I've met a man with no social conscience.
I don't mean he has no conscience at all. He would never intentionally harm anyone, and he may even be capable of compassion for victims of crime, disease, or natural disasters. I don't know whether he gives money to any non-profit organization or charity, although I doubt that he does; someone else’s misfortune isn’t his business, and for every dollar he pays out, he demands something tangible in return.
When I say he has no social conscience, I mean that he cares little or nothing for people put out of work by the ongoing recession. He sees nothing inequitable in the fact that the chief executive officer of a major corporation gets to keep his obscene salary and perquisites while overseeing the financial ruination of hundreds of people whose work earned for him the obscene salary and perquisites. Rather than bemoan the loss of hundreds or even thousands of jobs and condemn the idiocy of CEOs whose bad business decisions led to the layoffs, my acquaintance believes we should rejoice that some people got to keep their jobs.
This attitude is not a "glass is half full" optimism, it is a myopic view of a world seen in black and white. A person makes a choice to work for a company and must then endure the consequences without complaint, regardless of what those consequences are. A person who has no job is unemployed because of choices he or she made, pure and simple. This man's belief system is simply that people are destitute, hungry, sick, addicted, and oppressed because of choices they made. The world in which young teen-age boys are given the "choice" of joining a gang or being beaten up is foreign to him. He knows nothing of the world in which teen-age girls are raped and then forced into prostitution, or given a choice between selling their bodies or slowly starving to death. There are laws, he says, there are tax-supported entities for these people to go to, and if they choose not to go, well, that's their choice. Never mind that the entities are grossly under-funded and over-worked and that there is never enough money to adequately police them. He sees only the lazy and the spoiled accepting money taken away from hard-working men like himself; to him the welfare queen driving a new luxury car (the model changes from season to season) is an article of faith.
I've known this man for years. We aren't close, but we do see each other and spend pleasant time together a few times a year, and over all those years I have tried to persuade him that, as citizens of this world, we affluent, middle-class Americans have a social obligation to help the less fortunate. And over all of those years, he has obstinately clung to the absolute denial of that obligation. Even after being laid off himself in the recent lending/banking/financing debacle, he refuses to believe that the chronically unemployed do not choose to be chronically unemployed. Of course, after being unemployed himself for several months, he used his personal fortune to start his own business. Would that it were that easy for all of the laid-off administrative assistants, production workers, clerical staffers, and gofers that make business possible in America today. Too bad for them that their cardboard boxes don't contain a small pile of cash with which to start their own businesses.
After a recent and long conversation with this new entrepreneur I came to realize that he literally does not care that the vagaries of life can turn well-intentioned, hard-working, law-abiding Americans into victims with no resources. He chose, as a very young man, to begin saving and investing, and if others his age have nothing to fall back on when finding themselves unemployed, unemployable, and far too young for retirement, well, that was their choice. Never mind that the very industry that paid him so well all those years actually discouraged saving and encouraged life lived on the plastic card at around twenty percent interest.
This man's lack of social conscience wouldn't disturb me except that I see it more and more among people I know. The urban legend of massive waste in government has taken on almost religious significance among neo-conservatives and self-styled libertarians. They ignore the reality that the most massive waste in government is that caused by private industry gouging the federal government. Budgets get cut, sure, but that only results in government workers joining the ranks of the unemployed, not in crackdowns on or prosecutions of contractors who bilk the Treasury. Like a Scientologist espousing the ideology of Xenu, the new conservatives preach that slashing taxes and cracking down on government will prevent government workers from wasting all of that money and allow free enterprise to better enrich all of us. Or, at least all of us who choose to join in the prosperity.
This blind faith will continue to assure that money spent on social programs is largely wasted. Erosion of the American social conscience means a declining willingness to help our fellow Americans who fall on hard times. Refusal to even recognize, let alone act on, our social obligations to our fellow human beings can only worsen the political polarization and growing class struggle that, unabated, may well consume our civilization.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Yuma Sojourn: Gertrude Stein was right
Memory is such a slippery, deceitful thing. At best it is unreliable; at its worst it lures one into believing things were once greater than they can ever be, that we were once better than we can ever be.
