I cringe every time that I turn on an electronic device. I hit the “on” button, and I wait for it…the alert tone on the cell phone, the headline on the home page, the urgent voice of the news announcer on the radio with more bad news. I don’t like to focus on bad news. But right now, we’re going to go a little deeper than just bad news and talk about bad times, and what we might be able to do to make those times a little less bad, a little more tolerable and a lot safer. We’re going to talk about saving the lives and the liveliness of our friends, our neighbors, and ourselves.
A few days ago, there was bad news. But it didn’t come by way of the computer, or the radio, or the cell phone, or even the newspaper. No, this bad news came by way of the clerk at the country store where I stop every morning for gas and a biscuit. One of my neighbors had shot a thief on his farm. Now, normally we would call this a good thing in the county where I live…folks would bake the farmer a cake, and drop it by his house and pat him on the back. What made this shooting different was that the farmer had shot a scrap metal thief, who was in the act of stealing the beams of a brand new bridge that the farmer had installed in the last week. And the thief was another of my neighbors, an out-of-work steel worker…with a wife and children. When the farmer confronted him and his partner, the story goes, he swung a logging chain at the farmer, who promptly shot him in the stomach. He’ll live, though it looks like he’s going to do a substantial part of his living in jail for the next year or two.
So I get my biscuit, drive to town, get to school, and I “turn on”—my morning ritual of powering up the electronics. And there it was, all laid out in front of me. Norway, Washington, Wall Street, bankers, talking heads, traders, politicians, metal thieves, domestic violence on an industrial scale, the dollar in decline, rising commodity prices, gas prices, unemployment…at times like this, I want to crawl under a rock, a big rock, and just wait out the storm. But then it hit me. We can’t wait this one out. This one is different. This is a storm that we have to face. We have no other good choice. Because this is our generational crisis, and to avoid it is to fail utterly as citizens, as adults and as parents Because the question is, what are we going to leave to our children? But we do have this choice: we can face the storm alone, or we can face it together.
Difficult economic conditions lead to a rise in suicides, crimes of domestic violence and violence in general. While it is not in our power to quickly and effectively change political, economic or social conditions, it is in our power to influence and help those closest to us as we struggle through these difficult times. Tonight, I am going to talk about the rise of violence, the loss of hope, how conditions on Wall Street led to a shooting in my neighbood, using that lesson as a wake up call, we can help avoid having the people closest to us fall over the edge by supporting each other with a little, or a lot, of brotherly love.
Let me talk about the differences between this crisis and other economic downturns that have happened in the past. What is different about this particular crisis is its scope; this time there is no one to bail us out; this downturn comes with, and is partially caused by-rising energy prices that are not short term; this time, our money may really be broken, and not fixable. But the thing that worries me most is about this one is the mean streak that our society has developed. In this crisis, America, and Americans suffer from a disconnectedness, and profound loneliness. We are see ourselves and others as less human, and therefore less valuable and that de-humanization has made us prone to acts of extreme violence. Often, those closest to us pay the price for our sense of anger.
The problem…the crisis… that we face is political, economic and social in nature. O.K., let me dispense with the politics first. What is painfully obvious is that Washington is wrapped in the tentacles of each side’s political reality like a little fish trapped by giant jellyfish. And, like that little fish, Washington is paralyzed. And you know what? That’s just fine, because politicians aren’t capable of making us happy, or truly secure. So we’re done talking about those guys.
So that leaves us with the economic and social elements of the crisis. There are macroeconomic problems—a fundamental shift in both how we create wealth and how much wealth we can create. For the last twenty years, people (mostly guys) sat at computers in offices (mostly in New York and Chicago) and dreamed up new ways to package and sell paper financial products. Let’s face it. The way to get rich, lately, has been to make your money in the stock and bond market. At the same time, we closed thousands of factories… between 2001 and 2009, 41,000 factories closed with 5.5 million jobs lost. Mostly, those jobs were shipped overseas. Much of the paper wealth that sprung forth from the fertile imaginations of bond traders—what social commentator James H. Kunstler calls “hallucinatory wealth”-- has been proven to be, well, worthless. What’s more, because we have closed factories (and sold machinery for scrap, not to mention lost manufacturing skills) we can’t get back on the manufacturing horse easily, or quickly.
