Answering the question: What are the the most important/dramatic events for good and ill that happened in your lifetime?

I'll soon get to the answer, but first I have to tell you of the good and the bad that happened to me this week.  Having had so much attention drawn to my blogging locally and worldwide on Reddit, I worked long and hard to give an erudite answer to the question of the week – I did little else for three days! And suddenly one simple computer error lost it all.

All of a sudden I knew that both bad and good occurred through that simple error. For bad was losing what I felt was a powerful statement about world peace and mental health . But I was also made to understand that I was trying to do too much.  Composing two blogs while trying to answer over 1000 questions was just too much for an old man.

I had found it so remarkable that so many young people were interested in the musings of an old man that they would ask almost 2000 perceptive and thoughtful questions.  Each one, I felt, deserved an answer. The questions were so heartfelt and sincere that I knew I would regret not answering as many as I possibly could. Thus rather than trying to prepare thoughtful essays on my rant, my efforts for the foreseeable future will be to answer the questions that were posed.  What a personal joy for me to be asked and able to respond!

ANSWERING THE QUESTION FOR THE WEEK

The most important event in my mind for good of a worldwide nature was the creation of the United Nations.

The most important event in my mind of a negative nature in our country was the closure of mental hospitals for the mentally ill before we had planned appropriate treatment for patients.

I was truly surprised by my answers, and I am sure you are too.  I wish I had time to explain in full how dramatic I believe the two steps were in the pursuit of world peace and in our nation's failure to intelligently consider treatment for mental illness*.   Hopefully I'll return to both topics soon, just as I will share the two events of a personal nature that brought joy and sadness to me.  But they will need much background information.

*The failure of society to consider mental illness appropriately can best be illustrated, I believe, in the presidential campaign of 1972.  I wonder if young people are aware of it.  Thomas Eagleton, who had served two terms in the Senate, had been selected by George McGovern as his vice-presidential nominee.  Eagleton was forced to withdraw because it was later disclosed that he had previously been hospitalized for depression.

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