Every age has its tugs of war between the appetite for control and the yearning for freedom. This is at the heart of it why human beings are both fundamentally ungovernable and yet determined to hack out some functional – and by that I mean survivable – means to acquire the advantages of belonging to a society: the pooling of resources, the concentration and specialization of skill, the sharing of knowledge and all that economics jazz.
Yet one of the most important parts of group formation is the sharing of narratives, the development of skills to communicate and reinforce the fundamental epics and ethics that a given people embraces. Some of these can be legacies from earlier stages, earlier civilizations. Others can be imports from over the mountains or overseas. Yet other narratives can simply be minor keys and side bars that represent the stories that were either passed by due to historical changes – or have yet to fully germinate because the future fertile soil of those tales’ births is not yet prepared.
Story – and more broadly, political talk - is important in a way you can’t directly measure but it has indirectly measurable value. If you love you some accounting (I mean, who doesn’t?) then think of it as accumulated goodwill. To the extent your stories motivate activity, harmonize social relations and deeper sharing of knowledge and experience, and create and support stable, actionable and positive norms that raise a sense of trust in others and the society’s goals at large, you get… a lot of efficiencies.
That is perhaps why democracy is a very compelling story unto itself. Sometimes dry, sometimes process-minded and transaction-based (take the impressive yet rather legalistic prose of the Federalist Papers), at other times highly philosophical and even theological in its tones, as the Declaration of Independence. We hold these truths to be self-evident.
We see the invocation to higher callings and powers in another document, the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln essentially delivers prophecy: “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Damn right, Abe. Preach it.
And President Lincoln might well turn out to be wrong; there are no guarantees that our particular America shall persist. The historical record strongly suggests that, like individual critters and species, that human beings and their societies are born, mature, thrive, peak, decline and eventually die.
But six generations of schoolchildren didn’t memorize the Gettysburg Address because of its anthropological street cred or lack of same. They did so for the fact that it represent yet another polished stone added to stories that arch upward and forward.
And those stories, those stones after stones on the arch of our society, sometimes misplaced, sometimes broken, sometimes inappropriately embraced and set aside, keep coming.
And despite the occasional oopses, there are so, so many good stories.
Let’s go a century forward of the Civil War to the Civil Rights era for what one might dare declare to be the keystone of the arch itself… or rather, the anticipation of the placement of that keystone. For it had to be set in place. The American story, the arch that upholds the best of our society, desperately needed that one more piece.
And an entire people – not only those who were brutalized by racism but those who perpetrated it, or embraced it, or made jokes about it, or fearfully cringed in horror yet looked the other way – they all needed the arch to be finished.
But how long would they have to wait?
How long? They asked.
One man had an answer. It’s one of the most famous of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s lines. You'll recognize it when you come to it.
And I'm telling you right now, if you’ve never read the entire speech “How Long? Not Long” you have cheated yourself of more tears of relief and joy and heartswelling pride to be a human being than you could ever count. For we all exalted by the speech. All of us.
So…I’m going to let the master artisan finish this particular arc…and describe to you that keystone that the arch of America’s best – the stories that, if embraced in full, just might fulfill Lincoln’s prophecy at Gettysburg…and that the best days of the Republic lie ahead of us.
And carrying the good stories forward will help raise that needful keystone at last.
Now, on to Reverend King's words:
I know you are asking today, "How long will it take?" (Speak, sir) Somebody's asking, "How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?" Somebody's asking, "When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?" Somebody's asking, "When will the radiant star of hope be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night, (Speak, speak, speak) plucked from weary souls with chains of fear and the manacles of death? How long will justice be crucified, (Speak) and truth bear it?" (Yes, sir) I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, (Yes, sir) however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, (No sir) because "truth crushed to earth will rise again." (Yes, sir) How long? Not long, (Yes, sir) because "no lie can live forever." (Yes, sir) How long? Not long, (All right. How long) because "you shall reap what you sow." (Yes, sir)"
"How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."