All Fool's Day Article

Today is Our Day!

By John Taylor; 2010 April 01, Ala' 12, 166 BE

(Written in Hamilton, around the 26th of March, 1990)

In late fall, Christians celebrate those who have attained pre-eminence in morality, the saints, with "All Saints Day." Here in North America we know this celebration better by a demonic evening before All Saints Day. This time when demons have their hour has become the secular celebration of morbidity, Halloween. In early spring we celebrate the mirror reverse of All Saints Day, what is called in England "All Fool's Day."

You and I may never be called saints but it is fair to bet that every one of us will make a fool of ourselves sometime or other.

So, April Fools is our day!

Let us not fritter the occasion away on mindless practical jokes. All fools day is our chance to reflect upon human folly and its reverse, wisdom.

It has always been in the interest of society to condemn folly. For while a fool may or may not suffer from his folly, those around him always do! Mockery helps reduce foolish behaviour.

But social pressure is not enough to make a fool into a prudent person. Worse, when walking across thin ice, it is never wise to turn and laugh if the person next to us falls through. Even as we mock, the cracks beneath our feet grow larger.

Some may call it the height of folly for the captain of a super tanker to get stewed to the gills before setting off to sea, or for a judge to sentence him only to a maximum thirty days in prison, or for American corporations and policy makers to have created this environmental time bomb in the first place.

But the great losers from the Exxon Valdez are also the greatest fools, those we honour today: all of us.

Do we not all watch helplessly as the Amazonian rain forest goes up in flames, as the developed world competes with the undeveloped world to see whether automobile fumes or wood smoke will be the fastest to strangle the air we breathe?

Is not the definition of a fool one who rejects a clear and simple solution and persists in what makes the problem worse?

"As a dog," the Bible says, "returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly." (Prov 26:11) Repeatedly this century our leaders have rejected a world government and insisted that world problems can be solved on a national level. In a planet that is already a single economic unit corporations, with nothing powerful enough to police them -- not even the superpowers -- have become destructive to their own and everyone else's interests. It is natural, though irresponsible, for a few leaders to want to be big fish in little ponds; but for public opinion to tolerate collective suicide for the sake of massaging a few egos, what else can that be but folly?

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