Lies. Every day I encounter so many lies ruling our social fabric and poking holes in our social contract. Orwell would have a field day. The world is at once so beautiful but also such a steaming piece of shit.
I’ve seen this train wreck coming for a long time. In the 90s, I could see our governments being corrupted, turned into money making enterprises and corporate cheerleaders. Accountants and not guardians of the people and their welfare. Slowly, deregulation, contracted labor, the erosion of safety nets, an uncaring world was born - then, the digitalizing of all experience has brought us to the world we live in today. A world where one feels ashamed to even exist.
I say this with reticence. Years I’ve studied with heart and soul the beast we call “mankind”. I’ve written extensively on the Holocaust, for me an experiment I felt for a long time that was unrepeatable but important to understand because it revealed our heart of darkess and how good people come to do evil things.
Yet, here we go again. Whoooopitty do!
Henry Giroux is a mind we all should listen to. When I was a young man in Teachers’ College (now they call it Faculty of Education - see how everything becomes washed?), I read Giroux voraciously. I remember a professor writing a long note at the end of one of my papers and in caps stating “YOU ARE QUITE THE PHILOSOPHER!” Years later, as a professor in that same classroom, I force-fed my student teachers Giroux. Many didn’t like it but lots of kids don’t like liver or brussel sprouts. That’s what education is for, to eat, digest the things that make us uncomfortable.
Giroux made me think about the world I live in. He made me feel that the best a man could do was to help create a more just world, a better world. It’s the reason for this lament - what ever happened to our quest for “a better world”?
Please watch - a brillant mind …
The world has become a cruel one. A clownish one. One of data points and high finance. A world where we are eating up the world, with our hunger to turn everything into a monetary unit, into a product to be bought, sold, controlled, remolded and employed in the name of capital.
Journalism is long dead, they are busy killing the last reporters and soon there will be no one to even witness the crime. But listen to this talk, the honorable Bill Moyers with Henry Giroux. He lays it all out better than me, the air-conditioned nightmare we live in. And this was decades ago. We are now well into it.
But why have we come to this stage? Where so many are hungry, poor, destitute? Genocide is but a show on our screens. The environment is choking, biodiversity is a joke. How has it come to this?
We do now live in the Gilded Age on steroids. A corrupted world. But why? I believe it is a cultural change that is driving this slide into a place where we no longer quest for a better world.
The late, great social philosopher Lionel Trilling gave a short speech and then turned it into a short book titled - Sincerity and Authenticty. Like Giroux, he lamented how the world was changing into a phony phantasmagoria but unlike Giroux, he outlined the deep cause of our malaise.
In short, he thesis was that we were changing from a world where the moral code that governed human interactions was one based on sincerity and authenticity. A man’s reputation and word counted above all else. Being true to thine own self was a golden rule, it couldn’t be broken. We all are like Polonius, valuing our own self core. We could not lie to ourselves. Rationalize our evils. It was a line one didn’t cross. Economists call this “trust based” society though I think Trilling meant much more than that.
Doestoevsky was all about this, it’s the central message and theme of all his works. Sincerity. Don’t lie to yourself.
Nowadays, the authentic doesn’t matter. Sincerity is laughed at. It’s a world where you cry at the opera and then go home and watch people die on TV without a tear. It’s a world of doing whatever you have to do to get ahead. You know all the names of politics, of business that can be cited - all hypocrites. They don’t care about their reputation, for it’s now a world of multi-colored arousal. Dodge, weave, lie, cheat, steal and just keep the crowds crowing and cheering for you.
Hypocrites. Corporate execs flying to work in jets while giving speeches about their green, sustainable approaches. Politicians declaring “We Can” and feigning hope while purchasing mansions around the world. Upper class twits in office as “Labour” while cutting social security for the poor. Generals saying the only road to peace is war and the annihilation of a people. Businessmen saying “buy this stock” and then taking the monies and run. I could go on ‘til the sun doesn’t set.
"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief, "There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief. Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth, None of them along the line know what any of it is worth." Bob Dylan. All Across The Watchtower. Listen. It explains so much.
We live in a world of very little integrity. Trilling would say “sincerity”. And at heart, integrity is “wholeness”, integrated. But somehow our society is fractured, the mirror of our selves is broken and the vision appears as a thousand shards of glass. We live in confused times.
We need to turn a corner. Demand integrity. That our word is important, involitable. What we say, who we are matters. That’s the only way I see for us to repair the social contract. Inject trust back into governance. The only way to hold corporations and governments to account beyond every 4 years.
I noticed the world changing so much when in our media, everything became a dog eat dog, survival contest. Reality TV. Last one standing. Best chef. Best cupcake maker. You’re Fired! Survivor. Remember Jerry Springer? I think he was the watermark, the spark that set it all off. WWE became reality. Now we all live like WWE, we all live in a world where we shame each other and get our jollys by shaming and the pretence we are better than some segment of humanity. Solidarity, community have become dirty words. The world has become a broken place, one that is devoid of care, of wisdom, of being true to thine own self. SELF-FABRICATION is the name of the game. We all live a kind of Kabuki theatre …
We need to get real. We need to get true. Integrity. Sincerity. Authenticity.
Ai certainly isn’t the way. It won’t cut it. Distraction, amusement isn’t the way either. Disneyland, Oz - the wrong cause, way.
So be true to thy own self. Walk talk. Be good to your word. Treat all people as your equal. Don’t lie to yourself. Real - like a rock.
ALIVE
Dogs bark. Crows crow.
The distant noise
drifts up the mountain
to my bed’s side.
Outside the window
the banana trees
stand still
like terracotta soldier
watching over my
half-sleeping self.
I awake to the sound of mice
scurring through the pasta
in the kitchen.
Who cares if Rome is burning?
Or what Ceasar did or didn’t do?
I’m here. I’m true. I’m alive.
from my book 50 Poems From The Mountain
No Better World