The dismal trajectory of society and politics
Joe,
I think of myself as middle class -- but I can't really define it. I have a college education, and in politics I would be described by those who know me as a bleeding heart liberal. I'm 65 years old. I was sitting in a coffee shop in Seattle talking to a young man from Virginia who says he left the state twenty years ago to get an education and see the world, but is going back to see his 70 year old father who is not in good health.
Our conversation led into social issues. Not surprising since he is a social worker, and he told me about your book, Deer Hunting with Jesus.
I read it in one sitting and am already insisting that all of my friends read it so we can talk about it. I loved the book.
I like your brand of humor and appreciate many of the insightful discussions.
I think you have exposed the problem in a masterful and entertaining way.
How about a sequel? I would like to hear what advice you have for Americans who are secular humanists. What would you say to Clinton and Obama if you thought they would listen and take action? What steps do you think can be taken to educate the fundies?
Good luck with your career and congratulations on a much needed book.
Jerry
Seattle
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Jerry,
Well, I'm asked that question all of the time: "What steps do you think can be taken to educate the fundies?"
That question carries the implication that the genuinely educated 15% to 20% of the nation, or perhaps an elected leader, can somehow design a social engineering mechanism that will magically fix what 200 years of American religious history and at least half a century of educational inequity and social neglect have wrought. Were that humanity such a mechanistic and clock-like thing that could so easily be adjusted!
Personally, I believe that the problem is rooted in our empty culture whose main value is marketability and whose temple is the marketplace. In short, a commercial culture of Kitsch. Kitsch religion, Kitsch media, and Kitsch emotionalism substituted for critical thinking and spiritual values. The result has been a nation for the most part made up of mindless, soulless consumers led by an elite criminal corporate/political cartel with the same values but more balls, money and power. Where does that leave the man or woman who is sincerely concerned or alarmed about the dismal trajectory of our society and its politics?
Permit me here to excerpt a talk I recently gave at St. Edwards University in Austin Texas, sponsored by the Department of Ethics and Leadership:
St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas
Department of Ethics and Leadership
February 2008
I usually speak to political groups and literary groups and their awareness tends to be political or intellectual. The word spiritual is a big no-no in both circles these days. All solutions are supposed to be political or intellectual.
However, it is more than just a political or intellectual failure when we turn our backs on our own laboring people, denying them such things as basic health care and liberation from darkness through true education. Or when that quintile of our populace who are fortunate enough to be truly middle class and ehjoy all that entails, pretend there is no class system in America and that we are all equal.
What is left of the diminishing American middle class is at a critical juncture in history. We have become a nation whose survival and comfort depends not only upon the clothing and electronic sweatshops in the smoking trash heaps of Latin America, Africa and Asia, but also upon domestic denial of the gaping and widening disparities among our very own people. We let millions of Americas hardest toiling folks suffer sickness and go uneducated because we are in the middle class -- the class that is paid to manage our little corner of the system, not to be our brother's keeper.
As members of the fifth or so of Americans among America's true middle class, we must decide whether to be selfish or to be unselfish. There is no middle ground. No acceptable level of misery for the elderly or poor, no acceptable level of ignorance for any American. It's an ethical and spiritual problem every American should face up to and personally solve for himself or herself. Because if we fail to solve it, then our life has been a spiritual failure.
Now if this event is like every other one I've spoken at, someone is going to ask me: "Mr. Bageant, what can we do as citizens to . . .?" Blah blah, blah.
If I knew what YOU should do, I'd be God, or at least Dear Abby. But the fact that we all look to other people, politicians, police, supposed experts (even dumb rednecks like me who write a book) for answers or solutions shows how we have learned to be helpless. In fact, psychologists call it "learned helplessness."
Yet, none of us is truly helpless. The truth is that at any given moment in any given day, we can simply do something to help someone else in need. Which also helps us and the world in the same process.
Let's do this. Let's all stand up.
Everybody standing up?
OK now don't sit down until you have thought of something you are going to do to help a fellow human being, someone we actually know in real need, such as hunger or perhaps cursed by mental disorder -- or homeless, or an ex-convict or drug addict trying to regain a hold on his or her life. And do this before you go to bed tonight. Find some small way to remove a little bit of misery from the world and the human race. Sit down when you have decided on something to do.
People stand for 60 seconds. Some sit down.
OK. Let's sit down. Hard wasn't't it? Most of us probably had a tough time thinking of a truly needy person to help, much less a way to help them. Yet eliminating the world's misery, as any Buddhist monk or Third World Catholic priest, can tell you, is done mostly face to face, people helping people one at a time.
And we do know people we can help. We meet them every day and are blind to them because we are in a different social caste. What about that young single mom with the tattoo and the bad teeth scrubbing out the steamer pans at the school cafeteria? What about that redneck Pentecostal fella with four kids who empties the waste basket in your office or classroom at night while you sleep?
"Oh, that's a problem for social services," we say. Or "I give to United Way," or some such charity. Yet our social services are collapsing and nearly every major American charity has proven to be suspect at best.
So you see how learned helplessness works. Helpless people are conditioned to spend money instead of deal honestly and face to face with people and their problems: as in 'I'll write a check to Catholic Relief, then jump in my car and go grab an organic salad at the café.' Helpless middle class Americans are helpless not because they are lazy, but because they are conditioned to believe they have no personal power to change the world, just the money to buy it. Or help sponsor the least offensive of the political candidates offered to us by the political machinery of the state. Anybody here really believe that Barack Obama or John McCain can overcome a bought and paid for Congress to give all Americans the same free health care and free higher education enjoyed by nearly every other developed nation on earth? -- assuming they even wanted to do so. Then again, them thar's mighty big problems -- too big for the average guy to tackle.
When we have learned to tell ourselves that our fellow America's problems are too big for us to deal with as individual human beings, we've thrown away our humanity. We've denied ourselves a meaningful existence. Exiled ourselves from the spirit.
There are an awful lot of smart people here tonight, and collectively, there is more intelligence on the other side of this microphone than I will ever possess. In truth -- and this is no exaggeration -- the solution to every one of America's problems -- whether it is the injustice of class in America or the dark poverty of ignorance -- is in this room right now.
It's not about political morality or good and evil. There is no evil but meanness, stupidity, insensitiveness, and lack of imagination -- which has become active in human beings as fear greed and cruelty: The fear of losing the obvious advantages of our middle class status, education, 401-Ks, etc.; the greed that is inherent in a consumer based society and culture. And the cruelty that comes with the not only denial of a class system in America, but the failure of the middle class to stand up and reject the televised spectacle and sham that has been substituted for politics in our nation because true politics is about class and always has been.
The antidote is personal non-media produced awareness. That and unsentimental compassion. I believe that every soul here tonight has at least a little of those to offer the world.
Thank you all for taking of your valuable time to be here tonight.
Now let's get some discussion going. Let's share some ideas about all this.
Discussion begins . . .
