The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.
Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., 1924 – 2006,
 was a liberal Christian clergyman and long-time peace activist with international stature. He was ordained in the Presbyterian Church and later received ministerial standing in the United Church of Christ.  In his younger days he was a superb athlete, a highly talented pianist, a CIA agent, and later chaplain of Yale University, where the influence of Reinhold Niebuhr's social philosophy led him to become a leader in the civil-rights and peace movements of the 1960s and 1970s.  

Have you thought about getting away, about being left alone and leaving others alone?  As the population of our planet increases and the amount of land upon which we can live remains unchanged—if not, in fact, decreases—this dream of many people becomes a fading, wistful thought.  

In the previous part, we looked at how we might ensure that technology would enable us to be left alone and to leave others alone:  the solution would depend on who controlled the technology.  In this part, we see how the quotation by Coffin above might be proved true.  

It was with interest, in fact, joy, that I watched the report of April 13, 2008, on “Sixty Minutes,” entitled “El Sistema.”  In Venezuela , poor children start playing classical music at age four.  Before entering middle school, children are in orchestras.  Presently, eighty million dollars covers three hundred thousand children, which comes to less than $270 per child per year.  

The report pointed to the value of El Sistema to motivating children and readying them for careers.  

Not only could we cover four million American children every year for four billion dollars, the amount spent in two weeks on the war in Iraq , but, also, we could win many allies around the world by underwriting music programs in those countries.  

So, should music teachers have a larger say in Congress and the White House?  For that matter, should people whose outlook is to build bridges have a larger, permanent, say, without being susceptible to the winds of politics?

June 5, 2008