I sincerely hope all my readership had a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year. I’m willing to bet most of you went down to the local grocery, and found a store full of food for the meal you shared with friends and families. I’ll bet that you found that kitchen gadget at the home furnishings store, or some silly stocking stuffer at one of the novelty outlets in town.
For those with more exotic tastes, I’m absolutely sure that the big brown truck brought you whatever you were looking for from Amazon or another online outlet. Is that consumerism? Yes. Is it totally bad? Give me a break. We live in the times we live in. I’m exhausted with the endless flagellation about our circumstances.
None of this is the sign of a broken society. But increasingly, as the pandemic is forced to drag on, especially in blue states, we get to hear most stridently from broken people who assert that our society is indeed broken. They do so from the comfort of their own homes – the ersatz “pajama class.” And I’ve had enough of them.
Though the current batch that have surfaced are mostly on the left. But make no mistake — they’re on the right as well. The spotlight goes back and forth, dependent largely on the vagaries of the news media. And if there’s anything in our system that is actually broken, it is the national news media. I am a voracious consumer of information. And I’ve gotten to the point where I believe almost nothing from outlets like the New York Times, or CNN. Or Fox News. This is tragic, because we need healthy information channels to keep our society from becoming broken.
But we’re going to have to do a better job of dealing with the Brokens that want to run the show. Those fall into two categories. The first are the traumatized. Something in their life has caused them to view everything through a fear lens, and we would do well as a society to understand trauma, in all its forms, and work to heal their pain.
The second, though, are going to have to be turned out of power. These are the relational disruptors. They’re the ones telling you that it’s righteous to turn the unvaccinated out of their jobs, and out of Christmas celebrations. They’re the ones storming the Capitol.
You can tell them easily from their advice. If you followed what they said, would you be closer to your neighbor, or not? Would your family gather for the holidays, or not? Would your children thrive under their advice, or not? Would they be eating alone outside for holiday dinner, or not? Would you willingly approach someone different from you without preconceptions, or not? Do they tell you to trust your own judgment, or constantly defer to your “betters”?
I have little hope of fixing that segment of The Brokens. The current crop are spoiled, and enjoy broadcasting their fears while having others wait on them. But we are going to have to throw every last one of their representatives out of office in the next election, or they will break our children, and our future. Whether they are conscious that is their goal or not makes no difference.
We still have enormous problems in our society. The wealth gap continues to grow. Our educational system needs dramatic reform. We have a profound health crisis, ongoing, (and it’s not COVID) in metabolic syndrome and its primary symptom, obesity, especially in our children. We will have to be both vigilant and creative in dealing with issues of race and ethnicity. I remain concerned about environmental issues.
But broken? Far from it. Unless we let the Brokens continue to dominate our lives. Then, when the groceries are empty of food, we’ll find out what it really means to live in a broken society.
We’ve got our work cut out for us.
Pezeshki is a professor in mechanical andmaterials engineering at Washington State University.
