hopelesshappiness.com

It is official. Of course the truth is it began nearly 65 years ago when my personally primordial cord was cut. I suppose though it is not official until it is acknowledged. Uncle. My thousand-cut quest for quietus has begun.

Sure, as a younger man, from a distance, I nodded at death giving it all due respect but I was not on speaking terms until my first heart attack at age 50. And even then our daily, (sometimes weekly), conversations were centered around the fragility of life, not so much any sort of ultimatum. So at that time with that new understanding of vulnerability, I successfully fought back, losing 60 pounds and changing my exercise and diet regimen, and I have been hospital-free for the past eight years. But now in approximately this past year it has been harder to ignore the smaller cuts; knees, hands, eyes, tremors, shoulder, ears, skin, strength, agility, stamina. I am told that for my years I am actually in quite good shape. In theory this countdown should go on for years or even for two or three more decades, and that is my intention. Nonetheless, my conversations with the pale oppressor have taken a more somber, serious turn.

In one recent conversation, I asked how much of the gradual lessening of active contribution as one enters and navigates their senior years was due to actual limitations (i.e. his countdown) and how much was due to lower expectations (i.e. our natural tendency to regard older persons as debilitated). From his own observations, he agreed that there was injustice and (sadly) significant wasted experience but he could not (or would not) speak to how it should be. When I pushed asking if this was intentional, meant to acclimate one to the idea of a nevermore, or if it was just the nature of endings, he responded saying that the planning and strategy were above his pay grade; he was merely in place to execute. I continued, rather strongly suggesting that wealth and power took advantage of him to maintain their wealth and power. I further suggested that the rich and powerful, the decision- and rule-makers, the arbitrary, pretentious, superficial, controlling, unjust, gap-widening bosses are Death incarnate. Death was offended. He adamantly denied that he was a killer acting with intention and he staunchly defended his role as functionary, merely providing a requested service.

In another conversation I asked ‘His Highborn Sallowness’ why he was so feared. I mean, he describes himself as a functionary and from where I sit he is rather unassuming; quiet, not the best conversationalist, a little drab in appearance and demeanor but comes across as efficient and economical. He replied, “there really is nothing to be afraid of.” Which led me to the question, “are you saying there is nothing after this life?” his surprising answer: “I don’t know.” Come on, man! You would think Death would know what comes next. But he again insisted that as a conduit, the existence or not of an afterlife was above his pay grade. I grasped on to his mention of conduit making the point that conduit implied a passage; something on the other end. But according to him, in the performance of his task he is only allowed to see the passing from this life. When I asked if those who passed then somehow stayed with him, he said, “no, they pass.” So I asked again, “to where?” and he once again replied, “I don’t know.” And when I asked if he was even curious, he said, “it’s not my place.” It is hard getting a straight answer from Death. Though in probably his longest and most impassioned speech to date, speaking in the third-person, he then further explained. “Death is not other-worldly. Death is of this world, here, now, everywhere, always. Anyone can learn from Death, anytime. Commune with Death and ye shall be freer in Life.”

In another conversation I asked about his relationship with pain. He claimed it was not a relationship so much as a series of flings. Yes, they saw a lot of each other but only because they traveled in the same circles. According to Death, pain is far too busy and complicated and he couldn’t (and wouldn’t want to) keep up with her if he tried. What’s more, he pointed out that in every occasion in which they are both present, once he steps in, pain immediately exits to feast upon nearby loved ones. He also expressed disdain for pain’s short attention span. He said pain was easily bored and though time often gets the credit for healing wounds, it is in actuality the fact that pain loses interest and moves on.

Yesterday I asked Death if he had aspirations beyond his role as functionary. As much as Death can, he smiled, contemplatively. After a few moments he replied, “I would like to be a teacher.” I encouraged this thought expressing appreciation for what I have learned from our conversations. He countered saying that he felt his essential assigned task overshadowed any efforts he might make to connect with someone. Opposite of many aspiring teachers, Death is afraid people take him too seriously which he has found impedes any sort of mutually beneficial learning experience. Instead of wringing hands or quaking in fear or creating stories or using him for nefarious deeds, he would much prefer that people would see him just as he is – a part of life.

