Disappointing

"WHAT A PIECE OF WORK is man, how noble in reason"..begins a wonderful monologue by Hamlet. For an uplifting experience, read its entirety. It will give your admiration of mankind a boost. Hamlet is also the person who asked himself "to be or not to be?". He at once comprehended the miraculous beauty of life, and yet, seriously considered snuffing out his own. "Noble be man, compassionate, and good", said Goethe, who is widely regarded as surpassing even Shakespeare in literary brilliance. It is comforting to know that the two greatest writers in the English language, arguably, were both capable of harboring a positive attitude towards humanity, although both lived through turbulent times. But, don't we all? At other times, in other books, both writers expressed disenchantment with humanity. For me, the tendency is, the older I get, the more the contempt in which I hold the human species, excepting, of course, myself. I adore myself. When I was twenty, in 1975, I recall telling one of my friends that I liked somebody, and he responded "hell, you like everybody". Back then, in fact, I did. That seems like a long time ago. Then again, it doesn't. Now I tell myself repeatedly that I don't like anybody, that I prefer cats and dogs to humans, and that I have only contempt for humanity. I think I mean all of it. Simultaneously, I feel that I truly appreciate the wondrous beauty of the human species, the pricelessness of people, and the awe inspiring beauty and complexity of all life, and nature. I conclude that I love my fellow humans, but that I love them far more if I keep some distance between them and me. A college student wrote a letter to Einstein, telling the famous scientist that life was a disappointment, and that he often wondered why he even bothered to live. Einstein, a modern American celebrity, hated his celebrity status but answered many of the hundreds of letters he received. He replied to the young man that he personally found his life to be immensely interesting and very much worthwhile, and believed that everyone, with a little introspection, could find value and meaning. The most famous picture of Einstein has him sitting behind a desk in his study, wearing a grey sweat shirt, with a pen clipped onto it, and looking up at the camera with his head angled downward, a somber expression on his aged face. He had just answered an interviewers question by saying that as long as there are people, there will be war. In 1975, a friend told me that within fifty years, only a handful of Beatles songs would be remembered. Time is running out. He was wrong. My prediction was that someday everyone would have a flat screen on every wall in the house, which would serve as a television, a computer, and a picture telephone. I don't recall whether I had my computer spitting out cardboard cards. I night have, I hope not. My prediction of forty four years ago wasn't half bad, excepting that I never imagined portable pocket telephone computers. Neither did anybody else, with the exception of the guy who watched Star Trek, got jealous of Spock to Kirk, and invented the cell phone. I think his name was Smith, and he died a few years ago. Most of my childhood fantasies about the future were extremely optimistic. In the nineteen sixties, and on into the nineteen seventies, I believed that I would live long enough to visit a lunar base, and a Martian base. Now, it seems as if nobody will live to visit either. Back then, we were in love with space travel. I also figured that all of humanity's problems would be solved by science. In 1969, in ninth grade, Paul Ehrlich brought me down a bit with his "The Population Bomb", which, fortunately, didn't come true. He's still on campus at Berkeley, and he's glad about the agricultural revolution which made a liar out of him. The lesson is; human beings are very poor at predicting the future. The United States is the nineteenth happiest country in the world, and slipping. I saw a post thanking Trump for that, but it isn't his fault. Its ours. America is an angry, disappointed culture. The young are disenchanted with the world they are inheriting, old folks like me still want to visit Mars and live in a world devoid of disease, hunger, and especially warfare, as we expected to someday do when we were children. This truth is eternal: the choice is ours as to whether we find life disappointing.