Looking Around

People probably think I’m a crusty old pessimist. My take on some things might lead one to believe that not much hope dwells in my heart.

There still burns a flickering flame for things ending well, but only after one fucking trial by fire after another.

Our extrication from the Trump debacle isn’t going to happen without stress and strain and some level of violence. January 6 might have been a foretaste.

Our political place in the world demands that decisions are made and actions taken that have often served and will continue to serve as catalysts and lightning rods. I can imagine some saw the advent of NATO as a guarantee that there would never again be fertile ground for world-wide conflagration—that its mere existence would be deterrent enough to ward off any future wide-eyed megalomaniac’s designs on world domination. Putin has declared that the world should hold his beer.

Warnings and warning signs have not been heeded and we’re free-falling toward ecological and environmental calamity. We’ve been warned endlessly that the clock is ticking, but many still think that’s some sort of government ploy to take our freedom away.

Technology has given us shortcuts and, in some ways, made life easier and better, but it has also stunted our imaginations and is turning us into little islands of apathy and laziness. Social media have provided cover and a worldwide platform for all manner of skewed, incendiary darkness.

I have come to believe that there are indeed good and hopeful people in the world, but that we have not evolved enough to rise above more base instincts that tack toward self-interest and mere survival. Our moral development, our sense of duty and responsibility, our capacity for kindness and empathy is so dependent on who our role models are. Many have been shortchanged and jaded in that regard.

And let’s not forget about the mysteries that still baffle us with regard to the human brain.

We’re still behaving like hunter-gatherers—worried about supply and demand, looking over our shoulder, “protecting our own.” I don’t see a pivot toward “kinder and gentler” anytime soon, except as we make a collective effort to head in that direction.