THE DRUMMER IN OUR LIVES

Ever watch a drummer? Rock, Jazz, or Dixie, he's the man with the beat. The energy. The sound that drives the whole musical experience. No beat, no music. No music, no life. Well, at least not life as we know it.

Think about it. The drummer-man has been there from the very beginning. I can't testify he was anywhere in the Garden, but shortly thereafter, he was certainly the big man in the tribe. What tribe was without their drums? And the imposing guy beating them? Sending signals,..announcing celebrations...proclaiming victories.

The beat has gone on down through the centuries. Persian rituals. Greek holidays. Roman marches. Medieval festivals. Beethoven symphonies. Bruce Springsteen concerts. But if the beat of the drum is a metaphor for civilization's march through time, what are some of the specific cadences civilization marches to? Don't they mostly come down to what we call "values?" Those virtues and ideas people and societies embrace with such enormous passion they'll fight for?

Psychologist Abraham Maslow took a celebrated crack at identifying these values in a famous 1943 paper titled
"A Theory of Human Motivation." Those things that energize, direct and sustain our behavior as individuals and as societies. He outlined a hierarchy of needs from the most basic up to the most elusive:

* biological & psychological > the need for sheer survival
* safety > the need for physical security
* love & belonging > the need for family and intimacy
* esteem > the need for achievement, status, self respect
* actualization > the need for personal growth & fulfillment

I'm guessing many grandparents were subconsciously sensing Maslow when they tried to explain to their grand-children why "all this gushy-ness about the royal wedding!" Well kids, it's like this. In your passion to reach tomorrow, you may understandably dismiss yesterday. With its many gushy values by which that world once lived. For instance, the stunning body of values the British Empire represented and brought to the world.

True, the Empire's armies often ignored the very values they were supposed to represent. Something like the old Hollywood Studios of the 30s & 40s who packaged happy-ending movies bubbling with gushy values like family, country, honor, virtue, and good-guys-finish-first. Today's smarter more skeptical generations aren't likely to buy those values, "because they were hypocritically preached but ignored!"

Here's how THIS drummer tried to answer: At least they were preached and at least we believed they were worth the preaching.