We live in jaded times. This modern-era has precipitated the advent of self-indulgence and reckless consumption.
These are not new words. They are in the back of everyone’s mind. They are entrenched deeply in our souls. They are the source of our ills.
To preach the virtue of self-reliance is to accept dissonance. It entails a severing of the connection that exists between ourselves and the world around us. It neuters the mystical and embraces a cold, almost psychopathic disregard towards those that exist outside of our immediate assessment as to their usefulness.
We take humanity for granted, and why not? We have our problems, “they” have theirs. It is always “us” and “they” never “our”.
Africa is proof of that. As is Pakistan. Afghanistan. Iraq. China. Anyplace situated outside of the immediate influence of the North American way of living; we simply cannot relate to lives so dissimilar to our own.
“They” have their own problems to deal with.
If we were to frog-march the usual suspects up to our collective scrutinty, there emerges a criminal so conviving, so implacable and so improbable that we do not notice it’s presence.
Polarization. The tendency to assess situations through only two sets of lenses. Good and bad. Cruel and compassionate. Hot and cold. Democrat and Republican. Rich and poor. Wrong and right. Living or dead.
Decades ago, pre-martial sex was considered largely to be a sin. We do not think such things nowadays. In fact -- given our capacity for selfishness, we have socially-conditioned promiscuity as acceptable and placed it reverently upon our altars of self worship.
Laws are also meant to be broken. Prohibition should have served as an effective a cautionary tale as any; yet we continue forth, enforcing rules and regulations that are often perceived as an inconvenience that we must accept without question. Our judgement is constrained by an arbitrary boundary dictated by bureaucracy largely steered about by corporations and it's lobbyists.
Polarization is a form of situational alchemy. We grab onto an unfamiliar concept and weigh it’s values against either extreme. If it cannot be categorized as easily as we wish, we can always count on the ego to tip the scales in favour of either direction without due consideration on our part.
This is how fundamentalists are born. There is no gray in a world that demands either black or white. It is what fuels the engine of activism. It perpetuates racial and gender discrimination. It produces "terrorists". An attack on the World Trade Center that caused the death of a few thousand pale in comparison to the floods of Indonesia or the earthquakes in Haiti that has resulted in far more causalities. Yet, our empathy does not extend nearly as well towards a group of inferior beings whose lives we aren't emotionally invested in.
Do you remember where you were on the day that 230,000 Haitians perished? How about 9/11?
My point is, we are fucked. Our sense of empathy needs a kick in the ass if we expect to progress as a speices, much less a "civilization".
We have nowhere else to go but down, if the world continue as it does. Feeding the gluttonous appetite of North Americans upon the backs of less fortunate third-world citizens. Affording more gravitas towards spectacle than reality. Embracing a collective delusion unique only to the Western hemisphere, in which we struggle to hold up the shaky foundation of the American Dream, enlisting and exploiting the aid of those who have little choice but to consent to piss-poor wages and a shocking amount of disrespect.
The value of life is relative to the polarized mind. If it does not shock or stun us -- we simply will not care.
Such is the life of the Ostrich burying it's nose in the sand.
Get your Christmas shopping done yet?
