On the one hand, of course, if bad things are going on, we do need to know about it, and in measured doses, we also need to get a visceral sense of the tragedy; whereupon some photo, and video journalism, though heart renderingly stark in the physical reality of the tragedy in question, are needed so that both the rational mind, and the other half beyond rational, get the full, "this we cannot abide" message. And on the other hand the always possible falling to excess.
The tension between competing concerns here gets more complicated, obviously, when you honestly feel that you have discovered connections that lead you to believe these tragic events are related to the problem for which your advocacy is concerned.
One of the things I do now, especially when it involves children, is to take time, in my pause before writing anything, to imagine what it must be like now to be a kid. Now that they are thrown into life these days in the predominant environment of unstable everything.
Because of that instability, how much of anything can be counted on now in a kid's life, and I mean for the majority of kids.
The really interesting thing here is that fate conspired, decades ago, to make sure that me, and my family, would be really early adopters of "not being able to count on much" as a growing up life style. To this day I don't know much of anything about my mother's parents other than her mother gave them up for adoption, leaving her, and her sisters, to live most of their lives in orphanages. And my father's family was almost completely destroyed by the Great Depression, putting his father in a bottle for decades, and his mother in charge of surviving. As such both my mother and father were two dysfunctional time bombs waiting to meet and create the inevitably dysfunctional family of Donald W., and Gloria, Vale
I mention all of this as prelude because I want to emphasize the fact that I have ample background, as well as a huge imagination, with which to proceed with here.
I hasten to add, however, that it is also, obviously, not just about the lack of stability. And that, also, was predicted early on by none other than John Goodman, and his book "Growing Up Absurd." A book that looked at the question of that day (why are young men resisting the normal socialization process of fitting into the new, post world war two, industrial economy of prosperity), by suggesting that the fault was not in worrying over how this fitting in process should be conducted, but rather to ask if there might be something fundamentally wrong with the life path this "fitting in" would require in the first place; noting along the way that there might, in fact be problems; assuming, of course, that your goal is a well adjusted, self motivated, individual who has been filled both with a broad sense of possibilities, as well as a confidence on their hold of knowledge, tools, and delayed gratification, so as to go forth and try to accomplish some things.
Because the economy was building back up so well at the time, certainly, Mr. Goodman's misgivings were not paid a huge amount of attention to. And there was still, because of that growth, a lot of wiggle room for creative people to grow up and still be creative people.
But now that technology has changed things so much. Now that global competition has become so intense, and speeded up. Now that production has reached such dizzying heights that the encouragement of consumption must be redoubled seemingly every quarter. Things are quite different.
And then there are all of the true costs of things we've been sold on for decades now that we didn't pay for when we purchased a product. All of the life cycle costs, as well as the corners cut up front during the completion of whatever process made the product. All of the things that have made for such a happy planet of late. And because of that, as well as the secondary competitions for dwindling resources, instability goes hand in hand with the building disparities of those who have, and those who do not; disparities that the fundamental principle of scarcity, that supports Capitalism, only severs to exacerbate.
And all of these increased discrepancies are in our faces. Just as the all of the possible abhorrent aspects of every other group of people around the world are now in our faces. Just as the increasing acts of rage thus engendered are in our faces. Just as the increasing acts of, seemingly pointless, self destruction are in our faces. Only there, in that situation, there is in fact a point, which is that these indirect, or direct, suicides are telling us that the people involved simply don't see the point in living anymore. Which is an expression of no meaning in one's life that should be like a lightening strike for a wake up call; a wake up call, at least, for those of us who still care about the heart and soul of a society.
So I ask you. Try to imagine being a kid now. Try to imagine especially being a young girl now. The probabilities are that there will be little parental stability, with either separation being involved as a part of relationship breakup, and/or a de facto separation by fact of underlying economic necessity; be that necessity the requirement of multiple jobs to make ends meet, or that the work itself is so professionly demanding. hardly matters; if you are unable to be there to provide important interactions with a child, the child will try to fill the void as haphazardly, and inappropriately, as you would expect of individuals whose brains aren't fully formed yet.
And then how do we keep them from swimming in the vast ocean now of total, multidimensional, message, that is the info sphere. That ocean where commodity sharks create currents of attraction that can plug one into channels of message whose only sense of inhibition is to do nothing to benefit the receiver.
Try to imagine being that little girl swimming in that ocean. Try to imagine keeping a good sense then of what a girl is, let alone what healthy body image is. Try to imagine how you would go about finding something of meaning that you could hang your behavioral hat on. Something that didn't involve selling yourself, in an almost infinite numbers of ways, that didn't make it all so confusing as to what gender was for in the first place, other than, perhaps only as means to power, and self gratification. And please don't hesitate to do the same imagining exercise for little boys as well.
Try to imagine that now and see if young suicides don't take on a disturbing connection to the way things are now. Other things are involved as well, certainly, but the way things are has to be quite prominent among them. That is my honest opinion.
What do you think?
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