He carried with him an air of civilization in most of his music and performance.
He was a man of conscience. He enjoyed entertaining, but, so many of his songs really taught a lesson. He was more interested in reaching people and having them relate to a human side in touch with feelings that translated into humanitarian values.
We lost so much of civilization in the years of the Iraq War and our country is having a difficult time reclaiming it for the sake of political aspirations. When a civilization collapses it is very difficult for it to recover and as we have learned from generational problems in other nations, there is permanence that takes over providing impoverished values and strife. Eventually, civilization is not only collapsed, but, gone.
A country has to decide how much it values it's civilization and the permanence of it's people to accept life without disruption, because, if that civilization implodes the following generations suffer and never understand their own greatness.
The United States is such a young country compared to those of Europe and Asia that it stumbles a lot for it's lack of historic hardship. The French remember their revolution and shun returning to it. Germany is the same way when it comes to a country once so scared by economic loss it spawned a madman. I dare say Russia seeks not war above all else, but, accepts it as survival's only choice.
Spain lost a million people to civil war. The aftermath is what George Orwell wrote about (the picture is Aragon, Spain) :
I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size
in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in
capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragon one
was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of
working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms
of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it
was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say
that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that
the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the
normal motives of civilized life—snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of
the boss, etc.—had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division
of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in
the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the
peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master.Civil war is something that happens to many nations. It is unfortunate because so much of civilization is lost during these times. I don't believe the USA has the right to interfer in history or decide outcomes. And it certainly doesn't have the right to use assets for war when those assets are so needed to recover a forgotten generation of Americans.
The USA doesn't have the scars that other nations have and to that end they don't appreciate their own well being and the promise of the future.
