What cure is there for human stupidity?
An evergreen letter of note
Every now and then I’ll come across a letter that feels startlingly current, as though its author, despite being long gone, has somehow managed to write directly into the present. Of course, it’s simply a reminder that the human race has always wrestled with the same fears and frustrations, and likely always will. It was in 1938 that the following letter was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. The recipient was her editor and close friend, Maxwell Perkins.
Hawthorn, Florida
FridayDear Max:
[…]
What cure is there for human stupidity? Education, so-called, seems to have destroyed the individual power to think, rather than to have accelerated it. The only hope, to me, lies in the relative youth of the human race on earth. Figured in ratio to the probable life of our planet, a cosmologist pointed out to me that we are only a few hours old. Just as a child grows, and makes mistakes, and slips back, and goes on again, so perhaps in the end we may achieve a cosmic maturity. And to what end? You can go mad thinking about it.
I have always had a cosmic awareness. I am conscious most of the time of the universe of which we are a small part. But I have only lately become aware, so that it strikes deep into me, of the moment’s earthy turmoil. I hate it. And it seems as though the whole plunge into ruin were a tangible cohesion of evil superimposed on the reasonable and kind and peace-loving individual. Each of us asks only to breathe without pain, to love and be loved, to work for the daily bread, without interference.
Always yours,
Marjorie
Excerpted from Max and Marjorie: The Correspondence Between Maxwell E.Perkins and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.
A cure for hubris would be helpful as well. I think all wars are hubris wars
“I have always had a cosmic awareness.”
What a marvellous gift. And she clearly sees and speaks like a prophet.
Thanks. As ever. For finding these gems.