Human material conditions vary from the most privileged to the most deprived within countries and across national boundaries. What we call civilization derives from this constant human quest for a more livable environment. The nature of this struggle varies from society to society. But broadly speaking, there are two dimensions to this struggle. Although human beings have modified our natural environment in significant ways, when nature strikes, we often are humbled and reminded of our limits and vulnerabilities.
Human history is littered with such struggles.
We are about to perform an annual ritual that is expected to remind us of a long and bitter struggle against a dark chapter in the history of this nation, even though vestiges from that chapter still haunt us from time to time. Sadly enough, some of our behavioral patterns of today remind us that we are still haunted by the ghosts of slavery even though we can count the many instances when we have been able to keep some of those ghosts in check. Those were the mighty words of the late King, the man whose ideals for our society we honored once again this year. As a person, as a man, as a black man, King proved himself to be a role-model for both his contemporaries and posterity. A ritual such as this year's Martin Luther King national holiday was an occasion for reflection, for casting our minds back to our past in order to resensitize ourselves or increase our sensitivity to the fact that, to some degree, the present moment represents not simply a movement away in time, not simply the dawn of a new century, but also perceptible positive social progressive changes.