Is there a general malaise affecting humanity? Are we numb? Have we used up our empathy and ability to feel?
Malaise and Numb Are We?
Having finished my usual holiday calls to friends afar there seems to be a general theme. We are wondering if we’ve all become numb? Is there a general malaise infecting humanity? Or at least Americans. Do we all need a therapist? Or a great mai tai? Is it more than the orange elephant in the living room and his coming kakistocracy*?
The theory started innocently enough. Why are all the clothes and fabrics for furniture in hues of grey, black, brown and crème? Where is the color? The life. Could those who decide these things be suffering unconsciously from the same malaise or might it just be corporate strategy to save money by only offering a limited selection and often a poorer quality of goods at higher prices? You’ve noticed the more for less we’ve been enduring for the last half a decade. Corporations blamed Covid and supply chains as our peanut butter cups shrank while the cost exploded but they’ve never recalibrated post pandemic. They just continue to rob us, waiting for us to normalize their greed, breeding the manufactured consent. Speaking of corporate greed (and never condoning violence) but curious how you felt when the public sided with the shooter of the United Healthcare CEO? I saw memes out there putting him on magazine covers titled Sexiest Man Alive. And there’s talk of jury nullification.
Getting back to our conversations that went something like this…
How is it few seem to care about their job and doing it well anymore? As if the A-team has retired without passing their values, expertise and ethics to the B and C-teams left holding the bag. I saw and felt it in the decline I experienced visiting New Orleans recently. I blamed myself at first. I thought I was just romantically remembering the past and my hometown as I looked through rose-colored glasses – but NO DAMN IT! It’s changed and not for the better!
And those people I’ve been angry with and labeled apolitical or neutral, who I felt were just irresponsible and leaving the work to others like me to fight for a better life, could it be they’ve just been let down so many times they can’t manage to try again and muster hope anymore? Maybe. For some. And the spiritual bypassers, maybe they do so because one more uncomfortable conversation might feel like it could be the death of them. Am I going a step too far saying I can understand the depression and grievance of some of the MAGAs as they feel their lives swirl down the drain. They’ve been victims of the biggest cons as they’ve been fed a steady dose of lies and distortions for decades. We've all been victims of the "gig economy" working for no benefits or job security for years. We can all only take so much, care so much, before we crack open, screaming into our pillow.
As for the malaise, during the holidays did you walk into stores and see nothing that interested you? Does everything you eat taste bland? Does it feel as if there’s little to look forward to except kakistocracy for the next four years?
Does it take too much juice for the squeeze?
Are we all just waiting for the next shoe to drop while we put on happy faces for the kids or during holidays and hope for the bes? Are you having a hard time finding motivation to put forth the effort to make things happen. To care. Are you doing things because you should and because it’s expected rather than you want to?
Was it almost more than you could take to realize the friends you loved and thought you knew are actually falling victim to hate haters and that truth just cut you too deep? Can you remember how you felt as you kept seeing the ignorance of people without a clue about what they don’t know? Shocking these were Americans. How did things get so bad? Perhaps seeing our polarized country living in two realities makes you afraid and you wonder how or if it will resolve in a healthy way. Or watching our media act like State TV in a third world dictatorship rather than publish the truth protecting the Fourth Estate is a gut punch.
Sure, many of us have been social justice warriors for a long time defending the rights of minorities, women, people choosing alternative lifestyles and all the rest. Of course we fought patriarchy and felt like the deck was stacked against us. But we had come to believe the arc of progress bends toward justice and we lived in a great country striving to make everyone equal under the law...eventually. Where we were protected by the justice system and anyone could achieve almost anything with effort and some luck. Unless of course you weren’t white. But do we still have those illusions with student debt, housing costs, low wages, shrinkflation and all the rest? And now our hopes and dreams are on hold another 4 years at least.
There were steadfast guardrails, a status quo, though unequal it provided familiarity and some certainty. Now all bets seem off. With a demented, narcissistic and ignorant elderly golfer from the Pink House, not just the country, but our free speech, our safety net and the world seems at risk. Could we have imagined Canada, Greenland Panama might have to fear us? Afterall, we saw in a world of Citizens United, within a decade one man with unlimited money and "flying money enablers" can infect politics and defeat the justice system of the United States of America, the country we grew up believing was the most powerful and capable on the planet. The Beacon on the Hill everyone aspired to be a part of is on her knees. Now, however, we’ve seen the harsh reality of how being rich and white makes you immune from any accountability. (Our black and brown friends told us so.) You can have someone killed, maybe steal an election, defraud millions, sexually assault and there’s no accountability. That's all normal behavior now, perhaps preventing you from getting a job at McDonalds but not from the White House. Some might even say being rich and white enabled the death of truth and democracy, flawed though it was.
Is a decade of this all just too much for our human psyches to handle? Or have white Americans had it too good for too long compared to our black and brown neighbors and countries where freedom was never a reality? We aren’t accustomed to this sustained struggle and uncertainty. We, the masses haven’t learned to cope and find joy despite the adversity. We haven't learned to grasp happiness from between the rain drops.
In this process did we use up our ability to feel? Do we only get so much for one lifetime? Are we all numb with little capacity to feel happiness, joy or excitement? Lots of questions. Not lots of answers. Will the Age of Aquarius really bring in a progress time of love, equality and peace? So much needs to unfold.
Well, surprisingly, my little shred of happiness reared its head in a little thrift store on Sixth Street. I saw these little jeweled ornaments and my heart skipped a beat. It had been a long time since anything really appealed to me and made me smile. But when I saw these ornaments in the shape of cheetahs something stirred within me. I have hope my capacity for beauty and to feel something is not completely dead.
*Kakistocracy…is a government run by the worst, least qualified or most unscrupulous citizens. The word was coined as early as the seventeenth century.
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