hopelesshappiness.com

Once upon a time there was an era in which knowledge was increasing at such a rapid rate that the average citizen could not keep up. And in this era there was a learned man who, in an effort to explain the circumstance, pointed at the recent proliferation and seeming necessity of knowledge outlines and summaries from which the average literate citizen could better connect with deeper thought. This thinker / writer observed that “human knowledge had become unmanageably vast.” And he further described this diabolical challenge saying,

“The gap between life and knowledge grew wider and wider; those who governed could not understand those who thought, and those who wanted to know could not understand those who knew. In the midst of unprecedented learning, popular ignorance flourished and chose its exemplars to rule the great cities of the world; in the midst of sciences endowed and enthroned as never before, new religions were born every day and old superstitions recaptured the ground they had lost. The common man found himself forced to choose between a scientific priesthood mumbling unintelligible pessimism and a theological priesthood mumbling incredible hopes.”

Now this man could be describing Google and Wikipedia and our belief today that we are all experts and have no need for bona-fide authentic experts or deeper thinking. And this man could be describing our government and our rulers and our superstitions and our feeble, uninformed hopes. But this man did not write these words yesterday, nor even ten years ago. This man who was called Will Durant spewed this wisdom in a far-flung era more than 80 years ago. These words are from the preface to his 1943 edition of “The Story of Philosophy” and I interpret his remarks (as he meant them for his contemporaries) as an encouragement for the average, literate citizen to attain a base knowledge by using the aforementioned outlines and summaries of knowledge and to thoughtfully connect with and listen to expertise to make better, more well-informed decisions. And though this interpretation, (as the moral of a good story often does), also applies to our time and place, in addition Mr. Durant could be describing our increasing ignorance today as an entrenchment and he could be foreseeing our certainty as a threat to our survival as a species.

We could go on to suggest further prescience by recognizing that this gap he describes between life and knowledge has spawned other gaps that also continue to grow wider and wider: the wealth gap – the income gap – the opportunity gap – the health and well-being gap – the gender-pay gap - the housing gap – the education gap – the healthcare gap – the childcare gap – and then there is the exponential impact of the perpetuation of any one of these gaps on all the other gaps.

In this story, our story, there are good guys with faults and there are bad guys with redeeming qualities, and there are complications and hurdles and challenges, and there is hope and love and sadness and anger and oppression and liberation and imagination and hostility and division and ignorance and expertise. In this story, our story, the average, literate citizen, (as suggested by Mr. Durant), must rise up and rebel against those rulers of our great cities who are wealthy and powerful and comfortable and who think they know; and the average, literate citizen must take heroic action and reach out and work hard to listen and to learn and to understand and to connect. And for this story, our story to end happily ever after, the average, literate citizen must then rise up and rebel against convention and tradition and bureaucracy and certainty.

Certainty is a solid presence, overwhelming, stifling. Privation, hardship, imposed or chosen, is unnecessary, gratuitous, indefensible. Doubt is possibility and potential, leaving room for imagination. To embrace certainty is to defy one’s impermanence. To embrace asceticism is to defy possibility. To balance presence and absence is to invite beauty, profundity, mystery.

I understand before I even start that this is almost assuredly an exercise in futility – but I just – can’t – help – myself.

I can no longer hide it. And I can no longer hide from it. No matter how much it hurts, most times now I just lean into it, welcome it, embrace it. It is better to recognize it for what it is – a betrayal – than it is to hide its truth behind a mythical American Dream. It is better to look ahead at its trajectory, than to try and hide myself behind privilege that may or may not exist.

To unnecessarily act in one’s self-interest knowing it is at the expense of another is a trespass against all of humanity. Not that we act as if we care.

It does not have to be a zero-sum game, but because it often is, because that is what we have been taught, it is of course the wealthy and powerful consistently and constantly taking from those less-privileged. Must we first somehow reverse the flow of this zero-sum game so each of us can see it from all sides, before we can quit it entirely?

Below is an example close to home.

My employer is a large state university. I am employed in the medical school in a student support position. According to public records released in January, this past Fall I received a 3% pay increase. The dean of the medical school received a 4% increase. One might look and think that the increases are comparable, but if I would have received the dean’s dollars, my increase would have been 75.6%. The dean went from making 18.9 times more than me to making 19.1 times more, which again sounds close but again if I would have received the dean’s dollars (and he in turn mine) the dean would have went from making 18.9 times more than me to making 10.8 times more than me. The issue of course is the growing income gap. To entertain the thought that the dean is 19 times more deserving or more capable or more entitled than I am would require a different conversation; a conversation about available opportunities and available to whom and who makes the rules and bias and bureaucracy and convention and certainty and division. That is not this conversation.

Another way of seeing this conversation is that as said, instead of 3% I would have received 75% and on the other side, instead of 4% the dean would have received 0.15%. I suspect that the dean of the medical school would have been insulted by an offer of 0.15% yet I am expected to attach a different meaning to the same dollars. This example is one-to-one. More relevantly, looking at all pay for more than 23,000 employees in this same frame, if we would have reversed the dollar flow between the top 10% and the bottom 10%, instead of 6.65 times more, the gap would have narrowed significantly to where the top 10% would be making 4.1 times more than the bottom 10%. It is likely not necessary for one’s well-being (in the case of the dean) to pull in $910,000 instead of $875,000, nor is it likely a matter of life and death if the top 10% averaged $209,406.13 or $193,681.12. However, the difference (in the case of the bottom 10%) between $31,524.85 and $47,265.65 could hugely impact an individual’s or household’s well-being. It is worth repeating: a 59% increase for the bottom 10% would change lives. But instead of taking care of each other, the wealth gap widens, and the inequality is further entrenched, and the zero-sum game plays on with no dollar-flow-reversals and no rule changes. It is a trespass against humanity and (apparently) humanity should be grateful.

