On behalf of human dignity

Posted by Nancy LeTourneau | Apr 14, 2007 | 10 |

I’d like to repost a diary I wrote over at Everybody Comes from Somewhere almost a month ago. I thought it spoke to some of the general themes that seem to be emerging on the blogosphere these days.

I’ve never seen the TV show “The Wire” because I don’t have HBO. But I can tell you that later today I’m going to rent copies of the dvd and start watching it all the way through its 4 seasons. That’s because I just finished reading an article by William Hughes over at The Black Commentator that describes a speech by its creator David Simon.

Simon predicts the end of the American Empire as the result of the triumph of capitalism over humanity.

I am wholly pessimistic about American society. I believe The Wire is a show about the end of the American Empire. We…are going to live that event. How we end up…and survive [and] on what terms, is going to be the open question… There will be cities. We are an urban people…What kind of places they will be are…dependent on how we behave toward each other and how our political infrastructure behave…

But what I found most interesting in all this, is Simon’s thoughts about why this is happening:

Continuing, Simon emphasized: “We are in the postindustrial age. We do not need as many of us as we once did. We don’t need us to generate capital…to secure wealth. We are in a transitive period where human beings have lost some of their value. Now, whether or not we…can figure out a way to validate the humanity of the individual…I have great doubts…We (America) haven’t figured out the answers to these questions. I have doubts whether anyone is going to be able to do it…

As for the characters on the program, Simon explained, “Their lives are less and less necessary. They are more and more expendable. The institutions in which they serve…are indifferent…to their existence.”

This spoke to me on so many levels. First of all, like Simon, I see the effects of this indifference daily in the lives of urban youth and families. I keep trying to tell myself that if people knew how these families lived…they’d care. And sometimes I get that confirmation from individuals. But for the most part, the system as a whole gives it all a big yawn. We might care about an individual we hear about, but there is absolutely NO interest in changing the system that continues to put urban families in these circumstances.

Here’s Simon about why…

“I didn’t start [out] as a cynic…,” Simon underscored, “but at every given moment, where this country has had a choice…its governments…institutions…corporations, its social framework…to exalt the value of individuals over the value of the shared price, we have chosen raw unencumbered Capitalism. Capitalism has become our God… You are not looking at a Marxist up here…But you are looking at somebody who doesn’t believe that Capitalism [can work] absent a social framework that accepts that it is relatively easy to marginalize more and more people in this economy…[Capitalism] has to be attended to. And that [this attending] has to be a conscious calculation on the part of society, if that is going to succeed…” If it doesn’t succeed, Simon predicted, “You are eventually going to have the gated communities and the people inside saying: `Isn’t it a shame you can’t drive downtown anymore’. That is where we are headed…[towards] separate Americas…Everywhere we have created an Alternate America of haves and have-nots…At some point, either more of us are going to find our conscience or we’re not.” Simon believes that the city is basically “the victim” of this ongoing brutal process of “unencumbered Capitalism.”

None of this comes as any surprise to me or to any of you. The only question remaining is, can we do anything to change it? Can we find the value of humanity and hold it up as worthy? And what will have to change to make that happen? Its not just in our war zones that we are fighting for “hearts and minds.” I think that it is right here in our midst. I think its about each of us, engaging those around us and challenging the many ways that daily, the value of our humanity is sacrificed on the alter of greed.

Here is the challenge that Simon leaves us with:

Simon described himself as a storyteller. He concluded his insightful and relevant remarks by stating: “The Wire is certainly an angry show. It’s about the idea that we are worth less. And that is an unreasonable thing to contemplate for all of us. It is unacceptable. And none of us wants to be part of a world that is going to do that to human beings. If we don’t exert on behalf of human dignity, at the expense of profit, and Capitalism and greed [which] are inevitabilities, [and] if we can’t modulate them in some way that is a framework for an intelligent society, we are doomed! It is going to happen sooner than we think. I don’t know what form it will take…But, I know that every year it [America] is going to be a more brutish, and cynical and divided place.”

Every year – a more brutish, and cynical and divided place…sound like any place you’ve been lately??

About The Author

Nancy LeTourneau

I'm a pragmatic progressive who has been blogging about politics since 2007.

10 Comments

Nancy LeTourneau on April 14, 2007 at 9:19 pm

I don’t think anyone can spend much time in a large urban area in the US these days and not recognize what Simon is talking about.

