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« An Update. | Main | Random links from random places... »
Is it just me...?
February 17, 2008
Or has everyone/anyone else noticed a distinct shift towards hopelessness?
It seems like in the past year, all of the various doomsday indicators have been sounding out voluminously. It'd be a death toll except it's more of a peel. Like the squeal of brakes as they are quickly applied before an unexpected precipice.
I've even noticed the gloom in my children, who talk openly about the fact that the adults have fucked up the world for them. I don't know if my children are just extraordinarily jaded, but I just don't remember being eleven and even thinking about the future, much less mulling over having none and grouching about the fact that the planet might be "nothing more than an empty shell" by the time I was old enough to eat all of the candy I wanted whenever I wanted to. Because that's what I viewed as the main benefit of adulthood.
Well, guess what...the grown-ups have cleaned out the candy dish and broken it to pieces.
And those of us who have been paying attention all along have kind of known there would be a point of no return, but it's so easy to be lulled into tranquil security to the hum of the shift in targeted advertising. Lately, I am hearing strains of tune-changing as commercials on TV tout the benefits of NOT spending money (seeing as so many of us have so little to spend). I am wondering when reality TV will shift to pure fantasy TV, or perhaps...as actually my 11 year old so astutely pointed out after watching Nanny 911 with me..."I think the point of those reality shows is that when you are done watching them you are thankful for your own life because by comparison it looks pretty good."
And, you know, I don't want to lose hope. And I will actively set my mind and soul against losing hope...but I can't deny that the shift is palpable. I was watching the PBS show Now this morning, and a woman said (about something totally off this topic, but still somehow applicable) "There is right...there is wrong...and then there is reality." It's like the opposite of being given a choice between a and b and choosing C. And for the life of me, I can't figure out how to explain it better than that.
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Comments
If anything, I've noticed a shift in the opposite direction. It started a couple of years ago, just a subtle feeling that things were going to start getting better. Now, things are better, concretely so, for many people I know as well as for myself personally. And I see a lot more hope around me now than I did then.
Of course, I've changed a lot since then, too. And I'm definitely not suggesting that everything is great -- there are still problems, still plenty of work to do. But even the problems don't seem as hopeless as they once did. However bad things get, everything's going to be okay.
PS: I totally went through a phase in late childhood/early adolescence in which I blamed the previous generation for the hell through which I was certain I'd have to live. I did it again in my 20s. I still do a little oldster-blaming on a semi-annual basis. Strangely, though, almost all of the hell I've actually lived through was entirely of my own making.
I think that sense of hopelessness comes and goes over the course of time/history/human experience. My great-aunt who survived a tornado and the Depression used to tell me "things can always get worse." I remember having that awful feeling as a kid -- that I would go to sleep one night and the grownups would start a nuclear war and that would be the end of everything.
"There is right...there is wrong...and then there is reality."
Jesus, that about sums it up. Lately my mantra has been something I read in a Willie Nelson biography: "Don't you worry about a thing, 'cause ain't nothing gonna be all right." I still recycle, though.