and its blunders that purposely restrict a real view of the world and now we wonder about the academic mind. It is easy for us to be apologetic about the military mind—it is trained to a warped view of the world. What we find uncomfortable are universities working on projects for the military. From this came nuclear weapons, nerve gases, electronic gear including people-sniffers, bombs that kill people without damaging buildings. All the horrible paraphernalia of modern weaponry was first conceived by the academic mind.
The caves of higher learning.
Loren Eiseley, in The Immense Journey describes the bones of a fossil he found deep in a slit made in the earth by water cascading out of the hills: “It was the face of a creature who had spent his days following his nose.” We are still following our noses, snuffling about in the world of knowledge without wisdom. The institutions of higher learning have become institutions of deadly learning.
Man burrows deeper in the cave uncovering dark secrets.
This is not intended as an anti-intellectual diatribe. We are neither intelligent enough to bring it off nor dumb enough to attempt it. We still believe that within man is the necessary wisdom for hopeful human life on this earth. Somehow, this wisdom has become confused with cunning. The clever are praised and the wise ignored. We sustain ourselves with illusions including war and peace. There is even the illusion that war is a corrective violence—righting wrongs—and is desirable as a means of controlling population growth.
Peace is illusive because there is no such condition. There have been times of non-war but these are fewer and fewer. As long as man strives to change his world rather than himself there can be no peace.
The Nobel Peace Prize is an illusion. The idea of peace as a prize is nonsensical. A prize has all the connotations of competition which is the antithesis of peace. That the idea has become ridiculous is realized by the naming of Dr. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho as recipients.
“You don’t bring people together by violence.” There is a statement that should be awarded the Peace Prize. The mind that put those words together is trying to emerge from the cave instead of digging deeper in it.
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