A few weeks back, I spent an enjoyable evening at the Ernest Hemingway Birthplace on Oak Park Avenue listening to Scott Schwar talk about his new book, My Journey with Hemingway, which documents his personal and professional association with Oak Park’s most famous author. Scott was a co-founder and executive director of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park (EHFOP) and a fine tour guide to Papa’s haunts in Cuba.
During the Q&A following the talk, a longtime Hemingway aficionado mentioned an intriguing fact: Ernie wasn’t the only future-famous member of the youthful Red Cross ambulance corps during World War I. Walt Disney (who grew up in Chicago) and Ray Kroc (who grew up in Oak Park) also drove ambulances for the Red Cross in Europe, although Kroc and Disney both lied about their ages (15 and 16 respectively) for the privilege.
A fascinating historical footnote for sure, but I was floored by another consideration. Hemingway nearly died during his stint when a shell exploded nearby, and I couldn’t help wondering: what if all three of these major cultural figures had died during that war? A very real possibility, given the soaring casualty figures of the Great War. Imagine the gaping hole it would have left in the American cultural landscape: No Golden Arches, no Happy Meals, no Disney animation (no Fantasia, no Mary Poppins), no Disneyland and Disney World, no best-selling novels by the iconic American literary figure of the 20th century.
All three of these super-influentials have detractors to be sure, but like them or not, it’s hard to imagine American culture without them.
I also couldn’t help wondering how many other cultural creatives might have been among the casualties, on both sides, who never got the chance to actualize their potential — same goes for the dead during World War II and Korea and Vietnam and the Middle East, and all the other armed conflicts of the last century worldwide. England alone, it has been said, lost an entire generation of promising poets and scholars in the trenches of WWI.
How many creative geniuses did we lose? How many did our “enemies” lose? Plenty, no doubt, though we’ll never know the full extent. Not all were identifiable as geniuses at the time. Think of how many were sacrificed to questionable causes in our lifetime. Even if the causes were “just” (arguable at best), it is an incalculable loss for humanity, no matter the nationality, no matter the ethnic or socio-economic group. Genius is more widespread than we’ve been conditioned to believe.
And most of those war casualties, if they had survived, would have produced offspring, some of whom would have had an enduring impact for the good of society.
Of all the arguments against war, this might be the most powerful: Armed conflicts are, first and foremost, a waste of human brilliance, short-circuiting the potential of humankind, generation upon generation, depriving millions, military and civilians alike, of the opportunity to influence our world for good.
And not just war. If a madman hadn’t cut Abraham Lincoln’s life short, imagine how our reunited nation might have changed for the better in the aftermath of the Civil War. If a lone wolf hadn’t assassinated John F. Kennedy a century later, our polarized country likely would not now be in the hands of a Cultural Destructive instead of a Cultural Creative. History would have followed a different arc, and we would certainly be better off.
All the victims of gun violence across America these past decades force us to play a perpetual game of “What if?” We live in the world’s most violent culture, which gets worse with the sale of every unregulated firearm. What if it were not so?
Wars worldwide, and gun violence nationwide, accompanied by the racism and economic inequality that reduce opportunity and life expectancy, dilute and diminish our cultural vitality. We delude ourselves into thinking we can throw away young lives and in general, we don’t do nearly enough to develop youthful potential. What is the price we pay for that neglect?
Creative potential exists in all people, and we can’t afford to waste any of it. A myriad of Disneys, Krocs and Hemingways were among the many who have died in our foolish wars and because of our criminal failure to sensibly regulate firearms.
It’s hard to imagine a world with no Hemingway, Disney and Kroc.
Even harder, it seems, to imagine a world with no wars and no gun violence, a world that respects every human being’s creative potential and gives everyone a chance to fully develop it.