When convenience, not community, comes first
It’s difficult to avoid confusing a result with its agent. Correlation between addiction and crime is tenuous; competence and IQ have no DNA tests. It may be normal to look for somebody to blame when we fall into a cesspool. And it is so easy to underestimate how long it takes for societal causes to produce their effects. Here in the USA and throughout the world is suffering to burn. How much might be self-inflicted?
What should receive our attention now is processes, not a “state” of affairs. Nothing is and perhaps never was simple. I find no “developmental sequence” for a real crisis, either. The media live on feeding us a crash diet of crises to keep their ratings up, allowing them to run their hundreds of useless commercials at every blink.
Beyond the relative importance of context and sequence, details of daily existence get my attention, but sometimes links between them are obscure. Yes,
I’m educated. So what? I can’t “maintain” a gelding or reliably hang drywall, but I studied Mandarin Chinese. I may watch China’s economy daily but cannot say China is at fault for our problems. I learned long ago that economists can’t really help the ordinary person. Statistics fly like Minnesota mosquitoes, but we common folk don’t care about “median” family income. We only endure total household expenses. Sadly, I have enough “experience” with tax authorities to know that the principles and abilities of those who run those systems are woefully inadequate. The government portion of U.S. gross domestic product is shrinking, but that parameter measures what is produced, not what is bought.
And far be it from the American consumer to slow down or save some pennies. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has shrunk since 2010, but no one I know is driving less. What influences gasoline prices most? Exxon? Biden? OPEC? Putin? None of the above. The Pogo comic stated it well: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Our lifestyle is so sacred we would likely defend it to the death, but not the right of someone who differs to say so. So much is “DIY” (do it yourself) that we have reinforced our belief that we are truly alone, like it or not. Can it be true that any man might be an island after all?
We tend to lean on our smart (or dumb) phones, thinking we are in control. Convenience, not community, comes first. In 1900 the lame horse was our Achilles heel. Who’s to say the battery charger is not today’s heel? Adaptation is futile in the end; transformation is required in how we live, but for us the cost is too steep.
Whether or not we admit it, our existence today is largely dependent on science. It’s when science places itself at the service of politics that trouble begins. Disorder usually results from political arrogance or miscalculation. The best that “leaders” can realistically offer is a coping mechanism, not a solution. All of us tire of doom and gloom, wanting a way out. Anyone claiming he/she can “solve” the problems we face is fabricating or smoking something. The best we might hope for is management. “Business” as usual no longer seems “usual.”
Balance is needed among competing interests. But what we think of as our society is today made up of veto groups. Both “sides” propagate this. I’ve worked for election campaigns for both parties. There is no longer a “we” who are short-changed and a “they” who run things. Every “we” is a “they,” and vice versa. Exaggerated halftruths do us no good. Maybe we would not vote for a placeholder, but we will never get something for nothing.
No king is powerful enough to see in the dark. And the dark is all around us now. Many in the country advocate selection of a leader who would trade in our genuine freedoms for the elixir of power. His minions worry me even more (think Goebbels and Himmler). Talk regarding detention “camps” circulates. Can we be sure we won’t occupy those after the immigrants are removed? If that happens there will be no one to blame but us. All of us. Fair trade?
Greg Iwan has collected significant professional experience as a nuclear power plant chemist/operator, minerals land agent, nationwide commercial real estate appraiser, urban & regional planner, staff economist, and college professor. He is an Independent voter by choice.