Are we at a turning point?
There are moments in cinematic history forever etched into our culture’s collective consciousness. Paddy Chayefsky’s “Network” (1976) contains a particularly strong one. In it, howard Beale, a fired national newscaster (played by the late Peter Finch), rallies his viewers to channel their anger over the current state of the country. Over four decades later, it is nothing less than uncanny how prescient were the character’s words.
Says Beale: “I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad… we know things are bad — worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy…”
The famous scene culminates in Beale hollering, “I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell — ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. … You’ve got TO SAY,I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”
Just yesterday, I saw a crawler on a news channel declare that according to some poll, the word describing best our electorate for 2020 is “Angry.” Captain obvious to the rescue please. It doesn’t take a degree in psychology to see that. In addition to the White House becoming a disease vector and our president facing a fatal disease, in part brought on by attempting to make a political statement about the efficacy of masks; over 210,000 people have died from the worst pandemic in a century; which has also forced millions of people out of work through no fault of their own, each hoping to survive through this economic crash. Social unrest appears to be at an all-time high. Our climate is on fire while at the same time being flooded.
We have had so many hurricanes this year, that we’ve gone through the entire alphabet and now they’re being named by letters in the Greek alphabet. When the Republicans and Democrats can even get enough healthy Congress people to meet, there seems no center ground. Civil discourse? That’s almost a quaint concept.
I don’t like these turns of events any more than anyone else, but I do understand from where it rises. I too am angry. I also know I am not alone. The fuming path on which we now find ourselves is not an isolated trail; it’s more like Madison Avenue at rush hour.
I get it that iam not— at least in this venue — a political or news commentator. I write a “lifestyle piece” on wellness, motivation, and change, leaving the “hard news” and punditry for others. Yet, it is foolish to deny that one’s emotions are disconnected from our perception of how the world is turning; so it stands to reason that the state of current affairs is, at least, a mental health issue, if not so much more.
Maybe anger is only a defense to quell the sense of panic that — on a regular basis — rises up and seizes us around the throat. For when neither angry nor frightened, what remains is a sense of almost despondent, darkening, despair. This state of affairs is not the manner in which my generation promised to leave our planet for its children.
We had such high hopes, great expectations, and vast visions, which now seem an impossible fairy tale.
The state of the world therefore affects me — and you — intimately.
But — and here comes that unrelenting, undying optimist — maybe, just possibly, please God, could this sense of frustration and anger be a catalyst to create a better world? As Benjamin Franklin said, “We shall all hang together, or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.” We are bound as one, like it or not.
Is it feasible that history will record this era as the period where humanity turned the corner, realized our potential, and started moving forward as one? Could a better, healthier world burst forth from these painful flames?
We can always hope; we still have that.