Anomie

I know that I'm not the best person to tell this, but I'm the one who is. I don't write well enough or persuasively enough to make this stand on poetry. There certainly people out there more educated than I am. The only reason that I am writing this is simply that I don't see it anywhere out there already. To wit, I am saying this because I believe it needs to be said, and I haven't heard anyone else saying it - not in the way I think it needs to be said. And in a world where I don't feel equipped to do much else, this is the road that is open to me. Anyone who isn't being intentionally panglossian can see that there are problems. (If the word seems needlessly obscure, it's context gives it really no other meaning. It's the right word.) So, what is this? Well, anomie is what people experience when they look out at society and see problems. It's the collapse of the things we see as good in society and the despair that comes with that loss. 

But dear friends, without us, there would be no anomie. Surely, that's not a great argument. Without us, there wouldn't be anyone to experience the anomie and certainly no one to try and save us from it, right?

We're inundated with people telling us what the big problems are, why they are so big, why they're so difficult to solve, etc. What I aim to do differently here is to point out something that appears - to me - to be true at a fractal level: the problem is us. I'll try to avoid using metaphors (for a lot of reasons) but I think one here is instructive: even if you don't know someone like this right now, you may have or it wouldn't be difficult to imagine a person who regularly complains about problems in their life but somehow manages to miss the single key component of all of those problems: them.

If you know someone like this, you may have had a chance to observe a continuation of this metaphor: as the number and severity of problems increase, and the list of possible culprits dwindles, said person (And this can be an otherwise intellectually capable person; I've certainly seen it before. I think sometimes, it makes it worse when they are intelligent because self-deception is a function of the mind.) will go to greater and greater lengths to explain the conspiracy of bad luck or negativity surrounding them.

The problem that a lot of us can see, from the outside, is that they themselves are the problem.

I am putting forward here, in no uncertain terms, that if our species were a person, we would be the person I have been describing. 

To a lot of religious people, this will come as no surprise. But I think that kind of thinking is a convenient escape. It lets humanity off of the hook too easily. If some celestial evil, whether that's the devil or sin or some other external force, it's still not us. We may not be trying hard enough to get away from it, or we may be falling into its traps, but the simple fact remains: it's external.

No.

That's why I am writing this. The very same people who are capable of immense self-sacrifice, of incredible acts of virtue and love, under different and almost always inscrutable circumstances, we are the same people who are cruel, who are greedy, who will allow others to go through unimaginable suffering out of sheer callousness. I feel that I need to say this because I don't see anyone saying this the way that I am: we are the problem. And until we start to recognize this, all we will ever address is the symptoms of that problem. We will continue to be the anomie in the system, and we will be depressed and anxious and infuriated with the world that others who share more than 99% of our DNA have created. We will hold accountable those who, if the situations were reversed are doing what we would likely do if we were in their position. So what's to be done?

Well, the first part is begin to identify the problems. I have ideas. I'd like to hear what others think. But I've done too much thinking on and too much living with these issues to not say what I am going to say. Also, as I said, I'm not outside of this; I don't believe that any of us are. As I talk about the problems that I think we're creating and experiencing. I'm going to do my best to explain my part in the issue and what I hope to do to be less of a problem. There are certain things where I won't be able to shift the larger picture much, but that doesn't mean that there aren't similarities in my approach to the world that aren't problematic. It seems, again, circular, but the crux of this is that the very drives that keep our species alive - even when applied exactly as they've developed in nature - are often toxic to the systems around us. I am part of that. I'm not capable of the kind of amplified influence that a billionaire or a populist politician can point at the world, but I am just as guilty of harboring the same callousness at times. But I am going to do my level best to own those things and be more intentional about my own life. 

I cannot promise that anyone will agree, care about this, read it, or even see what I am writing here, but I feel the need to say it: We have met the anomie, and it is us.