Hope for the Species

Posted on March 28, 2003 in Citizenship

Many are shaking their heads and couching them in their hands these days, reciting the old negative platitudes about human nature and the ill things it wreaks.

Jaded Ju reminded us that with all the money spent to appease interest groups, “genuinely public spirited endeavors” still exist. She points us to the library.

If you want to see evidence that cooperation is part of human nature, go to the library. Marvel at the rows of books that have been selected on your behalf. If you don’t see the title that you want there, rejoice because your librarian can arrange — for the smallest of fees — an interlibrary loan: she can bring it to you from Maine if that is what it takes. A walk down the aisles and a thought given to the effort it took to assemble them quickly dispels the demon who chants “people are bad, people are bad”. Only Good could have made the library: it resists attempts by Bad to dilute its potency, to keep it from creating a meeting place for minds.

Sing praise to the chamber of words, to the free minds collected for a purpose, to the Library — the Hall of the People.