The following essay is a favorite from the archives of sweetney.com, chosen by tracey for Mommybloggers.com.

my dear friend angela came over last night for some beer and sympathy, and we waxed unpoetic for many hours on the human condition and all of its manifestations (the internet, the economy -slash- capitalism, the political landscape, the environment, and so forth); needless to say, this was not a gleeful conversation. so humor me for a few minutes and let me get all chicken little on your ass, because in all honesty i'm not merely discouraged about the present state of things, but borderline terrified.

some of what i talked about here yesterday regarding people and their behavior on the internet seems to me a small symptom of a larger societal sickness, namely a magnification of the importance of the self, the individual, to the exclusion of all else, including but not limited to basic civility born of an intrinsic sense of the interconnectedness between all people. it appears that, in an elemental way, empathy is waning, being extinguished through the alienation inherent in late capitalism; unlike in past ages, we no longer have a direct connection to so many of the people who make our lives possible on a basic level -- those who produce our food, our clothing, the homes we live in and the cars we now drive -- which ultimately leads to a pervasive, overriding sense that its every man for himself. that we're not all in this together, working in an interdependent way to survive and prosper and raise families and such, but that we're each islands competing with one another for resources to do those things -- a perspective that necessitates an inflated sense of self-importance, an egocentrism that is corrosive to that sense of kindredness and compassion that has long been essential to the health and advancement of individual communities and thus society generally. but, under the present system, having a strong sense of empathy and feeling of fellowship for others could in fact be considered counterproductive to individual prosperity and health: if i truly see YOU as myself, and recognize the full value of your humanity as equal to mine, then how can i proceed in participating in a system that requires your subjugation? for example, how do i continue to function knowing that the clerk at the market who bags my groceries is making $5.15 an hour, living in squalor and selling plasma to supplement her income to merely survive? how do i buy those groceries, knowing that so many of those who participated in the harvesting and processing of most of the foodstuffs i buy and consume are in some way or other being horribly exploited in the process? and, in a broader sense, how do i continue to live not being constantly plagued by the inescapable knowledge of others suffering terribly all around me -- living in wage slavery, in sub-standard housing, in the addiction and abuse that is so pervasive among an underclass that has resigned itself to these things because truly there is no way out of them. in this light, do we wonder at the fact that a full 50% of the american population can be categorized as mentally ill under DSM-V criteria? i have felt this attendant depression and anxiety, this all-too-pressing knowledge of the wrongness of the world and the suffering in it closing in, and i'm sure many of you have as well. but those of us who think and feel these things are in the minority, and we are most certainly not the fittest among those in this prescribed “survival of the fittest.” because of the very structure of the system we all live in (loosely, late capitalism), we -- the empathetic, the humanistic, pick your term -- are the vestiges of a dead age, antique humans ill-equipped to thrive in this contemporary environment. those who can unflinchingly raise themselves above others, who value the accumulation of capital over the accumulation of (heh) karma, and who are willing and able to participate fully and self-servingly in all that the system demands are now and will continue to be in the future those in power and those who lead. knowing this, i struggle with the awareness that i am trying to raise mina as thoughtful, empathetic, and with a strong sense of social justice. in other words -- in light of what i've said above -- i'm raising her to be a good, wise, but probably not terribly happy person (just like her mom! ha!). as the cliche goes, most parents -- myself included -- would agree that we want, above all else, for our children to be happy. but increasingly i feel sure i am raising mina in a way that is probably detrimental to her in terms of her overall success in this life (again, as determined under the present system... and no, i don't believe the revolution is gonna come in our lifetime, so that's really all we have to work with), and most certainly to her future contentment and sense of security.

as if this weren't depressing enough, i feel fairly certain that there is a great deal of additional badness coming down the track, and more and more i fail to see how disaster can be averted. so much of the way things are now seems truly untenable, unsustainable in the long run, including the above described societal dysfunction (which i don't think will culminate in the revolution coming, sadly, but rather in something akin to institutionalized and internalized libertarianism -- the ultimate dysfunction!). clearly, our economic system is on the verge of calamity. strap yourselves in folks, for this horseman of the apocalypse is rapidly beating a path to your door; in the next 6 months to a year i'd anticipate a catastrophic collapse of some kind, possibly resulting in a depression. we live presently in a country (i'd say “world”, but i know that's slightly overstating....but only slightly) led by persons (bush being merely a figurehead) lawless and destructive, willing to do whatever necessary to restrict social liberty and obtain resources. our global environment is quite literally on the verge of complete destruction -- in terms of global warming it seems increasingly likely that we've reached that point-of-no-return where even if we were to drastically limit CO2 emissions (which -- c'mon let's be honest here -- we're clearly NOT going to do, especially under this administration), we'd merely be delaying what is now inevitable. please note: i am not saying anything that isn't explicitly spelled out in innumerable well-respected scientific, economic and political reports. this is not news to any of you all, i'm sure. but we refuse (collectively) to really hear this, to truly listen and absorb the dire reality of our situation. why? because it isn't profitable? because it does not relate to our individual prosperity, at least in an immediate sense? because we have on some level just given up?

as i said, i am genuinely terrified by all of this. and though i feel less and less hope, i also want so very badly for someone articulate, sane and insightful to explain to me how in all of these things there *is* hope. i want to be convinced otherwise, yet it seems like an almost impossible task in the face of the real. i want not a best-case-scenario, because the best case never comes to fruition; i want a realistic, likely scenario under which we can collectively weather all of this and emerge intact. but i got nuthin'.

anyone?

Originally posted on sweetney.com on June 23, 2005