Two of my younger brothers and I made a pilgrimage to our ancestral home on the plains of eastern Colorado this weekend and I was surprised at how different the place is from what I remember. Not that we didn't expect things to be changed; I've visited Yuma often over the years, and I've watched it go through the normal changes that constantly alter the communities we live in. The houses are smaller than we remembered them; even the town seems smaller, but then hiking the length of Main Street takes a lot fewer steps with 50-year-old legs than it did when we were ten. Two of the three schools we attended are still there, but one has been re-purposed as an office complex, one has been enlarged and remodeled so much it’s hardly recognizable, and the old high school has been demolished and replaced by something more useful. Of the three-dozen buildings that comprise Main Street, only five still serve their original purposes, although all have been extensively remodeled. The old city library is a residence; the hospital where two of my brothers were born is now a state office building; the police station where our father served for eleven years has been replaced by a bank; and the Methodist church we attended was for a time a Masonic lodge and is now a fundamentalist Hispanic church.
We expected all of this change, of course. Still, for me, there was something sad about going back this time. All three of the houses we lived in are still there, but they are shabby and forlorn-looking from neglect. The lush green lawns and sumptuous flower gardens of my childhood are dried brown patches in expanses of bare dirt, or weedy thickets. The Yuma I remember was a vibrant, thriving community, with national-name stores on Main Street, stores like JC Penney, Montgomery Ward, Safeway, Coast to Coast, and Duckwall’s. Sure, there were the local mom-and-pop stores, too, but they were solid businesses that remained virtually unchanged throughout the decade-plus we lived there. Even the locally-owned stores had neon lighting or signs that were painted by professional sign painters. There was an air of indestructible commerce about Main Street, as if the people who did business there intended to be there for a good long while.
Nowadays there isn’t a single national-name retail store in town, and the only franchises are 7-Eleven and the fast food joints up on the highway. The stores and restaurants on Main Street sport hand-painted signs or lettering hand-cut from heavy plywood and painted. There is a sense that each store is hanging on by its fingernails, and if we go back a year from now, there’s a good chance it won’t be there. The old brick facades have been covered with aluminum or painted pressboard, and everything is weathered and worn. The town’s residential areas aren’t much better. There are a few grand houses and the occasional well-tended if modest home, but the rest of the town looks either threadbare or badly overgrown.
The experience has left me somewhat melancholy, as if I’m disappointed that I cannot make myself younger by returning to the scene of my childhood, or at least stave off the advancement of years. Still, I am glad we made the trip. For decades I’ve clung to the memories of my childhood with a fastness that sometimes bordered on the unreal. The Yuma of my boyhood was an American fantasy, where Grandma and Granddad helped raise us boys, where my mother and father were good and respected members of the community, where children could wander unsupervised on a summer day and soak up the bright sunshine of an unpolluted Colorado sky. The reality, so evident during today’s sojourn, was doubtless somewhat less perfect.
I realized that Yuma has always had its flaws, has always had its ramshackle houses and tawdry facades, its homemade public face. I just didn’t recognize them for what they were. Businesses are born, thrive or don’t, and then die, each in its own time. Renewal grows out of the compost heap of yesteryear’s style and discarded confidence. Homes, like our bodies, reflect the personalities of their occupants. A community has a life cycle and, like we who populate it, it changes over time. If Yuma looks less lovely now than I remember it, the fault is my own, not the town’s.
The glowing image of Yuma remembered exists only in the slightly fading photographs that fill the Rubber Maid tub in my father’s den. The moments captured in those photos are gone forever, and driving back to the place where they were taken won’t make them come alive again. Memories are wonderful things to occasionally sit and ponder, but they are not the sum of us. What is important is not what we were or even what we are, but what we can and will be, and that is as true of towns as it is of people.
I’ll probably never go back to Yuma after this trip. There isn’t any reason for me to go back. No more family members will be buried there, my work will never take me there, no one there is anxious to see me. The memories are more comfortable, more attractive than the reality, and there’s no reason to diminish them. As Gertrude Stein famously said, there’s no there there. It’s best to leave it that way.
