Zealots should be avoided at any age, especially if they’re our contemporaries. Who needs people who lecture without listening, parade their prejudices with pride, and believe anyone who doesn’t agree with them is not only wrong, but evil? It’s bad enough when we come across a contemporary who has developed the missionary zeal of a convert, but it’s even sadder and more dangerous when it’s someone younger who might actually practice what they’re preaching. Of course we must try to engage them in dialogue and get them to see reason, but with the true zealot it’s a waste of breath and brain cells, unless it’s your child that is involved. We can hope that there will be enough people of sense to neutralize the effects of zealotry, but that’s a pious hope at best.
The zeitgeist, or spirit of the age, is slippery and multifaceted and no one knows how, why, or when it will change its shape or character. We have to pay it heed but we don’t have to cave in to it. Of course we pride ourselves on our independent way of thinking and ascribe our successes to being different and standing out from the crowd. We shouldn’t censor ourselves, but we’ve surely learned the hard way that timing is as important as talent (and perseverance) in any creative endeavor, and if you’re not attuned to the zeitgeist, and can’t subtly adapt to its shifting codes and strictures, you risk being caught up in the crowd of its victims, and unable to persuade anyone to listen to your defense.
Zoos are a problem: a great place to take our grandchildren, but what’s our moral take on keeping wild animals in cages or enclosures? There are some zoos where the animals are kept in disgraceful conditions, but of the best we can say they are places to keep rare beasts from dying out or being poached or killed, where they can breed in safety and be properly looked after with, perhaps, a view to releasing some of their progeny back into the wild. We can show our grandchildren real live animals they might only see on television, even if they traveled to their native countries, and give them the experience of touching, smelling, and learning something about them. And yet, when we took our own grandchildren to a wildlife park we came across a giant anteater, walking around and around his enclosure, obviously stressed and bored and, for all we knew, lonely and sad. We’ll never know if he’d be happier in the wild, but he certainly didn’t look happy imprisoned in his exercise yard. With all our experience, it’s not an easy thing to explain. But then, if you’ve read this far, you’ll know that not every question has a straightforward answer.