In an early conversation, at the end, I got up and instinctively reached out my hand in appreciation and respect then noticeably hesitated. He waved off my embarrassment saying it was not my time and in a moment of deathly exuberance reached out with a hearty handshake and a quick double-tap to my shoulder. I had made a friend. We stood there for a few moments (as friends do) making idle chitchat and he also explained that he came to those at the end in varying ways depending on their receptivity. For some, just a light touch in the center of the forehead, for most, a two-handed, face-to-face, arm’s length gripping of the shoulders, and on occasion a good shaking was necessary to help them let go. It was also in this conversation that we came to addressing each other on a first-name basis. Mort then told me that when it was my time, when he came for me, it would be in a big-old bear hug and he would hold on to me for as long as he could until I passed. Until then, we will remain lifelong friends.

According to a report this week, (September 9, 2024), from the Pew Research Center the top four voter issues, according to the percentage of registered voters who say the issue is very important to their vote, are as follows:

Trump supporters:

1. Economy 93%.
2. Immigration 82%.
3. Violent Crime 76%.
4. Foreign Policy 72%.

Harris supporters:

1. Health Care 76%.
2. Supreme Court Appointments 73%.
3. Economy 68%.
4. Abortion 67%.

In the survey there were ten issues presented. The three not cited above in order of importance to both factions combined are:

1. Gun Policy.
2. Racial and Ethnic Inequality.
3. Climate Change.

Interestingly Harris supporters average percentage of very important issues is 60.0% and as a group the majority includes 8 of the 10 issues as very important leaving only ‘violent crime’ (46%) and ‘immigration’ (39%) at less than 50% consensus but still of significant importance. Whereas Trump supporters average percentage of very important issues is 54.7% and as a group the majority includes 7 of the 10 issues as very important leaving ‘abortion’ (35%) as significant and leaving ‘racial and ethnic inequality’ (18%) and ‘climate change’ (11%) both as essentially inconsequential to Trump supporters. If for no other reason than this broader consideration of all the issues I believe this shows the greater depth of concern and consideration on the part of Harris supporters. In addition the average percentage of the top four issues for each group, (Trump supporters 80.75%, Harris supporters 71.0%), accurately reflects the hot-button, rhetorical nature of the republican party compared to the less emotional, more even-handed approach of the democrats. This is not to say the democrats have it all figured out as further reflected by their track record in recent decades of condescending pretense and the absence of any meaningful grassroots empathy or compassion. Which brings me to the question, why are both factions ignoring what is (in my mind) the much larger issue of income and wealth inequality? Strides toward narrowing this gap would most certainly also include progress on many of the named issues. Yet (I believe) as long as our leaders (both republican and democrat) are on the advantaged side of this gap, income and wealth inequality will remain the issue not to be named and we will continue to be distracted and misled so order (i.e. status quo) can be maintained.

There is one more issue also unnamed that would be on my list very close to income and wealth inequality; that is educational opportunity. In the conclusion of his 2023 book (Ours Was the Shining Future) Pulitzer prize-winning writer David Leonhardt addresses these two unnamed issues alongside some of the named issues, asking:

“How might the United States develop its own version of sectoral-level bargaining for workers? How can the federal government effectively tax not only top incomes but also the accumulated wealth that has created a modern aristocracy? How should the country build a pre-K and childcare system that can reduce childhood and gender inequities? How can the country reduce mass incarceration and police violence while also holding down crime levels? What would it take to create an immigration system that did not increase economic inequality? Why is medical care uniquely expensive in the United States? How can colleges and employers create a version of class-based affirmative action that is legally protected and more popular than the old race-based affirmative action but that also fosters racial diversity?” (page 390.)

He goes on to point out that most Americans (republican and democrat) are in favor of more progressive economic policy and reform but in that regard republicans today, (specifically Trump), are all talk and no action, but the rhetoric has enough bite to disguise their lack of effort. So as long as republicans are able to maintain the divisive fervor surrounding the social issues, the political right will continue to be a disruptive force and we will make no progress on economic issues. To overcome our mistakes of the past 50 years, Leonhardt espouses a new grassroots effort utilizing the story of freedom oppressed. He says:

“…today’s extreme inequality is hampering Americans’ freedom in ways large and small. Most children who grow up in poverty are not free to escape it, as Raj Chetty’s research has demonstrated. Many children are not free to achieve their potential because they attend inadequate schools. Workers are not free to earn wages that reflect their economic contributions. Consumers are not free to avoid surprise medical bills and sneaky mobile phone fees. Americans are not free to travel around the country as rapidly or easily as the citizens of other affluent countries move around theirs. Nor do we live as long as they do. In each of these cases, the main culprit is our highly unequal economy, in which corporations have grown larger, most workers have little power, and the wealthy can bequeath millions of dollars from one generation to the next with only light taxation.” (Pages 377-378.)

