Beware of Doldrums

Most of us are comfortable with our family members although we may not ever have chosen them as friends. There are psychological reasons for this, of course. ‘Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know’, perhaps. We may not love each family member equally but somehow we learn to accept their idiosyncrasies, even when they cause us undue stress, inconvenience, or even pain.

Lots of times we stay embedded in the dysfunction of a family system although we hate it. We continue to play our expected role well into adulthood after choices are available.

We get comfortable. We maybe get too comfortable. Is it laziness? (I ask this question about a lot of things, it seems). My friend Dixie, who is one of the world’s wisest people, tells me that we become inured. She is, like most of us, apoplectic about the Gulf oil spill. She blames corporate complacency on the whole thing. The unwillingness to effect a change in this instance resulted in damage that will last for decades.

The complacency that results in failure to make improvements shown by BP reminds me a lot of what happens directly after coal mining disasters. You know, when the news reports ‘this mine has had 15 safety violations in the past 18 months’ and we all wonder WHY nothing was done to prevent tragedies that demolish mining families. The Department of Labor issued 175,000 safety violations and $141.2 million in fines on coal mines in 2009 with little effect on the number of fatalities that were a result of said violations. This kind of inured behavior really is a result of nothing more than corporate greed. The same corporate greed displayed by BP.
The point is you can put up with your tyrannical family member and suffer the painful consequences, you can fine oil or coal companies out the ying-yang, and all of those things seem to be acceptable rather than taking a step that may cost you something in order to prevent future suffering. We are inured. Or greedy. Or both.

And in my little brain, I see an extension of this unbendable part of human nature as becoming more and more of a threat to our existence. It comes to our own unwillingness to make a change, stand up to a threat, or face something that may be difficult or costly.

Locally, I see this in AZ SB1070. I have family members who favor it; I have family members who are against it. There are such complex layers to the problem of immigration, particularly in Arizona, that it boggles the mind. Sort of like having to drill down super-deep in the ocean for oil. It’s THAT complicated.

However, what has happened as a result of the ‘discussion’ around this bill and its resulting passage is quite simple. It has allowed the re-emergence of racism as an acceptable but unspoken element of our existence. To face this ugliness and call each other out on it would be painful, expensive, and difficult. But it is so necessary. Again, I fear we are inured. It’s easier to watch both sides holler at each other behind giant signs and American and Mexican flags than it is to step up and ask for civility.
And now we’ve had an election. I don’t even want to tiptoe into the potential racism replete in the referendum on the Obama presidency that we’ve just experienced. That is too much for my tired mind to contemplate well, and with the discipline it deserves.

There was an increase in voter turnout of 1.1% between this mid-term election and the previous mid-term election in 2006. With all of the bickering and badgering, the despicable advertisements and heated arguments that took place, I’m afraid that this turnout still shows a discouraging level of complacency.

I’m left to wonder how we will ever solve anything when the undercurrent is so ugly. Has it always been this way? In Arizona we’ve just re-elected a dolt as governor (this is nothing new to Arizonans, having lived through Evan Mecham and Fife Symington), who really embodies the just-below-the-surface type of racism I fear the most.

So what is my point? I’ve been thinking through societal structures from the family unit to the corporation. I’ve been looking at the laziness of Americans in general. I believe what I want to say the most is this: The comfort in which we dwell while we allow intolerance to bubble up will bite us all squarely in the ass and in a very ugly way indeed. Whew.

Once the game is over, the King and the pawn go back in the same box. ~ Italian Proverb