This upcoming Martin Luther King Jr. Day promises to be an especially sad one. As evinced by the deteriorating social circumstances both at home and around the world, we have done a poor job living up to his legacy.
And while we still have Dr. King’s prophetic voice as a beacon, it feels like we somehow went into reverse, deep into a dystopian wilderness since he died. By my calculation, we are about as far from the clearing of his “promised land” as we have been at any point in my 64 years.
“When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered,” wrote Dr, King in his last book, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” He continued: “A civilization can flounder as readily in the face of moral and spiritual bankruptcy as it can through financial bankruptcy.”