Digging into green issues yields insights that apply remarkably far afield. The ideas encompass war and even atomic bombs.

The panel discussion is fertile ground to begin digging. I do not mean a panel with a lineup of speakers all for one side. I mean a panel of contrasting viewpoints.

The dynamic is very different from that of a speech, a talk show, a slogan, a public rally or a rebuttal in next week’s newspaper. All these customs highlight someone’s half of the story. 

By contrast, a panel discussion starts with the premise that no single person is able and willing to tell the whole story. The most telling view of an issue comes from assorted people who have different perspectives. This belief grows from the same live embers that led to democracy itself.

Other settings have similar effects. At hearings and trials, witnesses are questioned. To make an analogy, cross-examination is larger than testimony the way a panel discussion is larger than a speech. Through questioning, we gather an outline of the full story vs. an arrangement of selected points.      

Our species has a unique ability to block out any details that threaten our preferred stance. A potent antidote to this trait is for differing views to reach us simultaneously or in surprising proximity. A panel discussion works this way, as does cross-examination.

Art is even swifter at showing multiple facets at a glance. We saw art end a fierce dispute when talk had failed.       

For years, our nation was in turmoil with strongly mixed feelings about the Vietnam War and those who fought it. Then came the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. In a single stroke, the sculpture ended the quandary. A piece of art laid to rest a profound national problem. 

The magic is in each name that is carved on the vast and reflective black stone. The elements depict the human heroism and human tragedy of war.

The genius is in setting the heroism and the tragedy with precisely equal force, each neither a minim more nor less than the other. The two are inextricably bound together in the names of the dead, the beauty of the stone and those piercing black reflections.

When we take in a speech or an analysis, the heroism and the tragedy are torn asunder. Our minds can chop and process the flow of words and ideas as we choose. Each of us can reject the heroism and amplify the tragedy, or vice versa as suits our nature.

Not so the shining dark monument. The two feelings come at us as one. There is no instant when we can sever the two and choose which to accept and which to reject.

As a result, most hearts and minds retain both feelings. The painful struggle over how to judge those who went to war exists no more.                 

A similar national quandary is the dropping of atomic bombs at the end of World War II. The Bradbury Science Museum at the Los Alamos National Laboratory has a Forum Wall, on which opposing groups display photographs and opposing views on those events. 

In front of the Forum Wall stands an open ledger of unlined pages, inviting people’s comments. In her master’s thesis in 1998, my wife analyzed the comments, with their great mix of strong feelings about the A-bombs, many pros, many cons, in many styles.

One comment sticks in my mind. In five words, it wrestles with the same dichotomy as the Vietnam Memorial: the coexisting heroism and tragedy that is war. Extreme brevity gives the comment the effect of art in conveying the twin truths in a flash.

Faced with the opposing views on The War’s close, the visitor, signed JD from NH, wrote: “It was neat and sad.”            

Hear the ring of truth about human nature.