Rediscovering hope

Sam Smith - During times like these it is easy to lose hope. In fact, there have been few moments in  our history as bad as those we are in right now and few in which we have felt so weak in our ability to change things for the better.

Part of the problem is that there seems no way we can challenge the Mafia style leadership on the right. But one of the reasons we reach this conclusion is that we have come to accept the idea that morality and decency can’t challenge thug-like tactics that have created so much power for so few.

History gives us a few alternatives. For example, consider the progress that blacks and women have made over past decades. The civil rights movement did not have tanks and troops. It had a visible soul backed by large numbers that even the most racist could not destroy. And if you just look at the political polls these days, it suggests that roughly half of Americans want something far more decent than Trump would have for us.

The Trump world was created in no small part by moving power away from the numerous small communities of America and creating domination by huge institutions controlled by a small number of humans.

Long moving in this direction has been our economy but in more recent decades it has been joined by forces such as Internet programs and national media modelled, like the economy, to reflect power rather than humanity.

Meanwhile, unnoted by the powerful and thus typically unheard by ordinary citizen, the institutions and systems that used to serve human interests primarily are declining in power and in their own ability to survive.

Here are just a few examples of where ground has been lost:

·     Local media

·    Churches

·      Community groups

·      Teaching civics in schools

·      Boy and Girl Scouts

And hardly a word is said in the media about cooperatives – the economic system most friendly to ordinary citizens.

In short, we have created a society that increasingly serves the powerful few and thinks of humans as only customers or tools rather than citizens. 

As noted here before, there is no other species where so few control the lives of so many. Nor does our history remind us that there once was a time when a human only interchanged with a few hundred others at most. In fact, you don’t need to go back more than a century to find a time when humans were lived in what we now  think of antiquated communities i.e. ones in which one’s views were mainly affected by real people and not by systems such as the Internet, advertising and other forms of propaganda.

I have lived with this conundrum my whole adult life but have been blessed by having chosen human communities in which to live and participate even when writing and interviewing about national affairs. I even lived a half dozen blocks from the US Capitol in a neighborhood that didn’t need any outsiders to define itself. And now I’m in a small town in Maine where morality and decency are still honored and in which someone as perverted as Donald Trump would get little respect regardless of one’s party, and, in fact, got only 27% of the vote in my town when running for reelection.

When I review my own life, I can think of few people from the corporate, hyper-institutional or major political worlds who had anywhere close to the influence on me as people who rose and led in real communities, people that include a farmer who taught me how to drive a six wheel truck when I was 13, three English teachers in my high school who showed me how to write, and two Texas liberals who were my first bosses starting in radio news. I value those times far more than dealing with those whose only asset was power, which more than a few misused.  

Can we bring humanity and community back into our lives or are we forever trapped in the world we find on TV and the Internet and soon to be absorbed by artificial Intelligence?

I think we can if we rediscover what it really means to be human and exist well with other humans. We need to put humanness above power and prominence and find more ways to express it.

A few possibilities:

·      Create a non-theological alternative to the decline in churches, such as weekly gatherings of neighbors to hear talks, and engage in conversations, about non-political issues facing the community.

·      Redesign school curricula to help students understand such values as morality, community, cooperation, decency, civics and mediation.

·      Start online community news sites to make citizens better informed and present non-political issues of significance.

Is the task too difficult? We won’t know until we no longer only complain about what is happening now but build an alternative that folks can admire.