Red-headed robins, challenged by the weather, and Oklahoma mythology, including serial killers, mass murders, and werewolves. Imaginative subversion of the terrain. Students are not co-teaching. Two-headed chickens. A homeless freestyle rapper named Big Weiner.
And from the notes of Kris Saknussemm:
-Rapper 50 Cent, age 48 and trying desperately to look like a cartoon version of someone my students’ age, says to his 12 million X followers, “It’s almost over,” as in Humanity. This while he’s embroiled in collateral flak from the federal investigations of Puff Diddy for sex trafficking, rape, domestic abuse, drugs, guns—the usual. And where did all the playground-sounding names come from? Puff Diddy. Charlemagne Tha God. Megan Thee Stallion. Strange mix of adolescence (if not childishness) and sexual perversion.
-Sawfish. Improbable creatures that look like they were designed for sheer novelty. They’re somehow going crazy and committing communal suicide in the shallow waters of Florida’s beaches. Perhaps a strangely apt metaphor.
-Weirdly echoed by parents (particularly white parents) in epidemic numbers seeking professionally certified diagnoses of their kids as being autistic, ADHD, clinically depressed, or neurodivergent. Why? In order to secure more time on tests like the SATs and ACTs.
-Meanwhile, Harvard, the jewel brand in the Ivy League (and the pressurized Holy Grail of the test taking frenzy) sees the first drop in applications ever. Antisemitism and plagiarism scandals are credited as causes in the decline. The Harvard Corporation (note that term) has also come under legal fire for DEI discrimination against Asians, artificially promoting underqualified African American applicants—while it’s been revealed that a disturbing percentage of white admissions are solely legacy based—children of alumni, faculty, and staff, who are in the main unable to compete outside the nepotism advantage.
-On a broader, global scale, scientific experts from many fields debate the concept of the Anthropocene as umbrella label for the current era / epoch. But what no one ignores is that the Human Impact in question is viewed as entirely destructive. And on perhaps the principle of compounding interest, a great deal of the “damage” has occurred since the mid-20thcentury, which mirrors the rise of Environmentalism and green ideologies. Say one thing, do another.
This inventory of Dysfunction could go on and on. We know. But like many curious and concerned thinking people today, you and I have talked about the Dysfunction often in terms of mass psychosis. A spiritual, psychological vortex-disease on the Cultural scale. I now wonder if the truth isn’t conceptually much simpler.
Let’s take our sawfish death spiral despair as the emblematic end result of the ambient, atmospheric Dysfunction. If 50 Cent says world doom is at hand, what hope do sawfish have? Talk about a marginalized community. But what links these other crises (and so many more)?
I’m coming around to viewing the “problem” as a fundamental collapse / erosion of Morality. Morale. Moral. How often do we connect those two notions? Are our problems today really all that complicated? Don’t they in fact amount to people knowing what the right thing to do is and not doing it? Each of the above examples from recent news is about a failure of moral conscience and basic decency. Perversion arises from selfishness.
We can break down or address each of these issues (selected from far too many others) in almost child-level moral terms. Many people (particularly NPR followers) now embody a genuine hatred of Humanity for our environmental destruction. Does this mean they’re trying to live and consume more sensibly and sensitively? Nope. For the most part, they just complain about what governments and corporations are doing or not, while they go on consuming like it’s 1999 or 1979.
Ivy League schools, and now so many downstream schools, companies, and government departments know that DEI policies are inherently unfair, divisive, and illogical. Racism in the name of combatting racism? Victimology in the supposed service of reducing victimization? Doesn’t work. Can’t work. At the same time, admitting mediocre white candidates because of legacy loyalty is actually an advertisement of total failure in the institution’s nurture of academic and intellectual excellence. How is it that legacy applicants are mediocre if Harvard is such an incubator of brilliance and achievement? All of this is just disingenuous maneuvering for personal, political, and identity politics gain. It's in the realm of lying and cheating—basic morality. Nothing complex or clever about it.
Same with parents (especially parents of underachieving white children) pleading to psychologists to designate their kids as Special Needs. Work the System, milk the System. Everybody else is.
Could it be that our core problem at this point in history isn’t nearly as interesting as technological mass delusion or a giant masquerade festival of psychosis? What if it’s just moral sloth, devious self-interest, and everyday spinelessness?
What if, as a Cultural community, we said, “Man up and try to be the best, humble, heroic leader in your house and in your neighborhood that you can be. There’s honor in that. And you’ll live longer.” Black millionaire and billionaire celebrities aren’t doing black people at large any good. More black teachers, social workers, professionals, skilled tradespeople, and small business operators would.
What if we eliminated all legacy advantage across the board? Radical individual meritocracy, as in sports?
What if our activism regarding complaints and protest against corporations and governments turned to activism in our own habits and purchasing behaviors?
What if we could tell the truth to each other? A good example might be: yes, there are key levels of society where females need to be encouraged and “empowered,” but there are also many levels where they wield far too much power.
We need to bring back Morality and Ethics as essential…completely transcendent of any Right / Conservative frame, or Leftist rebellion. Hypnosis and Hysteria are more exciting than Hypocrisy—but mundane Hamburger Helper level hypocrisy is creating an Hypocracy.
No, it’s not nearly as cool a calamity as mass hallucination and simulated Matrix realities. It’s really just Laziness Hard at Work.
And as to the Left’s exhaustingly shrill and repeated claim that Morality and Ethics can only enter in when the “playing field is level,” that’s not a social belief system or program of coherent public policy—it’s a secular religious mania that’s so clearly not working as social program, only more mania will do. To me, the mania isn’t as intriguing as I’d hope. More and more, it seems purely pathetic.
