If you drive for just over an hour from my mother’s home town, Little Falls, Minnesota, you reach Minneapolis, a thriving, Mid-West American city known for its balanced life of arts and business. On my visits I have been impressed by the harmony among ethnic groups of different origins and by the clarity of the citizens about creative matters. A city that gets a blend of the Minneapolis Institute of Art and General Mills right, understands what humanity is about.
The recent shocking events in the city are sad enough for the citizens affected by them. They are sad and frightening for all the United States – and for the rest of us, too.
The American Dream was what got my family to emigrate from Germany and Ireland. They lived the Dream with great success. A part of that achievement was modesty. The German Jews and non-Jews cooperated and intermarried, and, as emigres, understood their roles as innovative guests. They made money but it was modest money and they gave a lot of it away. They took part in the civic developments of the times but didn’t lust for power.
Charles Lindberg was in the same school as my mother. He was the first person to fly across the Atlantic. In May 1927 he took his aircraft ‘Spirit of St Louis’ from New York to Paris. That’s when the first seeds of the European-American Alliance were planted. ‘From Minneapolis to Montmartre’ has been forever etched on my heart. Times change of course. Inventions and developments bring both benefits and costs.
The most troublesome of those costs is the failure to understand the difference between What Helps and What Matters. An example of the absurdity this can lead to is the proposal by a British Parliamentary Minister that Members of Parliament should be paid on the basis of how rich they make their country. Money is a tool to be understood not, as we now seem to be being persuaded, a Deity to be worshipped. By all means let Members of Parliament understand economics. Their job remains primarily understanding life.
Just as doing so remains the primary job of each of us. So what does ‘understanding’ comprise? Above all it involves reason and reason starts with recognising that we are different people aiming to live peacefully and enjoyably alongside each other. Pretty obvious when you put it like that. Less obvious when you apply reason and peace to any specific issue. Then, we have been smartly told, it’s “my way or the highway”. Bullying indicts the bully not the bullied.
Thousands of people worked on the ‘Spirit of St Louis’ but only one flew it. In the same way, thousands of people work to enable each of us to have a good life.
We are the only people who fly our lives. We also help to fly many other people’s.
Can we each fly with the Spirit of St Louis as our intention?
Good morning
John Bittleston
Please tell us what you think at [email protected].
28 January 2026
