Why Human Beings Need to Speak: Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone, and Human Dignity

The other day, I was reading a blog ranking the best acting performances in The Twilight Zone. The number one choice was Burgess Meredith in the famous episode where he finally has all the time in the world to read, only to break his glasses at the very end.

I mentioned to my wife that while it is a great episode, I was not even sure that was Meredith’s best performance on the show. He appeared in several Twilight Zone episodes. Personally, I think his acting in “The Obsolete Man” was even stronger.

She did not really remember the episode, so we watched it again.

While watching it, I thought this would become a blog about human dignity and human value.

In the episode, Meredith plays Romney Wordsworth, a librarian condemned to death by a society that no longer sees him as useful. We are getting close to that now — the librarian part, not the condemning people part. In the world of the episode, a man can become “obsolete” simply because society no longer values what he is.

That got me thinking because I thought I had already written a blog touching on themes like this. Then I realized it was actually a story I am currently trying to write. Sometimes I get my stories and blogs mixed together. Sometimes the thoughts overlap.

But while watching the episode again, one line suddenly took over my thoughts.

Wordsworth cries out during his conviction:

“I don’t care! I am a human being! And if I speak one thought aloud, that thought lives, even after I’ve been shoveled into my grave!”

And I realized this may be one of the deepest reasons human beings write at all.

It is certainly one of the reasons I write.

I do not write as well as many others, but I do have something to say.

We have thoughts we do not want to die with us.

Not because we believe every thought we have is correct. Not because we think we are wiser than everyone else. But because ideas only truly begin to live once they are shared.

Someone may hear them and say:

“That is not exactly what I think.”

Or perhaps:

“That is exactly what I think.”

And then a conversation begins.

But if our thoughts are never spoken, never written down, never shared, then no one else can wrestle with them, challenge them, build on them, or even reject them. They simply disappear.

Did they matter?

I would say yes.

When I was younger, I had a friend whose name I will shorten to G because I have not seen him in years. I do not remember every detail exactly, but he played either safety or linebacker in high school and college. People who played with him said he was one of the best. For reasons I will not get into here, he never went professional.

One day I asked him what made him so good.

He told me it was what he knew.

So I asked him why he was not coaching or teaching younger players.

He told me he would only teach his own children and nobody else.

I have not seen him since then. I do not even know whether his children ever played football.

And sometimes I think about that.

All that knowledge. All that understanding. All that experience.

Possibly gone.

Was his short career valuable?

That is up to him to decide.

But I think there is something deeply human about wanting to pass our knowledge, thoughts, and experiences forward before we disappear. Whether people know they came from us or not.

Maybe that is part of our responsibility as human beings.

To place our thoughts and skills honestly into the world.

Not to force them onto others, but to leave behind some small piece of what we saw, what we questioned, what we feared, or what we understood.

Because maybe that is what we are really doing when we write.

Maybe that is what stories, essays, conversations, Facebook posts, YouTube videos, and even TikToks are at their core.

A refusal to let silence have the final word.

I guess this really did become a piece about human dignity after all, if dignity means standing up for what you think. And maybe it became a piece about human value too, if we believe our thoughts have value once they are shared with others.

Albert Jr

Author of The Nature Within Us