If we applied this thought exercise reversing the dollar flow between each pair of mirrored deciles, here is what would happen:

• For tier 1 (top and bottom 10%) instead of respective averages of $209,406.13 and $31,524.85 and the more affluent sector making 6.65 times as much, the respective averages would be $193,681.12 and $47,256.65 and the upper half would be making 4.10 times as much.
• For tier 2 (11-20% and 81-90%) instead of respective averages of $105,754.16 and $38,592.13 and the more affluent sector making 2.74 times as much, the respective averages would be $99,741.30 and $44,604.99 and the upper half would be making 2.24 times as much.
• For tier 3 (21-30% and 71-80%) instead of respective averages of $84,679.51 and $44,395.10 and the more affluent sector making 1.91 times as much, the respective averages would be $80,749.08 and $48,327.23 and the upper half would be making 1.67 times as much.
• For tier 4 (31-40% and 61-70%) instead of respective averages of $72,129.23 and $51,702.56 and the more affluent sector making 1.39 times as much, the respective averages would be $70,291.70 and $53,539.29 and the upper half would be making 1.31 times as much.
• For tier 5 (41-50% and 51-60%) instead of respective averages of $64,445.48 and $58,268.89 and the more affluent sector making 1.11 times as much, the respective averages would be $63,698.53 and $59,015.84 and the upper half would be making 1.08 times as much.

Equity! What a concept!

And if you’re paying attention, you will have noticed that this dollar flow reversal has allowed the bottom 10% to (barely) leapfrog the second decile from the bottom thus (in a sense) eliminating the bottom 10%. Wouldn’t that be something? And yes, there will be some in that second decile from the bottom who would want to complain about their paltry 20% increase compared to the 60% captured by the former bottom 10%. But they only need be reminded of two things: 1) that this process will work more in their favor next year when they are in the bottom 10%, and more importantly 2) To unnecessarily act in one’s self-interest knowing it is at the expense of another is a trespass against all of humanity.

Not that we act as if we care.

It is upside-down and distorted, yet gives an impression of depth and dimension.

It is a lie bought and sold again and again and again, increasing in cost with each successive sale yet paradoxically, proportionately decreasing in value.

At its best it is magical, alluring, captivating – a siren's song.

At its worst it is disturbing, ominous, sinister – a malevolent propriety.

It is a comfortable excuse; it appeals to my sense of order and it makes me feel less ignorant, yet it leads me astray.

It is an enterprising depiction of what is (simultaneously) there and not there; an invention, an illusion, a myth.

It is full of light and dark and hope and trust and imagination and danger and vulnerability.

It is an urgency incidental to itself, and a warning humbled and hesitant. We have chosen to follow the urgency; the warning goes unheeded.

It is a house of cards built inside a cast iron vault.

It is (only a little) closer to reality at 90 degrees and then (a bit more) at 180 degrees.

When you look beneath it – there is nothing there.

When you reach underneath – it slips through your fingers, cold and wet; unctuous, unfathomable.

It is a tool used to substantiate,  justify and maintain.

It is a covering, a garment used to conceal, amuse and distract – one size fits all.

It facilitates, expedites, promotes, simplifies, enables.

It is absurdity masquerading as wisdom. It is impulse pretending virtue. It is artifice playacting sincerity. It is death posing as potential.

It is a mirrored membrane reflecting a misremembered past as present as future.

It is an imperious suggestion of misinformed righteousness.

It is a preference for answers over questions, constraint over consideration, presumption over doubt, loud over obvious.

It is decisive, judgmental, unflinching, unforgiving.

It is a landscape, a pointillist perspective, a watercolor, a canvas stretched, a kaleidoscopic diffusion of promiscuous observation.

It is blissful reconciliation.

I came across this suggestion in the book “Blood Memory” written by Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns: “We're supposed to make decisions that go seven generations beyond...” -Marcia Pablo, Native American.

I came across this statement in the work of fiction “The Son” written by Phillip Meyer: “…it was all pointless, we might as well have never crawled from the swamps, we were no more able to understand our own ignorance than a fish, staring up from a pool, can fathom its own.”

I said the following last week: “How do you tell someone who makes more money than you, is more powerful than you, and who believes they are smarter than you, that they are stupid; or even just ignorant.”

They don’t want to hear it; any of it. It is obvious that “they” are Wealth and Power. It is less obvious that “they” also includes comfort, and that compliance is often confused with comfort, and I think we do this purposely to justify our inaction and to feel better about our collective lack of progress. My momentary, confused comfort is not going to help my great-great-great-great-great grandchildren. And because I am not wealthy, it is unlikely I will even be of much help to my grandchildren. And if the objective is really seven generations beyond, it is also unlikely that the wealthy will be of much help to their direct descendants seven generations beyond, much less mine. And the goal is not (should not be) limited to direct descendants, but should convey to all future generations. Yet for our momentary, confused purposes, we are wealthy, we are powerful, we are comfortable, we are compliant.

We could choose to live creatively, through the eyes of an artist; but instead we choose to live unflinchingly, through the eyes of a banker.

In the 2018 film “At Eternity’s Gate” Willem DaFoe as Vincent van Gogh said, “…a grain of madness is the best of art.”