We Can't Keep Pretending
It's time to grow up and take responsibility
Thanksgiving Day. Sitting at the table, surrounded by lots of talking, lots of interrupting, very little listening. They ask me why I am so quiet. “I’m just listening,” I reply.
How does one have a meaningful conversation with people who are just waiting for their turn to talk (that is, if they even have the patience not to interrupt)? I don’t join in on such competitive conversations, it makes me anxious. There’s no real connection going on.
I’m looking for connection.
It seems that there are fewer and fewer people who listen, who read, who think. I hope to learn from others, to share. Yet, nearly everyone I know avoids educating themselves if the facts revealed make them uncomfortable.
They still want to believe that our nation is a shining beacon that is only being temporarily dulled by the Trump presidency. They shout, “No Kings” and they await the return of the Democrats, who they believe will make things “normal” once again.
They still want to believe in such fairy tales.
We can’t remain children forever; we can’t wait for someone else to solve our problems. We have to educate ourselves as to what is really happening around us, and not depend on the mainstream media to (mis)inform us. [The Seven Richest Billionaires Are Now Media Barons]
At the gathering on Thanksgiving, I’m told that an in-law is encouraging her son to join the military. This woman graduated from an Ivy League school. She is relatively wealthy. She owns three homes, several boats and cars, and her son is an only child. She says she wants her son to have “challenges.”
I said, “Does she want to get him killed?” Oh no, the person relating the story replied, she’s thinking more of having him join something safe, like the Coast Guard or the Merchant Marines, not the people who go to war.
This level of ignorance floors me. I don’t think they understand what a merchant mariner is. They don’t know of the high rate of casualties of the Merchant Marine in WWII. They also don’t know that the Coast Guard deploys internationally, and that the Heritage Foundation already has plans drawn up for the role of the Coast Guard in a future war with China.
Because they get their news from the mainstream media, which consists mostly of constant coverage of Trump’s babbling, followed by “supposedly” angry rebuttals by Democrats. The mainstream media acts as a sideshow, a means of distraction.
Why read a history book when you can be popular among your friends by sharing the latest Trump-bashing meme? Don’t worry about the big stuff, leave that to the “experts”.
I don’t want to judge them or debase them — I love them. Yet, having been given the privilege of a secure home environment and an education, I can’t help but feel that they have a responsibility:
For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us. The responsibilities of intellectuals, then, are much deeper than what Macdonald calls the “responsibility of people,” given the unique privileges that intellectuals enjoy. Chomsky
I’m far more comfortable being around people who don’t have to worry about “finding challenges”, as their everyday lives are already filled with challenges — how to afford the rent, the groceries, the medical bills, childcare. How to work to support themselves while in fear of being picked up by ICE agents. These are the people who are fighting the system, because their survival depends on it.
And it angers me that the people who provide companionship and care to the frail elderly, who work 12-hour days installing a roof or painting a house, who wash dishes and cook food, who take care of children, are considered by many people to be somehow worth less than the educated elite. These are the people who make our society livable!
Yet, the “privileged” members of our capitalistic society rarely think about the lives of the people who provide the services that make their own lives more comfortable. Too many have been convinced that these hard workers are looking for handouts.
The ability of a people to think about themselves as part of a society working for the general welfare has been replaced by a collection of individuals fearful of a rapacious “government” stealing their “taxpayer money.” (Jim Kavanagh)
Too many people think that things will be just fine once Trump leaves office. They don’t want their comfortable fairy tale lives to be disrupted. They still believe that their children and grandchildren will live with the same degree of comfort that they have.
They are woefully ill-prepared for the real challenges that lie ahead.
So many of us are ill informed, Jean. And how can we expect to do what's right when we're allowing ourselves to be fed misinformation, with mainstream media one of the worst offenders?
We have to acknowledge that western society has supported a genocide. What does that say about the values that those at the top are trying to convince us to adopt?
This is a time when moral clarity is needed, and we can't have moral clarity without accurate news.
I wholeheartedly agree with you Jean.
Here is how I answer the quote from Noam Chomsky.
Noam those privileged intellectuals with the so-called freedom lose their freedom being lost in individualism lost in individuation- separating inseparable subjects AND adhering to the reward system that their security depends upon. The rest are kept busy as consumer producers seeking security in reward systems that ensure we respond in accordance with those external rewards so that their security needs might be met. We must have basic security needs met first Noam, before we are free to meet our needs free of material needs not met by external material reward systems. Our real basic material security needs- a home-education- health care are poorly met by our external rewards. Our psychological spiritual needs for meaningful lives are crippled or canceled out by our reward systems. Meaningful pursuits only come when we have the freedom to follow or intrinsic interests for intrinsic internal rewards. Few have that freedom even fewer exercise that freedom. Intellectuals and academics are some of the most trapped of us . Imprisoned by external reward system. They built their careers and indeed egos based on external rewards that are killing humanity.