Today, we do not have leaders in this country, we have misleaders. In the epilogue of his 2023 book (Poverty, By America) Pulitzer prize-winning writer Matthew Desmond says,

“The majority of Americans believe the economy is benefitting the rich and harming the poor. The majority believe the rich aren’t paying their fair share in taxes. The majority support a $15 federal minimum wage. Why, then, aren't our elected officials representing the will of the people?” (Page 188.)

Indeed.

I think the whole idea of grace is to remind us that life is a gift.

Gift: “something bestowed or acquired without any particular effort by the recipient or without its being earned.”

From March 6, 2021:

• “Grace alone implies a complex design of predestination in which everyone is equally base and no one is deserving.”
• “Grace insists on a respectful, unpretentious, humble compassion for All.”
• “If Grace insists on a respectful, unpretentious, humble compassion for All, then a lack of Grace insists on an inconsiderate, pretentious, selfish disregard for all and everything beyond this moment.”

Capitalism lacks grace and (today more so than ever before) encourages me to take individual credit for this gift that is life and believe that it is not only earned but deserved, and believe that I am not only entitled but gifted. These impressions of course are erroneous but consistently thought they become entrenched and for most of us there is no turning back.

Yet to move forward we need to turn back not only to grace but also to civic and moral value.

From February 27 2021:

• “Political discussion in recent years has retreated from a substantial, meaningful debate on civic and moral virtue to an entrenched academic exercise calculating market values. Going as far back as Confucius and Plato and as recently as Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King Jr, moral and civic virtue was a consideration; part of the equation. What has happened in the past 40 years?”
• “It may be an oversimplification but I believe our recent decline is a result of our increasing capacity for learning that has enabled rapid technological progress and at the same time stymied our ability to think. We are so busy creating, we have left no time to consider potential outcomes or repercussions. We have grown smart faster than we have grown wise. So we have fallen back on this system of Market Value because it appeals to our current level of acuity and does not require the thoughtful, careful depth of consideration necessary for inclusion of Civic Value and/or Moral Value.”

I need to understand that regarding Humanity’s progress and survival, wealth and power is the equivalent of the kiddie pool. I need to understand that individually being better off materially does not make me the better person.

From January 16, 2021:

• “My natural state, (with no artificial encouragement), is discomfort. To be consistently comfortable I must be constantly comforted; and that comforting is not going to come frequently or fast enough from others, …therefore I must constantly soothe and reassure my self myself; in every moment. This leads me to the realization that constant comforting is more comforting if I am constantly improving or getting better; and in our capitalistic world what better way to be better than to be better off. Not only better off than others, but also (and perhaps more importantly) better off than I was a few years or months or even moments ago. And it does not matter that I am better off because (or in spite) of others being worse off. What matters is that I am comfortable because I am comforted by my wealth and/or power relative to those more deserving of less; those on the wrong side of a coin flip that I have conveniently misremembered.”

I need to understand that compassion, progress, survival is not comfortable.

From January 30, 2021:

• “Perhaps to reach optimal productivity from discomfort, we need to first establish world-wide-spread comfort. If we have a comforted / comfortable constituent base that feels secure in opportunities for education, peace and prosperity, then perhaps the burden of the necessary awareness from discomfort can be properly placed on the shoulders of more thoughtful worldwide and community leaders and experts, who are capable of mitigating existing and unforeseen threats to our long term survival. As long as we have a constituent base mired in discomfort and on the less preferable side of widening wealth and power gaps, we have an audience for populists, despots, tyrants, autocrats, oppressors, and fringe fear-mongering fascists spouting divisive rhetoric. And as long as we have that audience, we will have an us and we will have a them.”
• “We are in a difficult place. We must seek discomfort to become aware and to encourage change, but we must create comfort to discourage divisiveness so we may work together; or at least work on what is important. And we must narrow the gaps, yet we are still operating on a strong instinct to widen the gaps. It is a multi-level entanglement of contradiction and hardship.”

I need to see the last four to five decades for the cluster they have been.