To make matters worse, energy prices have risen, and rise again, every time that someone says the words, “economic recovery” Again J.H. Kunstler points out that rising energy costs make every unit of economic growth more expensive, and harder, to grow.
All this leaves the out-of-work or underemployed American in an unenviable position…with no job in an environment where it is very difficult to create jobs, with gas, utility and food prices rising, having to make payments on a house that is worth less than the mortgaged value…no one can blame us for being frustrated.
Socially, we suffer from a wicked case of anomie; a profound sense of disconnectedness, lacking a sense of what is, or should be, acceptable social behavior. Jerry Springer immediately comes to mind as a classic example of how to teach people how not to act—or to think. Jerry is gone (from TV), but we are surrounded by so many bad examples—so much bad behavior—it’s hard to single out any one source. But we do have a choice, and some power, here. When confronted by trash, we need to ask ourselves, “Is that how decent people act? And when the answer is “no”, turn the trash off, because, to paraphrase Bruce Lee, as we think, we do.
We spend huge amounts of time online, paying much attention to our “online community” while our relationships with the people closest to us suffer. Now, I’m not referring to our physical friends who are connected to us by electronic networking devices. I’m talking about the web forums and niche sites to which so many of us belong, and where we spend so much of our time. Because, I believe, that just like we have been dealing in hallucinatory wealth, we have been dealing in hallucinatory friends. Come hard times, cyberfriendships will crumble to dust just like the 56 trillion dollars worth of derivatives that Wall Street wrote over the last few years. It’s time to get real. Just like it’s time to start to once again make real things for real people, it time to make, and hold on to real friends.
So what does all this have to do with my neighbor shooting my neighbor and scaring me into writing about this subject? Okay, I’ll tell you. I have never been a guy that believed in the “Butterfly Beating Its Wings Theory” You guys have probably heard this, a butterfly beating its wings in the rainforest causes ripples that grow like the rings after you toss a rock into a pond, the ripples grow as they move further from the source and, on the other side of the ocean, a hurricane is born. I know, it sounds like bull to me too. Until a few days ago, when I saw rising unemployment, and rising commodity prices (for scrap steel) and the way that people have forgotten how to act and how folks don’t care about their neighbor’s property, or life—I saw all those things come together, from Wall Street banks to the banks of a little river, in the middle of nowhere, Virginia…and it has scared the daylights out of me. Because, I believe, things are going to get worse, a lot worse, before they get better. And they will get better (After a decade, or so, of hard work). But between now and then, the only thing that can save us, save you, save me, save our society…is agape…pure brotherly love.
So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to do one thing. And I want you say three things. I want you to make a list of your friends and family…your real friends, the ones that you went to kindergarten with, the ones that you played ball, or soccer with, the ones in the cute team pictures on your parent’s den wall, the guy you drank your first beer with—THOSE people…and you’re family. And when you talk to those friends and family, here is what I want you to say:
1) We are living in some freaky times. People are under a lot of stress. So, I’m calling to make sure that you are O.K..
2) No matter what happens, we are gonna be all right.
3) If you start to feel lost, or hopeless, say something, and don’t do any freaky crap, OK?
What do you get for all that trouble, which is really no trouble at all? You get closer relationships and friends and family who are alive and well and connected in the years to come.
What is necessary now is for regular folks to be smarter, more mature and more compassionate than the people who caused this mess and to go forth with a simple message for those that we love:
1) Are you OK?
2) We’re gonna be all right.
3) If you need help, say something.
What will happen is what has to happen. And that means giving up some ideas that have proven wrong about the nature of work and the creation of wealth. This isn’t going to be easy. But it will be a lot easier with real friends and family—people who care about us--close at hand. And our message for those people is:
1) Are you ok?
2) We’re gonna be all right.
3) If you need help, say something.
While we are gathering, and speaking to those we love, we have to remember to watch what we allow ourselves to think, because, as we think, so do we act. We, as individuals, don’t have the power to alter the political situation in Washington, effect macroeconomic conditions, or cure society’s ills…at least not quickly, and surely not alone. But we can affect the people closest to us, keeping them safe and sane. We will all be effected by the history that is unfolding before our eyes. But we don’t have to allow our families to be shattered by the loss of hope and the violence that it breeds. So, if it’s dark, hold hands, or keep a hand on a shoulder until the light appears. Until then, love hard. The life you save may be your own.
