Corrosion of nation’s soul feeds opioid crisis

Rich Lord let Pittsburgh know that Pennsylvania is among the four states hardest hit by heroin overdoses (Dec. 22, “Pennsylvania Among States Hardest Hit by Overdoses”). His subdued delivery of this news ends with a remark from the University of Pittsburgh’s Donald Burke that belies the cynicism of something the doctor had been quoted as saying earlier in the article. When Dr. Burke tells us that the opioid epidemic is the result of a deep despair that grips our nation, a calamity that flows from “hopelessness,” a “loss of purpose” and a “loss of community,” it clues us into the hollow nature of his previous expression of hope that some technological innovation may come (in what form, who can say) and rescue our people from this profound malaise.

I think the doctor, and all of us, know that “technology” is not coming to restore us.

The only thing that can is a national awakening, a collective realization of the dark state to which our nation has slid, of the moral decay that permits what Rev. William Barber of the New Poor People’s Movement has called a “shameful disregard for the poor,” and what Cornel West has termed “spiritual blackout.” An existential malnutrition values the obscene profits of the gangster few over the basic dignity of the least of our countrymen.

Until we again remember the value of concrete human beings, and remember what it means to love, our nation will remain mired in ethnic hatred, in moral free-fall, in nihilistic consumerism and, yes, hopelessness. JONATHAN WHALEN

Oakland