Is it even possible?

It is very possible that I'm just missing the real point, but I know that in most of small-town America, for example, cooperation and support and mutual consideration are high priorities. Why do we think that we can't take this up a level, say, to the national, or even international level? That's something else that makes me wonder.

After all, humans are social creatures. It's part of who we are as a species. The dependency (and yes, I chose that word specifically) is hardwired into our DNA. It's part of what makes us human. We can, however, with enough focus and effort sometimes overcome such "mere" limitations, but I think we do so at our own peril. The mind is a very powerful thing. Perceptions can be game-changers, and it would seem that at sometime within my own lifetime the game got changed.

My philosophical friend Günther Anders advances the notion that our multifaceted, over-stimulated existence forces us into a kind of schizophrenia. It sounds bad, and it probably is, but think about it: we cook dinner, have the TV on in the background, we're minding the kids and the spouse is standing there unloading about the bad day at work. Where's our attention? Are we really devoting the time and effort to each of these tasks that they duly deserve? I doubt it. We've split ourselves into more than one person, trying to more than one thing at the same time. That's backwards. There should be more than one person attending to anyone of those things at any given time.

In the popular imagination, schizophrenia is a split personality. In other words, the unity of the individual has been shattered. As a result, we have a lot of trouble just getting ourselves together (which is one way we phrase this), and if we aren't getting it together, who is? It turns out more are not than are.

This is anything but a healthy state of affairs. What we once understood as a given social bond, something that bound us together has become more and more difficult to achieve. We would like help and support in the family. We seek help and support in the neighborhood, perhaps our local community, but beyond that, we are of a different mind. Out there, in the "real world", in the dog-eat-dog business world, the world of global competition, it's every person for him or herself.

And that's schizophrenic. We act one way here, another there. We believe one thing here, another there. This goes beyond the mere adapting to changing circumstances. Being of more than one mind isn't healthy.