From December 12, 2020:

• “As appalling and repulsive as it is to think, it truly appears that we are a nation of elitist bigots. Until we overcome this empathyless national infirmity, those who look different (minorities and immigrants), those who fall into circumstance created and perpetuated by rich white men (poor people, single moms and felons), those born into less opportunity than advertised, those who don't take advantage of the opportunity there is, and those who are on the overcrowded side of the ever-widening wealth gap, will continue to be victimized. The funny part here, (at least funny to the rich white men and the 9.9% born on third base), is that even though the potential victims constitute a large majority of all Americans, somewhere around one-half of this majority remain active, bona fide, card-carrying elitist bigots, and I would guess that at least half of the remaining half are (to varying degrees) closeted supporters.”
• “I will never understand why or how someone would or could prioritize their bank balance over the needs of a victim. Whether that victim could or could not have made a better decision at some point in the recent or distant past to alter their trajectory should make no difference; statistics show they will, regardless, land on a ladder rung very near to where they began, and be prohibited from climbing too far. So, if today they are a victim, (as are 90% of us in this country), why would we choose to withhold available wealth and rob them of their personal sense of significance? Why would we choose to turn our backs and allow them to question and doubt their self-worth? Why would I choose to believe that I am any more necessary than they are?”

Truthfully, America has never been great; but it has been better, more thoughtful, considerate, concerned.

• Grace.
• Civic Value.
• Moral value.

With effort, perhaps America can be better again.

Affluent comfort is security; freedom from care, anxiety, or doubt.

Compassion requires effort.

Effort, done properly, creates discomfort.

Thus affluent comfort rejects-refuses-repels compassion.

Affluent comfort is the realm of those with wealth and power.

Though a large majority of us do not live in the realm of wealth and power, a majority of us have been initiated into its hopeful pretense, and as initiates a majority of us have come to be comfortable within our servitude.

Thus our proximal comfort also rejects-refuses-repels compassion.

In our culture, comfort, affluent or proximal, has become the driving force for the majority.

The force of comfort, (an interesting juxtaposition), has always been a driver but the difference in recent decades is that technology makes attainment easier, so less effort is expended on improvement and progress. Less effort equates to more comfort and that in turn negatively impacts our ability to discover, to understand, to care.

To care, to want to right wrongs, to fight for Good, one must be rationally, actively angry and in turn one must listen for and learn from others’ rational anger.

Anger, justified or not, creates discomfort.

Compassion requires anger.

Anger comes from truthfulness.

Truthfulness requires effort.

Truthfulness creates discomfort.

It is a dilemma:

• I am not allowed to be truthful.
• I am not allowed to be angry.
• I am only allowed to work hard for myself or for the comfort of others.
• I am only allowed to be compassionate quietly, within my reach; and my reach is limited.

To choose compassion (even only within my individual realm) I must embrace truthfulness, anger, and effort, and I must consciously, consistently reject comfort.

Broken: reduced to fragments; fragmented; ruptured; torn; fractured; not functioning properly; out of working order.

We as a nation are broken. Yet we remain tied, bound, gagged to a system that is safely entrenched in practice, ritual, convention. And I understand that for those with power it is more comfortable to choose our moment over the care and consideration of future generations. And I understand why many of us with little or no power also choose to be safe within what we know rather than risk relatively comfortable moments for the untested turmoil that would be required to work for the future. Promising decisions are hard. Routine decisions are easy. To be safe is to abandon Justice, both today and for future generations.

Hard decisions are necessary in the face of injustice. Yet (by dressing up routine as promising and presenting status quo as progress) our system in this country has evolved to convince the oppressed that injustice is just; that they are better off in their shattered fragment than they would be seeking Justice for other fragments even if theirs would also benefit from that search. Our system in this country has taught us zero-sum thinking – that first and foremost it is about me, my comfort, my pretense, and secondarily it is about my fragment because opposing fragments are out to get what’s mine and there’s no such thing as mutual beneficence.

So to seek Justice, to attach urgency to actual hard decisions, I must do the following:

• Admit that it does not have to be a zero-sum game.
• Consciously realize that there is no such thing as a good decision.
• Begin to recognize myself as pretense.
• Risk comfort for untested promise.
• Risk the moment for tomorrow.

We are not functioning properly. We are not functioning according to Beauty, Truth, Wisdom, Justice. We have warped Form, Function, Discipline, Indulgence and elevated bureaucracy, convention, certainty, division.

We are broken.