Listen to the World

Today is Maundy Thursday.  I always found the Episcopal service held in the evening of this day to be the most moving event of the entire religious calendar.  At the heart of it is the breathtaking concept of a God who, instead of simply demanding that humans make sacrifice to Him, beyond all understanding sacrifices Himself on their behalf.  A deep thought, and a stunning one.

And somehow in this sacrifice, as Christians piously believe, all the world is brought together, united in God and in one another, unbreakably, beyond all pains and perils, through all time and space and eternity.  Of course, Love is the reason; for God is Love.  And all that is not Love is not God, either.

Now your Head Trucker is no theologian, and I dare say no more on so profound a subject - which you may take poetically, if you please, or ignore.  But somehow today it seems fitting to share with you all this film I just came across for the first time:  The Listening Project.  A series of interviews with people all around the world, asking simply what they think of America.  It was made in the last years of the Bush regime, and perhaps some attitudes have changed since then; but even then, the surprising thing is that so many people have such a good impression of what America is - or should be, could be, can be.

I highly recommend watching the whole film, which you can see by instant view on Netflix.  I think you fellas will find it fascinating, as I did.  Growing up in the early Sixties in the deep South, I realize now that what we learned in school about the rest of the world was sadly limited.  We learned the names of the continents and the major countries and capitals, of course; and some scattered facts about various rivers and mountain ranges, and what grew where, and which nations had been allies in the world wars, or not.

But in memory, at least, it seems that time and again when we studied other countries, the gist of what we learned was that X was located here, which used to be a colony of Z, and was full of happy, peaceful natives carrying jars on top of their heads, or weaving baskets, or pulling rickshaws.  Of course, all such godforsaken, backwards people were in the gunsights of the Communists, who had nothing better to do than plot night and day to enslave happy, peaceful natives.  I suppose they were just mean that way.

Certainly we were not interested in disturbing all the happy, peaceful natives with their quaint little ways.  Though naturally, we would be glad to sell them all the Coca-Cola and transistor radios they could use - er, that is, I think we were selling radios, although every radio I saw came stamped with "Made in Japan" on the back.  Oh well, it was nice to think that the happy, peaceful Japanese natives had something productive to do, so they could stay all happy and peaceful, as good natives should.  Besides, what else could people living in paper houses do? 

At least, that's what teacher said.  And that lions roamed the streets of Johannesburg.  And at the heart of the British Empire - for so all our teachers called it, invariably - London was still pockmarked with bomb craters from the Blitz.

So deeply impressed upon my mind were these facts that years later, when I visited London at age 21, I looked eagerly for bomb craters everywhere I went, hoping to get a picture of one.  And indeed, when I returned home, a friend the same age as me inquired whether I had seen any bomb craters there.  Alas, not a single one, I had to report with disappointment.

Apart from all these inaccuracies, the thing that strikes me now is that all through those long, sunny, somnolent afternoons we spent poring over our social studies books and learning where all the different happy, peaceful natives lived, we never once were able to read anything written or said by one of them.  Our textbooks were fairly new - and I grew up in a small city, not the boonies - but they were all summary, and very little pertinent, current detail.

We kids knew there was a world beyond the oceans - it was the age of television and Telstar, air-raid drills and Sputnik and the British Invasion, for goodness' sake - but we saw very little of it in our books, and heard even less.  Where I grew up, television was never used as a teaching medium; except that once in a very great while, when John Glenn or some other astronaut was about to blast off, teacher would bring a portable set from home and let us watch the countdown live from Cape Kennedy.  Quite a thrill, even better than the Jetsons.

We did have school-provided record players and movie projectors, of course, and occasionally we would get to see an Encyclopedia Britannica film of some faraway land.  But even though they were welcome breaks in the scholastic tedium for us kids, they failed to give us a clear sense of the actual people living in those lands - all those quaint, anonymous, faceless, but happy and peaceful natives.  I remember one film we saw - it's strange what the mind retains, isn't it - was about Libya, of all places. 

Which in those days was a real nowhere place, where apparently nothing whatsoever had happened since the days of the Roman Empire.  I think we saw a shot or two of Roman ruins; and then about forty minutes of long shots panning across the trackless wastes of the desert, while in the middle distance, the droning announcer told us, some happy, peaceful natives swathed from head to foot in sheet-like clothing swept the desert with some American-supplied equipment to uncover all the land mines left over from World War II.  Through carelessness, I suppose; no reason was given why anyone would want to leave a lot of perfectly good land mines out in the middle of nowhere like that, but there they were, somewhere under the sand dunes.

No doubt there was the obligatory shot of the front end of a camel, and some more long shots of shrouded but happy, peaceful natives bustling around in some crowded bazaar, the way happy, peaceful natives always do.  And that was that.  All those educational films, even the ones in - wow, color! - were like that.  It was not the sort of education that would or could engender any feeling of common interest or brotherhood with all those swarming, bustling people in faraway, foreign lands.  Our young minds were much more intrigued with the thought of rocket ships and space travel, and whether we could be taking vacations on the Moon by the time we grew up.  Certainly we young Americans had no intention of living like quiet, mute, voiceless but happy, peaceful natives, sans rockets, sans television, sans cheeseburgers and french fries and milkshakes, even sans rock and roll.  Please.  How dull would that be?

Of course, nowadays - I do hope - young people learn a lot more a lot earlier about people in other countries, and that they are real people, just like us.  Or do they?  Well, now that I've digressed long enough, watch the trailer for The Listening Project, and see if some new insights come into your own mind about happy, peaceful natives our fellow human beings around the world.  Finally, the "natives" talk!  Will wonders never cease?