Hello from 37,000 feet. I’ve been up here many times over many years. It’s always the same. Ethereal, beautiful, empty. My home is down there somewhere, on the ground, with all the people who live there with me, but they are not up here (at least not out the window, thank goodness for them, since it is minus eighty degrees Fahrenheit out there).
From up here the misery in Gaza and Ukraine is invisible. So many things on earth can’t be seen from high above the clouds that nurture us with their life-giving rain as their part in the atmosphere that permits us to live.
I have had these thoughts many times. They are not exactly thoughts of the futility of human existence, or more particularly mine, but they return me always to the question so many of us ask ourselves. What are we dong here? Or, better put, what should we be doing here?
I have acted my part in the play of family and commerce. I have children I’m proud of. I’ve done things in my work I’m proud of, as well as some things that were disappointing, but none I am ashamed of.
I am not, however, helping the children of Gaza or Israel or Ukraine who are ripped asunder by war, or the millions of others who are as surely brutalized by abject poverty and cruelty, cruelty in some cases from the very family members and countrymen from whom they rightly expect kindness.
Over the years I’ve helped a few people who needed help, but not enough to feel I’ve made a difference in the overall balance of hope and despair. I vote for and support politicians who want to help others with medical care and unemployment benefits. I would likely vote for someone who said we should just give everyone enough money to get by, a guaranteed basic income, as it is referred to by some, or enervating socialism, as it called by others, often in the bloodthirsty tone we used to reserve for witches on their way to the bonfire.
I believe in democracy. I believe that government is the only viable vehicle to undertake the big projects of collecting taxes, building infrastructure and protecting its citizens, including by looking after the needs of the less fortunate among us. Government in America is not in a good place now to do it’s job.
Government cannot act (for long) without consensus among the governed about what action should be taken. Consensus of any kind has become hard to reach these days. Consensus almost always requires compromise, and our political leaders, both the ones who would be just as happy to see government shrivel up and die and the ones who want to usher in a modern New Deal, are not in a compromising mood. Both sides are sure they are right, and to some extent they both are. They’re just not completely right. Hence the need for compromise.
They have to see that for it to happen. Or things have to get so bad they are voted out. That’s usually the way it works, but gerrymandering and hard-ball election politics are likely thwarting the will of the majority, which means that “bad enough to get them voted” out probably has to be really terrible. And “really terrible” sometimes leads to worse, when people get so frustrated they start looking for a political messiah to lead them out of the wilderness.
Beyond giving to relief organizations, I can’t help the war-torn, poverty sickened children of the world. Beyond voting for and supporting political causes I believe in, and writing about them, I can’t aid our democracy.
As a practical matter, maybe what I’m doing is all I can do, but it does not feel like enough. I am not so vain as to believe that a heroic hurling of myself upon the barricades is going to make much of a difference.
That leaves me with two feelings. One, for reasons that are obvious to anyone who cares about people, is sadness. The other, for reasons that are equally obvious to anyone who has spent time tilting at windmills and come away with a broken lance and the windmill still spinning merrily, is detachment.
I admit, I like detachment, even though I know there is no real worth in it. I’m not doing any harm—indeed, I do a little good now and then—but I am not engaged in the way I would be if I were attacked in my home with my family, or if we were starving, or if we were reviled and bullied for our political or cultural views. In those personal circumstances, I would fight—to the death if necessary.
Indeed, some part of me wants to do that now, even though I know my death would be the certain and futile result. At least I would have gone down fighting. That I have not done so, in the face of all the misery around me, makes me feel like I have already died. Like I am not of this world.
