A Sour World

Recently, I took down one of these blogs because it bored me. I was giving the same old message of 'we need to look at ourselves' at a time when no one wants to.  It takes rational disinterest to stand back from the pleasures of one's prejudices, and we're sorely lacking in that as a nation and as a world. One day, we're going to look back on the lunacy and wonder what we were thinking. But that's for later.

Right now, people want to hear only what agrees with the minds they have already made up. We've just lost one of our major public intellectuals--Christopher Hitchens--and in reading the tributes being published for him, one theme stands out. People who didn't like his ideas had little to offer in the way of debate with him--they resorted to name-calling because they couldn't muster decent arguments. I read him even when he dabbled in lunacy (he thought the neo-cons were the only way to stop Islamic fundamentalism) because it was an interesting lunacy. When he moved back to the middle, I cheered because I at least needed him to be an independent, inquiring, moderate in order for him to be a moral compass.  He was right about proud (and ugly) anti-intellectualism around him.

I'm no Hitchens--that kind of intellectual brilliance drives me back to writing because I cannot sustain the type of debate he exemplified. But I can learn from him. What I see in his work--and also attempted in my own--is the revelation of the very sourness that lies in the basement of our being.

We are at root tribal creatures. We herd. We want the loud-voiced leader who spout maxims we don't have to strive to understand (we're also lazy, of course). We want a religion that flatters us into believing we have every right to eat whatever walks or flies on this planet. We want politicians who benefit us in various ways (mostly getting out of the way of our making money). We want a culture that never changes and people who believe like we do.

We are greedy and paranoid. We want to be protected. We may make noise about wanting to be independent, but let there be one listeria-cantaloupe outbreak, and hear the cries for government to protect us. We treat money as if it is something real rather than just an artificial representation of labor value, and we live in fear that some undeserving person might get something we didn't.

We are also aggressive and territorial. Religion's only excuse for existence is the preaching (more or less successful) of a set of values and ethics. Too bad that once religion gets established, it becomes just like us and uses our herding instincts and paranoia to its own advantages. Want to be a member of a herd: join our congregation. Paranoia? No problem. We've got redemption on tap, not to mention confession. Need to work out your dislike of people who don't think like you? Great--we have a crusade you might be interested in.

I'm not talking here exclusively of the US elections--prime horrors though they are--but of the tendency of the whole human race. People offer up short-term solutions on the belief that political actions can somehow change basic human nature. Well, they can't. In another hundred years, who the heck is going to care whether we have gay marriage? illegal immigration? In less than that, medicare and social security won't be a problem because the baby boomer generation will be gone, and we'll be crying for population. We may be very glad of those illegals we have now been led to despise (many married to and parents of Americans).

Things change. We don't seem to.

One thing I've learned about us and our politics--our demand as fleas for a greater voice in managing the dog--is that we get what we deserve. Right now I can't imagine why anyone would want to lead any country, let alone the US.