Are We Just Witnesses?

Chicago: Here I am at The Grind a Lincoln Square coffee shop with free WiFi. Admittedily, I am in a funk, even with the glories of caffeine surging through me; however, and this is a BIG however, what follows may be explaining what is happening and may not merely reflect the funk I feel myself in.

Decadence: it's been on my mind, on and off, for the last couple of weeks. Historians write about how it is part of a culture's natural cycle, and right wingers blame the left, the media and Hollywood for it and the left blames the right for it and most of us sit wondering what it is and how do we identify it, and some of us may even be speculating about our role in it. I am speaking here specifically of US culture's decadence and the whole "fall of Rome" analogy that seems to be floating around these days. This means many different things to many people, but just to touch on a abbreviated list, let's say it includes morality, social health (decay), spiritual health, ethics, leadership (either positive or negative leadership), intellectual life, and economics.

Now, let's take one example from this list as a sample point of discussion, economics. Is there enough wealth in the country for everybody to survive? Is it distributed evenly enough? Is there too much in the hands of any one individual? Has the apparently more egalitarian movement of public ownership and incorporation of most sources of products and services made our lives better or worse? I know these are massive questions that no individual can answer, but it seems that these questions need to be asked for a healthy evaluation of our current lives. Part of the problem is that to answer these questions about general populations puts in the shoes of a social scientists, and social scientists work in the fuzzy speculation of statistics, which is just that, fuzzy and speculative. Moreover, even statistics are not REAL evaluations that show the flux and flow of opinion and human whimsy. So where does this put us?

Some sort of faith or belief and human involvement (or "human intelligence" as the Pres likes to refer to it when it comes to the CIA/FBI and their hunting of terrorists) in the machinations of our social life seem to be the only two things that are going to get us through. This itself is fuzzy, at least as fuzzy as the statistics of a social scientist. "You can do your part and hope for the best," you might suggest. True enough. But it doesn't take away that sinking feeling that economics are drying up (am I being short-sighted?), that lots of people's moral compasses have problems with their poles, that ethics has been swallowed up be self-interest and self-indulgence, that social health is sickly (Will there even be SS when I retire?), that leadership is a myth of the past, that spiritual life is confused at best, and that intellectual life?... Intellectual life, where is it located these days? (This is coming from a teacher for F-'s sake!) On the Internet?

I usually look to art and philosophers for answers. For all it's flaws, it still provides more room for creative thought than the interlocked and incestious thought of politics. I have been reading an article about the role of artists in this culture. (The article is here: http://pitchforkmedia.com/columns/get-that-out-of-your-mouth/05-01-28.shtml ) The way it ends makes me feel a bit sad: "Do artists only regret practical setbacks, or do they still think about ethics? If they don't know what's 'wrong,' how do they make these decisions in the first place? And if the rest of us don't care about it, who's going to help them figure it out?" Not that I took many ethical lessons from contemporary artists, but I feel a bit depressed by the thought that somebody else has considered the same thought, thus validating my own depressing thoughts. I mean, thinking outside of yourself and your own life is difficult enought but it's twice as worse to think that you're the only one doing it. Talk about a Herculean task!

If we are in a state of decadence and Rome is falling, then where are the barbarians? Are we waiting for them to take over? Is this all just a funk I'm feeling? The walls are falling in, aren't they? Or is that just my hangover? God, I hope so (and I'm not exactly a believer in any traditional sense of the word). But I know that they only thing that's going to make me feel better is if I get my ass up and get out of this cafe and start doing something. I'm bored as hell and no entertainment is going to cure that. The funk isn't just me; this funk is all around me and I feel sick from it.