This isn't the first time I've been torn between what I experience and what I want to be true. We all go through phases like this I'm sure. But, it's getting increasingly difficult to keep my spirits up these days. There's simply too much inanity and too much insanity to have to contend with. And while I want to believe that somewhere, perhaps behind the scenes, certainly unbeknownst to me, there are people succeeding in making their world a better place, it also feels like they're getting harder and harder to find.
What's even worse, and as a life-long student of language most distressing, is how we've allowed our language to be commandeered by newspeakers, marketeers, and propagandists. We are subjected, day in and day out, to an unending harrangue of false truths (we're-the-good-guys-they're-the-bad-guys), conscious bias and prejudice (if-you've-seen-one-Muslim-you've-seen-a-terrorist), over-the-top hyperbole (I-could-shoot-people-and-not-lose-votes), unmitigated aggression (#black-lives-matter), calls to violence (carpet-bomb-the-Middle-East), and bald-faced "justifications" of corruption, greed and oppression (Citizens United). Along with those 5,000 ads we're subjected to every day, we have this ceaseless stream of reality distortions against which can hardly defend ourselves.
One the one hand, I can understand why nothing happens. People are cowards by choice or through resignation, people are afraid for we're repeatedly shown what will happen if you step out of line, too many people have just enough that they can be made to fear those who have less. We can always find scapegoats and if we can't find them ourselves, there are more than enough interest groups to give you comprehensive list to chose from.
And we fall for it every time.
One of my favorite cultural philosophers Jean Geber wrote, "Every reform is a mere attempt at resuscitation." He was right. You can only resuscitate someone (or something) that's dead. And most of what we hold dear is dead: our money system, our banking system, our economic systems, our political systems, our education systems, our social systems ... dead or dying before our eyes. They're being hijacked, kidnapped and murdered before our very eyes. A stacked deck, a rigged game, a grand illusion, a con; deception, deviance, distortion, dishonesty, all in the name of the good, the better, the just, the humane, the compassionate, the fair, and what's right.
Sure, I would like to think that things will improve, but they can't under the current conditions. I would like to think that humanity will come together and realize that they have much more in common than what separates us, but they won't as long as we can be so easily set against one another as we are. I would like to think that change could come without all the pain and suffering that most great changes in history have brought with them, but it's getting more and more difficult to hope otherwise.
Maybe it's time to just let it all collapse. Maybe we are headed into a new dark age. Maybe we simply haven't got the smarts or the will or the desire or the wherewithal to save ourselves from all the suffering. If we don't, then we don't deserve to not suffer. If we do, then maybe we should start doing something to embrace the change that will come.
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