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The headlines of social disfunction [1]
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Date: 2022-12-20
“Russia unleashes biggest attacks in Ukraine in months.”
“State food aid offices understaffed amid worker burnout.”
“Hmong community ousted from land along south Sacramento creek.”
“LA council president resigns after racist remarks.”
Headlines, front page, THE SACRAMENTO BEE, October 11, 2022
This particular front page stands out in my mind by depicting four related elements of our modern world’s current disfunction. This edition appeared on a day when the news was not dominated by severe weather events caused by climate change; thus we could see in stark reality the chronic problems we must contend with, even on a “quiet” day. War, racism, and exploding population, along with a rebellion against long-standing workplace practices, have long been intrinsic elements in the human story. These problems are solvable by global mechanical production, but the current economic and social system distributes most of that productive plenty to a tiny upper crust. As long as we persist in keeping this system, we will continue to suffer from the problems it causes, solvable problems that threaten civilization, if not mankind’s existence, even when they are not directly caused by climate change. Cheerful headlines will keep coming.
Russia’s aggression in Ukraine keeps up an ancient tradition practiced by mankind’s rulers going back millennia; of starting wars whenever conditions at home get uncomfortable. Russia, a major military and industrial power, is also an exporter of both food and fuel. There is but one reason why every Russian is not personally well-off: Russia’s plutocratic (or kleptocratic) elites have all that nation’s wealth and intend to keep it. As always, when rulers are forced by circumstances to deal with economic complaints from the lower castes, their recourse has usually been to wage war. Vladimir Putin’s brutal attack on Ukraine is just like old times.
The Hmong people who were moved out of their settled homeless camp are also victims of the long-established custom whereby rulers of burgeoning populations conquer their neighbors and replace them with their own. The Hmongs’ ancestors, originating in what is now Central China, were driven southward to Laos and Vietnam in the eighteenth century by the Han Chinese—like the fate dealt to indigenous inhabitants of the Americas when Europeans arrived. Naturally the Laotians and Vietnamese (whose ancestors were also forced to leave China much earlier) were less than welcoming. The Hmong settled in the sparsely populated hills, where many of them sought protection by siding with the French and later, the Americans. When the colonial occupiers finally left, the winners, as always, persecuted their enemies. A Hmong diaspora ensued, leading some of them to settle in the United States. Not all of them found homes here.
A small group of Hmong refugees settled on the flood plain of a creek at the edge of the Sacramento River Delta, where they were left alone for a few years, long enough to build a stable, functioning, sustainable community. But it was also an extra-legal community, so when the levees eventually needed repair, the people had to move. As always, few cared where they went, as long as they left where they had managed to get themselves in the way. Again, their removal is simply typical of the way human societies act toward “others.” An enlightened America could find room for the displaced ones, but America’s resources, like Russia’s and China’s, are held by the wealthy, who never did, and never will, believe in sharing. While we common folks argue over the scant remnants, others get sent down the road.
War, conquest, displacement and servitude, all ongoing mainstreams of history, fit in with racism, an instinct dating back to our hunting-gathering days. The essential element for human survival during that long period was absolute loyalty of each individual to his or her native tribe. Tribal devotion was of course reinforced by contemptuous hatred for people from other clans, who were considered scarcely human. This universal human trait, the basis of racism, is hard to root out from peoples’ minds. Over two or three of the most recent millennia, people have gradually awakened to recognize the common core in everyone. Some farseeing individuals who pioneered these concepts, considered in those times to be heretical, were crucified or forced to drink hemlock for communicating them, but the idea of a human community gradually caught on. Now we at least pay lip service to the concept that all people are alike and equal. Now quite a few of us honestly believe we belong to one tribe. But this intellectual conviction remains new, therefore unwelcome, to many others. Racism, originally a foundation of humanity’s survival, is hard for many to let go, even though it now threatens the survival of the human race.
Longstanding racism is behind the dustup in the Los Angeles City Council. Several prominent Hispanic politicians were recorded making disparaging comments about African-Americans. No doubt, whoever made that recording public did so without permission from those who were involved in the conversation. While recognition of our oneness is a worthwhile goal, few of us have achieved that goal in all our affairs, at all times, though some of us work at it. Most Americans, like most other human beings, still retain some deep pockets of the racist instinct that enabled our ancestors to survive until modern times. We have, as individuals, a choice to either wrestle with that sentiment or embrace it—a personal choice for those who are not public figures sworn to represent all citizens. But the undeniable fact is that as a race, humans are now so closely interconnected, we cannot afford putting into action those atavistic feelings of ethnic specialty. If poor Americans of all ethnic origins would unite behind providing our mutual needs, we could build an America that truly exemplifies its vaunted reputation. Words are important sometimes, but our actions define us.
One action involving Americans of all ethnic groups is resistance to modern wage slavery—“worker burnout” described in another headline column. Many jobs are miserable, yet people must do them, every day, in order to keep body and soul together. Quiet desperation was the national mood until the COVID-19 pandemic rubbed raw the social sore that is the dehumanizing nature of working for a living, and exposed it to the air. With pandemic recovery, jobs in many fields are readily available, and people are switching jobs at a high rate. With some jobs going unfilled, our dour but seemingly unchangeable pre-pandemic world has been turned upside-down. Politicians and pundits assign blame anywhere they can, but workplace drudgery is getting recognition, along with the reality that for many it still cannot pay the bills. Americans are switching jobs, unions are growing in popularity, and workers are beginning to demand dignity in what nearly all of us must do to make ends meet. Adding these factors to the general chaos has resulted in personnel shortages in some essential occupations.
The four headlines listed in this story have common origins: they stem from long-standing social and economic practices that enabled the human race to survive and progress until recently, but are desperately outdated today. A hyper-competitive economic system, along with top-down, corporate management methods, have been exposed as unable to provide basic human needs. The headline crises listed: war, homelessness, racism and employment stress, provide ample evidence of a social structure needing significant repair. New forms of organization, cooperation, and distribution are required. Problems that we must deal with now are beyond the ability of the “magic of the marketplace” to solve.
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