Two of my younger brothers and I made a pilgrimage to our ancestral home on the plains of eastern Colorado this weekend and I was surprised at how different the place is from what I remember. Not that we didn't expect things to be changed; I've visited Yuma often over the years, and I've watched it go through the normal changes that constantly alter the communities we live in. The houses are smaller than we remembered them; even the town seems smaller, but then hiking the length of Main Street takes a lot fewer steps with 50-year-old legs than it did when we were ten. Two of the three schools we attended are still there, but one has been re-purposed as an office complex, one has been enlarged and remodeled so much it’s hardly recognizable, and the old high school has been demolished and replaced by something more useful. Of the three-dozen buildings that comprise Main Street, only five still serve their original purposes, although all have been extensively remodeled. The old city library is a residence; the hospital where two of my brothers were born is now a state office building; the police station where our father served for eleven years has been replaced by a bank; and the Methodist church we attended was for a time a Masonic lodge and is now a fundamentalist Hispanic church.
We expected all of this change, of course. Still, for me, there was something sad about going back this time. All three of the houses we lived in are still there, but they are shabby and forlorn-looking from neglect. The lush green lawns and sumptuous flower gardens of my childhood are dried brown patches in expanses of bare dirt, or weedy thickets. The Yuma I remember was a vibrant, thriving community, with national-name stores on Main Street, stores like JC Penney, Montgomery Ward, Safeway, Coast to Coast, and Duckwall’s. Sure, there were the local mom-and-pop stores, too, but they were solid businesses that remained virtually unchanged throughout the decade-plus we lived there. Even the locally-owned stores had neon lighting or signs that were painted by professional sign painters. There was an air of indestructible commerce about Main Street, as if the people who did business there intended to be there for a good long while.
Nowadays there isn’t a single national-name retail store in town, and the only franchises are 7-Eleven and the fast food joints up on the highway. The stores and restaurants on Main Street sport hand-painted signs or lettering hand-cut from heavy plywood and painted. There is a sense that each store is hanging on by its fingernails, and if we go back a year from now, there’s a good chance it won’t be there. The old brick facades have been covered with aluminum or painted pressboard, and everything is weathered and worn. The town’s residential areas aren’t much better. There are a few grand houses and the occasional well-tended if modest home, but the rest of the town looks either threadbare or badly overgrown.
The experience has left me somewhat melancholy, as if I’m disappointed that I cannot make myself younger by returning to the scene of my childhood, or at least stave off the advancement of years. Still, I am glad we made the trip. For decades I’ve clung to the memories of my childhood with a fastness that sometimes bordered on the unreal. The Yuma of my boyhood was an American fantasy, where Grandma and Granddad helped raise us boys, where my mother and father were good and respected members of the community, where children could wander unsupervised on a summer day and soak up the bright sunshine of an unpolluted Colorado sky. The reality, so evident during today’s sojourn, was doubtless somewhat less perfect.
I realized that Yuma has always had its flaws, has always had its ramshackle houses and tawdry facades, its homemade public face. I just didn’t recognize them for what they were. Businesses are born, thrive or don’t, and then die, each in its own time. Renewal grows out of the compost heap of yesteryear’s style and discarded confidence. Homes, like our bodies, reflect the personalities of their occupants. A community has a life cycle and, like we who populate it, it changes over time. If Yuma looks less lovely now than I remember it, the fault is my own, not the town’s.
The glowing image of Yuma remembered exists only in the slightly fading photographs that fill the Rubber Maid tub in my father’s den. The moments captured in those photos are gone forever, and driving back to the place where they were taken won’t make them come alive again. Memories are wonderful things to occasionally sit and ponder, but they are not the sum of us. What is important is not what we were or even what we are, but what we can and will be, and that is as true of towns as it is of people.
I’ll probably never go back to Yuma after this trip. There isn’t any reason for me to go back. No more family members will be buried there, my work will never take me there, no one there is anxious to see me. The memories are more comfortable, more attractive than the reality, and there’s no reason to diminish them. As Gertrude Stein famously said, there’s no there there. It’s best to leave it that way.
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