There is an epidemic of loneliness and isolation among the elderly. There is an epidemic of depression among the teenagers and adolescents, even suicide. There’s an epidemic of homelessness - people who can’t afford a place to live or aren’t mentally stable enough to participate in a society based on money and middle class values. And wow, yeah, these days we have an epidemic of bold face lying by the ‘leaders’ of the country and abject submissive believing of those lies by the citizens of the country. I mean serious deception and cognitive dysfunction on a . . . well on an epidemic level. War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. George Orwell wrote a famous book about that called ‘1984’ and we’re way beyond 1984.

Of course to these you could also add war, famine and pestilence, but they’re so common, barely worth mentioning.

So let’s take these cheery topics one by one.

Recent statistics reveal that a third of older adults deal with loneliness and isolation. That’s alot of people. There are 65 million baby boomers (born between 1946-1964) so that would be over 20 million just among the baby boomers.

This kind of stress can lead to dementia, heart disease, stroke and other diseases eventually resulting in premature death. Lovely.

We discard our elders in this country by shipping them off to the old folks home where they are medicated and relieved of all their financial resources until they die. No time, no room, no appreciation from the kids. They’re busy making money.

This one I really didn’t know about until I learned it from a friend. I knew their daughter since she was a little kid. We had a friendship. She would play at my house. When she went thru adolescence (middle school) she ended up on anti-depressants. Later she had issues with suicide. What!? I couldn’t believe it. What happened to that innocent, beautiful, happy little kid?

Suicide is the leading cause of death for kids 10-19. Forty per cent of high school students report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, 20% have seriously considered suicide and 9% have attempted it. There’s something wrong with this picture.

Visit any major city’s downtown area and you will see the homeless camped out. Attempts have been made for years, decades, to address it. Money has been thrown at it, facilities built, programs initiated, conferences convened - nothing seems to work. The problem persists.

The statistics for 2024 are 771,480 people sleeping under bridges and on cardboard in door stoops, an increase of 32% since 2022. The problem is getting worse not better. In the city where I live, San Antonio, they put the number at 3,398 living on the street.

I interact with some of them on my bike rides and honestly many of them seem content, living in their tents by the creek, with their own community, but many are miserable and vulnerable. With no kitchen and no bathroom imagine what their daily life is like. And no bedroom. Well a makeshift bedroom.

Hey people used to live like this thousands of years ago. Do you know that? Living in a teepee or a hut or a cave or a tiny house of mud and wattle. But they had a system and a tradition and they found a way to survive in relative comfort. They weren’t illegal. They didn’t have their camps busted up and then driven off by the officials, but these days it’s disreputable. Unlike India where you can live in the street as a sadhu and be respected. Sit around all day and meditate on God. Give the tourists a blessing and a tilak for a few rupees.

And so whatever are we going to do with all these epidemics? Reclaim our humanity and our tribal heritage - that’s what. And that’s why I chose this music. It’s vibrant but also seriously intense. C’mon people, this is our tribe. Don’t forget your tribe. All the humans are your tribe. Your neighbors are your tribe. Your church, your school, your friends and whatever association you’re in is your tribe. It’s not like we don’t have the communications technologies. We don’t have to send smoke signals. No, we can walk over to our neighbor’s house and say hi. Bring them a plate of cookies.

I had a friend from West Africa. He told me the story once of his father coming to visit and at the end of his visit he asked him, so what did you think of America? I didn’t like it he responded, you don’t even know who lives next door to you. So true.

Hey we have zoom and video phone calls and email and fricking internet connections out the wazoo. Use them. Make contact. Not with emojis and two word blips but with real feeling and care and hopefulness.

Maybe some people are cool with this. They have actual families, functional families and they stay in touch and they use the technologies but I don’t see much of that. I see individuals living their individual lives because they don’t need a tribe to survive - we’re not hunter gatherers after all. We’re modern people but we still need to find our common language and connect.

The natural world is the common language of humanity (as it is for all species). This is our home and this is where we can gather wisdom and comfort. Walk outside and look at a tree, glance at the sky, feel the breeze on your skin. You have just transformed yourself, become primal, connected to the earth and the air and the whole web of life.

We are not hunters and gatherers, not in the historic sense, but our ancestors were for 300,000 years. We have only been ‘modern’ people for 6 or 8 thousand years. Something we don’t think about but it influences every aspect of our lives. You can’t just discard that much physical and psychological conditioning by reading a book or watching TV. We need each other in a tribal sense because that’s who we are - tribal members.

Oh yeah social media, I almost forgot. Endless scrolling and addictive miniature movies of cats and babies and ridiculous AI fake images of trucks and tractors rolling around and emojis and messages from people you’ve never heard of acting out on some issue or other and telling you all about everything you don’t even want to know. Now they have found out that not only is social media addictive but it affects the mental health and well being of kids. All this to make a dollar or more accurately a billion dollars. Money is the most addictive drug there is but we call it business and not only is it not illegal it’s got its own laws to protect it. Cleanliness is next to godliness but being rich is even closer. It’s the unwritten subconscious principle of our society.

Good grief.

Ok. I’m done. Just had to express this. It weighs on me. When I see how unnatural we have become and how much damage it has done, I despair. We are really fucked up. We need to come home to where are real home is. That would be love and compassion, that would be caring for our earth and letting the earth care for us. That would be communicating in the common language. Not a spoken word language, not politics, not the language of money but the common language that we all know and need - the language of being human.

And what is human? You are. Ask yourself and listen for the answer.

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