Seeking Perfection On Paper

IN AMERICAN CULTURE there seems to be a tendency for people who are extremely religious to also be extremely patriotic, as if these two pillars of conservative tradition somehow automatically go hand in hand. The bible, and the constitution, two documents which were not considered perfect by the people who wrote them, and whose serious flaws render their alleged "perfection" dubious at best. Perhaps there is psychological comfort, as well as social strength, in veneration words on paper, or in stone. As if we humans need superior role models to which to aspire. Thomas Jefferson, who didn't write the constitution but taught James Madison how to, firmly believed that a new version would be preferable every generation, that each generation could govern itself, without being constrained to the methods of its ancestors, a reasonable sounding notion. As a society, we have chosen, of course, to do just the opposite, the enshrine the constitution of our ancestors, content to let them govern us, willing to change the slightest part of the sacred text only with great reluctance. Thus we the modern American people live under a constitutional which mention slavery three times, but never by name, which seems strange, almost as if the framers realized that the peculiar institution required addressing, but were ashamed of it,which, in fact, they were. without protecting slavery, the constitution would never have been approved, and the new nation would never have come into existence. Indentured servitude, a form of slavery for white seven year slaves, also required protection. In all three mentions, the institution is upheld, the slaves regarded as property, not people. This is one of teh reasons why some people believe that we should heed the message of Thomas Jefferson, and create a new constitution, suitable for the twenty first century, rather than the eighteenth. The problem, of course, is the literate human tendency to place way too much importance upon words on paper, or in stone. Illiterate humans, strangely, often share this tendency. regarding the Bible, Goethe said it best: "It is beyond me how anyone can believe taht God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not reveal itself to us, and if our hearts do not tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we will surely not learn it from books, which at best are designed only to give names to our errors."