Normalizing Injustice
I may be wrong but there is something spooky about the current running through our society - the breeze that says it's fine to be just about anything (until it is not).
In Vegas (more coming about that), I ran by this sign and said a little “amen”. But then, as I kept running, my shyte detector started humming and a ringing … so I thought about it some more.
Is it really ok to not be ok?
I mean, I get the point. Our downtrodden, our poor, our huddled masses, the forsaken, them thinking about suicide, those struck down with an illness or a misfortune - they deserve to know they aren’t alone. I get that.
But it also, this slight turn of the phrase and magical word slight - makes being marginalized, being unemployed, being poor, being sick, being (you name it) OK. And I’m not cool with that.
It’s a thread going through our modern world, the whole idea that everything is good! Be who you are, you are lovely just like that. Even if you’re poor, have no health care, are on the street, half dead. It’s ok. Just know that. Who are these copywriters, writing these half-hearted, brave new world messages, we swallow wholeheartedly?
It’s a cop out for society. We don’t need to help and create a society that is just and caring. We don’t need to because, hey, “everyone’s ok”!
I could go on about this rabbit hole of normalizing everything, even injustice as “ok”. It’s as if we made all the gears in the car we are driving through life on - into neutral.
Just a short post after a long bus ride from Vegas, the Grand Canyon and now sitting here in LAX drinking a beer and writing some poems, I’ll share in the coming weeks.
I’m not ok but hey I’m ok! What do you think?
Maybe the message should be just a little less super simple, like …