This Is the Dawning of the Age of Perplexity
There is something almost ironic about that old song, “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In,” from the musical Hair . The music was written by Galt MacDermot, with lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni, and the famous recording by The 5th Dimension was released in 1969 . The song looked toward an imagined coming age of harmony and understanding, as though Mankind were moving into a brighter and more enlightened future. But if that song were rewritten for the world in which we are living today, I think its opening would have to say something very different: “Harmony and understanding have been thrown under the bus for ignorance and hatred.” That may sound humorous, but there is something very serious underneath it. The peaceful age that Mankind imagined it could create for itself has not arrived. Instead, we are watching a world that is increasingly divided, anxious, angry, uncertain, and perplexed about where everything is going. The strange thing is that this is happening at a tim...