Ben Herbster was the founding president of the United Church of Christ. His philosophies were strongly believed, he had incredible leadership abilities, and he had a great philanthropic spirit. Albert Einstein was a genius. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics, was a writer, and helped make the atomic bomb. He later said he wished he wouldn’t have helped with the project because not only was he an intelligent man, he was a peaceful one.
"The greatest waste in the world is the difference between what we are and what we could become." -Ben Herbster. He is saying that so many people could do so much with their lives, yet they do just enough to get by. We are, essentially, wasting our potential. We all have the possibility to be great, and it depends on the individual if he is going to use his potential to make himself and the world better.
I agree with what the author is saying. All of us have the ability to made good decisions and the right choices, yet most of us make the wrong ones, or worse yet, no decision at all. The 90’s were one of the most prosperous decades in history, and instead of using that prosperity and tranquility to tackle the larger issues at hand, we had the largest audience in history watching the O.J. Simpson trial. We are supposed to be expanding our horizons, dealing with the larger issues at hand, but everyone sits around watching one man’s life fall apart.
Marion Anderson, an African-American singer who was limited because of her race said, "No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise." Albert Einstein once wrote, "I don’t know what kind of weapons will be used in the third world war, assuming there will be a third world war. But I can tell you what the fourth world war will be fought with - stone clubs."
Today’s modern society is so caught up on who could make the biggest splash, that when the third world war does come, we are going to destroy ourselves. Then in the end there will be nothing left, just like when they still used stone clubs. Einstein also said, " Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding." He said, he "’passionately hates senseless violence and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism.’" If we want to act senselessly, and before we have a clear understanding of what the consequences are going to be, we are going to be irrational in our decision making. Acting extremely isn’t necessarily what the world and everybody needs right now.
Talking about today’s military, Albert Einstein said, "He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already been given my contempt. Heroism at command, how violently I hate this. How despicable and ignoble war is." Our war is only going to lead to us destroying ourselves and destroying the world, leaving nothing, nothing at all for there to even be a fourth world war.
"To preserve peace, we need weapons of smaller and men of larger caliber." -Unknown. When speaking in terms of the guns, a smaller caliber would mean a smaller barrel, therefore a smaller gun. When speaking in terms of men, we need to have larger leadership abilities. "It takes twenty years or more of peace to make a man; it takes only twenty seconds of war to destroy him," King Baudouin I, the King of Belgium in 1951 once said. War destroys people, and to stop it, everybody has to be the "bigger man," step down, and be men of a larger caliber. Einstein wrote, "We cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used to create them." Most of the problems we have today are caused by people thinking they are right and never wrong in what they do, by their not thinking about how their decisions are going to effect the people around them. Everyone needs to think" outside the box" and not rush into the same mistakes twice.
Our solutions cannot be similar to our problems. We need to change directions. Pablo Casals, a Spanish born cello player who made extraordinary contributions to the music culture of Puerto Rico and the world said, "Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it." We need to put down the weapons and be the better man for it. We need to be the men of larger caliber.