Get what we deserve

I am tired. Feeling a cultural malaise, a sorrow for things lost.

My family was big on values, on aiming to be better. My parents taught us right from wrong and demanded that we live our lives by what we learned.

My maternal grandmother was born into a world where electricity and telephones were oddities, when your actions were measured against a code of good and evil and how they affected others.  She lived through two world wars, a deep, devastating depression and a move with few material resources across the ocean.   She raised her two children with little help from her spouse, scraped together a meaningful life, was always there for her daughter, my mother, and never wavered from the basics of compassion and kindness no matter how great the difficulty or cultural leap. She was sure about what was good, what was right and how to live compassionately throughout all the changes she experienced.

Today? Culture changes so fast. Yesterday I watched a morning TV show on which the hosts talked about the end of CD’s as storage devices for music or sound or anything for that matter.

They apparently join the stacks of cassettes and floppy discs that I have for which there are few ways to retrieve their contents.  A first world problem? Minutia? Sure. But they point to something else, a discomfort, a feeling of displacement for many for whom these and more momentous cultural changes rearrange the way we interact with people, with things and with that which we call God.

What seems to be the nexus of discontent and belief is that along with technological changes that become the impetus for other changes is the idea that there are no aspirational values beyond accumulation of wealth.

Used to be that we subscribed to a set of values that defined the “good life,” the “best life” and although many strayed to varying degrees from that paradigm in one way or another, they acknowledged that the standards were the behaviors and ideas that exemplified what were the best ways to live in that society.

There was a belief in something better and right.  And there was a sense of something being wrong when measured against the “right.” Today? What values do we espouse that set the standards? Fidelity to spouses, to employers or employees? Compassion for those whose lives are filled with fear and insecurity?  Subscription to what most religions espouse, the “golden rule,” applied to commerce or interpersonal relationships?  Honesty? Honor? Civility?  Who are our heroes?

There is a recurring dream that I have that fills me with illogical terror. I return to the house that I lived in as a child and it is gone. How many times has it awakened me and filled me with sadness and fear?  Why?

I think this is one way my subconscious is telling me that I am losing touch with the things I valued that came from that childhood. How many others share that feeling?

It does seem that today there are few overriding values that guide behavior, that “whatever” is OK.

The most important value is like that house on 55th Street, the idea that a culture, a society has to have shared aspirational values, ideas that form the structure of human transactions, that guide behaviors. Without this, it becomes a group of tribal communities, guided by “me and mine” first.

I am reminded of a man who once told me that he resented the town offering swimming lessons to local children. “I made enough money to have a swimming pool for my children. If the parents want their children to learn to swim, they should earn enough money to do the same.”

This man went to church. Sad. But, too often today, you will hear the same sentiment, perhaps phrased differently, relating to another issue, but invariably, it reflects the idea that I and those I call mine come before you and yours.

Those cognoscenti who study these things point to the rapid technological advances that have left many on the sidelines, many without meaningful and sustainable employment who are looking for someone or something to hold accountable for the position in which they find themselves.  Laws that challenge basic belief systems confound, confuse and alarm. There is a powerlessness that generates suspicion, finger-pointing  and fertile ground for those who would separate us as a culture, as a nation.

When we look to government to help with solutions, we find that those values that should underlie the dialog, that should be a part of the governing process have also disappeared.  Instead of discerning what is best for the country, we see over and over, a set of behaviors that wouldn’t be accepted in middle school.

There is so much anxiety, so much dismay, even hatred today.  I am exhausted trying to align the values that I have absorbed about honesty, morality, kindness, civility, compassion and service with what I see on television, read about in the media, both electronic and paper, and yes, sometimes hear from otherwise good people…it wears at your soul.

So, why am I exhausted?  I subscribe to the idea that people get the kind of government they deserve. I want to know what I did to deserve this?