I don’t buy into the Joe Rogue nouveau macholinity. It’s a phenomena, mostly bought into by men that want to have their cake and eat it too. [by the way - that’s the proper idiomatic express NOT “want their cake and eat it too”]. By the way, I don’t have a man cave nor intend to start in the near or any future, a brocast.
However, his little monologue does speak to me. So I’d like to discuss it. How soft we have it.
We do have it soft. Us, we, you, me, she, in the modern middle class, globby Guccified world of city living. Our air-conditioned nightmare.
But this is not to say the world has gotten any better throughout history. I don’t buy into the Pinker Pilgrim’s Progress Protestant version of this world, the inevitable, triumphant march of science and discovery, taking away all pain and misery. Eventually getting to and returning to our rebuilt garden of Eden.
No, it’s not happening and all those apologists for western, modern, business society saying it is so, won’t make it so.
There are so many suffering, there are so many forgotten, forsaken. It’s a bloody Holocaust of suffering, out there in the world, this here and now. Our “progress” is anything but.
Sure, in pure numbers you can argue, we are living longer overall. We are more literate, more luxurious (whatever that means). But percentages as numbers lie. Take any sliver of present day humanity’s suffering, death and poverty and it is such a larger number than any who have gone before. If you put your ear to the door, you can probably hear the collective scream.
There is no progress save the progress of the human heart.
I’m often reminded of the old Monty Python skit when I start comparing our world today to that of yesteryear. You have probably heard it, old men going on about “when they were young”. It’s a good laugh, even watched a 1,000th time.
We all tend to look at our past lives as something less, with more travail and suffering. However, I think we get it all wrong. We are captivated by the present day, it’s lights, illusions and sounds. And like Rogan says, we need motivation a reason to pat ourselves on the back and say, “Hey, look how far we’ve come!” We are looking for a reason to rise to the top.
Yet, unlike Rogan and all the fire and brimestone prognosticators out there in the airwaves - I don’t buy into that fear, the “cycle” and the thought that the poor and pissed off and forgotten of this world will rise up and take revenge. That’s been a constant theme of history and except for a few local and exceptional circumstances, it has never happened in history.
So no need for you, me, us to be vigilant. In fear.
We do however need to live more in the light than the darkness we currently do. We do need to help our brothers and sisters in this world, however we can. Instead of electing leaders who see the world as a business opportunity and who keep the suffering spinning on, cuz, hell, that’s good for business. Desperation. Sharing never was part of any capitalistic design.
Just saying. We have it soft. Time to start sharing that soft seat with others. Not because they’ll be hell to pay and ugly, dangerous people will soon be on our doorsteps. No.
We share our softness because it is a gift we’ve been given. We choose moss rather than rock. We are not as beasts, we are alive. And if alive, you are aware of your connectedness and responsibility to everything else alive.
Your choice. Choose the fear or as soft as you are, risk the love that is in your heart, to gain the whole world.
“Compassion was the most important, perhaps the sole law of human existence.”
―Fyodor Dostoyevsky,The Idiot
The 20th Century
Airflight, cars, too many cars
radio, TV, telephone, video, computers
social security, the pill, condoms, AIDs
equality, justice, no brotherhood.
Steel, plastic, teflon, concrete
(but the earth abideth forever)
Picasso, Jackson, graffiti
canned food, microwaved food, fast food
so many starved – no food
vaccines, by pass surgery, transplants
everyone still always dying.
Man on the moon, speed, nuclear bomb caboom!
the ashes of Birkenau bloom.
A little love and peace, no understanding
much profit, no prophets
Russian, Chinese, Cuban, Iranian revolutions
but the world still goes around the sun and itself.
National buildings, nation building
Trinidad, Tajekistan, El Salvador, Kosovo, North Korea, East Timor
looking up there is only one sky.
Papers, books, magazines, TV, radio, information ages
who can remember what was said
the paper burns, the words fly away.
Pop stars, fat politicians, scruffy generals, Elvis, Ali
Einstein, Churchill, Mickey Mouse, Hitler, Ghandi, Stalin
billions of others but I forget their names.
A lot of noise, less space unless up in space
floods, famines, the fixing up
accumulation, credit, yo-yos and hula hoops
every man will one day stoop.
The 20th century ends not with this bang but a sob
nobody there to throw in the towel or hand a kleenex
only the morning after and us all carrying on.
— Dec. 31st, 1999, Flophouse, Havana, Cuba
How Soft We Had It