But what about the UN's status today? What about Iraq? And more important, what about the people who make laws and draft resolutions and create new constitutions? Can a lawyer's work make humanity's future better than its past? I ask Stein these questions in his office one morning as the radiator clanks. He tips back in his chair. I expect a hearty answer in the affirmative. But he looks at me squarely through his thick-framed glasses, and I become horrifyingly aware of the 60 years of living he has on me. "I have my doubts," he says. "I would like, by instinct, to be optimistic. But by my experience, I have constantly the feeling to control that instinct." Later, he adds: "There has been progress in human rights. I was in the chamber of the UN in '48 when they adopted universal human rights. Just think of the recognition that 'human being' included women. This was wonderful. But no one knows how long it will last. No one knows how deep the trend is. People learn from history only so well."
No one knows how long it will last. Human rights may be only a trend. I ask Stein how he has mustered such effort for so long on a project—that's what cooperative government is, really: a project—that is so intrinsically experimental, so uncertain. "It is perfectly plausible that the Earth will be destroyed," he says. "The question is, What to do now? This is what I think of." He brings up a poem by Wallace Stevens,
The Man with the Blue Guitar, from which he quotes in his book
Thoughts from a Bridge. A line from the poem reads, "I cannot bring a world quite round / Although I patch it as I can."
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