In with the Old...
The black funk railway pulled into my station last week and doesn’t seem ready to leave any time soon. Christmas 2000 was the unhappiest I have ever known, and my mood slid downhill from there. Yesterday I tried to write myself out of it, ticklin’ the ivories, hoping to generate some sort of positive alternatives on the screen before me. Alas. This morning, Linda asked if I’d been successful. I allowed as how I hadn’t.
I am upset because I see society crumbling and see no obvious paths to recovery. Driving out the eight miles to the freeway yesterday, I saw enough trash by the side of the road to fully fund a recycling program. It reminded me of the outskirts of Mexico City or some places in the Caribbean where the sense of civic pride did not pick up litter. The trash is thrown out the window or blows out the back of the pick-up trucks of the eponymous drivers. It is not laziness but an act of defilement.
Throughout nature, the only animal that dirties its own nest is sick. The social vomitus that rather than who populates the rural environs of the North State are the bottom of the barrel. Most receive some form of public assistance. Most have had some trouble with the law. Few have made it through primary education. They contribute nothing to the commonweal. They are generations along in their patterns. They have all of the worst-nightmare attributes of the human waste that populates the Mad Max films.
A friend of mine with an eminently more optimistic posture than I would seek to gain the attention of his students by telling them he had some good news and some bad news. Then he would throw at them a list of stark figures about teen suicide, pollution, infant abuse, and the like. And when he had them all sitting upright in their chairs, he would announce, And that’s the good news. The bad news is that we aren’t doing anything about it.
My scenario, as I laid it out for me dear wife, is that the economy will go south, and funds for keeping the dregs in their own holes will dry up. Hey, when you’re spending $330 billion on the military and a similar amount paying interest on the national debt, plus their are all those "entitlements", there’s not a lot left over to toss to the baying hounds. What will they do? What would you do if you were hungry and work didn’t seem like a viable option? Probably steal from the neighbors. Living out in the sticks, miles from the nearest authorities, people are going to have their own choices to make.
Personally, I find this rather discouraging. I had hoped that we were moving to a time when we might master the basics of human existence — food, clothing, shelter, health care — and move on to discover of what human beings are truly capable. You know, throw away the remote, drive past the drive-thru’s, and look upon other people as worthy of our interest, love, and collaboration. It was only a few years ago that I was struck by the revelation that the great cosmic everything might indeed be well-fixed and that we were on our way. Now I don’t feel that.
I spared Linda the fact that I had been mulling over Meriwether Lewis’ reported exit strategy; it is said that he shot himself in the head and the heart at the same time. Talk about sending a message. He was equally fed up with the voices in his head and the ache in his heart. I would only add to plan a detailed letter of the sins of those I would have taken with me. But in truth, I’m not likely to kill myself, first because I wouldn’t want to hurt Linda, who still finds some value in my continued presence, and second because according to my albeit weakened philosophy, I’d have to come back.
What’s to be done? Well, it’s not like I face any imminent decisions. Tomorrow is the deadline for registering assault weapons here in California, but I always felt they were too noisy. So I’ll continue writing and exploring — for myself and those fine folks out there who find some merit in this search. The bottom line for me is that I can’t imagine that 15 billion years of Big Bang would be purposeless; that the lives we have lived lack meaning. I sincerely believe that we are here, now, together, with some work yet to do, and it is more than to pick up the trash.
Best wishes for a glorious 2001, Hal.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.