Heinlein: Decency Is Not News, but It's Stronger Than Crime
This I Believe
Robert A. Heinlein's 1952 essay is a plainspoken creed in ordinary human goodness: the priest down the road, the vet who treats a stray cat for free, the townspeople who feed anyone who knocks and asks. Crime makes the headlines, he argues, yet for every criminal there are ten thousand honest, decent people — otherwise no child would survive to grow up. He ends with a defiant faith that humanity, barely up from the apes, will endure and reach the stars.
Decency is not news. It is buried in the obituaries, but is a force stronger than crime.
- johnohara
In 2026, it is not wise to believe that almost all politicians are honest. It is better to be skeptical of their motivations and hope they are honest enough to do the right thing for the citizens they represent.
- blfr
Excellent points on the intrinsic motivations and qualities absolutely dominating any control system.
But also plenty of places are nothing like Heinlein's hometown so this is far from universal.
- ballmerpoint
(1952).
Heinlein was such an odd fellow. Extremely progressive on one hand and extremely regressive on the other, sometimes in the span of a single paragraph.
- rf15
Ah, Heinlein. There's not much energy up there, and the energy question is a big one. It's now 2026 and we are still at the point where we can only move a fraction to actual space of what we originally start off with down here. Our fuel is still not anywhere close to what we'd need in terms of energy density and throughput.
- aetherspawn
I’m not sure I believe this anymore. Maybe around 2 years ago, I think.
But the trajectory, of everything it seems, has completely changed. And I have no optimism left.
The world would need to possibly take up arms against its leadership to recover from where it is right now. The problem is, I know the masses are pacifist and reasonable, and it’s the insane few that are either running everything or have all the money. That dreads me, because just as I wouldn’t take up arms, nobody else will either, so who will stop the descent?