For example, where I work we’re trying to mitigate a new school policy for 6-8th graders that allows them to EXPEL kids who have three incidents of showing gang signs – no intervention, no accountability – just count to three and expel. Its bred from ignorance and fear, but is really just a way to get rid of kids that adults find difficult. They are not human beings living in almost intolerable circumstances and doing their best to survive. They are problems to be eliminated.

But Simon also speaks to me about what we are seeing in our public discourse these days, both in the media and sometimes in the blogosphere.
- Teacher Toni on April 14, 2007 at 9:57 pm
  
  Your right about the expulsions. The sad thing is that we as a society don’t want to fund those interventions for problems students. At my school, the same students are allowed to disrupt the learning process for his/her classmates and all we’ve got are suspensions. Those are like vacation days – these do not help the student gain control of his life and try to make some positive changes.
  
  We try nothing else because we’ve got no money. That’s a terrible excuse. I suggested researching interventions to our School Improvement chair and I was told that a whole committee would not be set up, but if Student Council and I wanted to do some research, to feel free. Sure, I can have the kids do some preliminary research, but to dig into costs and data and then report back on it, that is clearly on me alone.
  - Nancy LeTourneau on April 15, 2007 at 10:24 am
    
    We try nothing else because we’ve got no money.
    
    When I read this, I immediately related it to what Simon is saying. There is a confluence of all these economic events happening in our urban public schools. There is the lack of resources, but there’s also the pressure to “corporatize” how we look at schools, ie, competition, focus bottom line (test outcomes). This just brings the capitalistic model into the schools – with no value for human dignity. Just what Simon is talking about.
    
    By the way, I’m on season 2 of watching “The Wire.” I’ve heard that season 4 focuses on the middle schools. Season 1 was about the drug trade in the projects, season 2 is about human trafficing. Not sure what the focus of season 3 is – but to put public middle schools in that line-up is an amazing message.
- Steven D on April 15, 2007 at 5:50 pm
  
  Thanks for a very thoughtful diary.
ignorant bystander on April 15, 2007 at 10:28 am

I think Al Gore would agree with Simon.

I have come to believe that the waste crisis — like the environmental crisis as a whole — serves as a kind of mirror in which we are able to see ourselves more clearly if we are willing to question more deeply who we are and who we want to be, both as individuals and as a civilization. Indeed, in some ways the waste crisis serves as perhaps the best vehicle for asking some hard questions about ourselves.

For example, if we have come to see the things we use as disposable, have we similarly transformed the way we think about our fellow human beings? Mass civilization has led to the creation of impersonal, almost industrial, processes for educating, employing, sheltering, feeding, clothing, and disposing of billions of people. Have we, in the process, lost an appreciation for the uniqueness of each one? Have we made it easier to give up on someone who needs extra attention or repair? Traditional societies venerate the oldest among them as unique repositories of character and wisdom. We, however, are all too willing to throw them away, to think of them as used up, no longer able to produce new things to consume. We mass-produce information and in the process devalue the wisdom of a lifetime, assuming that it can easily be replaced by skimming a froth of essential data off the flood tide of information rushing through our culture. For similar reasons, we have devalued the importance of education (even as we increase the lip service we pay it). Education is the recycling of knowledge, and since we have emphasized the production and constant consumption of massive quantities of information, we don’t feel the same need to respect and reuse the refined accumulation of learning treasured by those who have come before us.

Al Gore, Earth In the Balance

And this, in particular seems to echo Simon’s words. Except Gore wrote this in 1989.

We can see something like this same pattern in the way our society allowed the inner city to become a toxic dumping ground for crime, drug abuse, poverty, ignorance, and desperation. In this case too there was a shift, not from a single technology but from the industrial age itself — which had put a premium on the clustering of factories and housing near ports, where a critical mass of coal, raw materials, and workers could be maintained. It was followed by the post-industrial age, in which families moved into suburbs and new jobs and established new patterns in their lives. The inner cities they left behind, no longer essential to efficient production, became — in part — repositories for wasted lives.

Al Gore, Earth In the Balance

If you haven’t read Earth In the Balance because you think you already know what’s in it — green house gases, global warming, climate change, blah blah blah, yeah yeah I already know all that — I urge you to take the time to read it now. It is not just about climate change. It is about much, much more. It is about being a citizen in a democracy. Stewardship of our environment is only one small part of that. Stewardship of our human community is a much larger part.
- Nancy LeTourneau on April 15, 2007 at 10:38 am
  
  Wow, ib, you’re talking to me. I haven’t read it precisely because of the kinds of things you allude to. I had no idea. Thanks for making me a little less of an ignorant bystander.
  - ignorant bystander on April 15, 2007 at 11:27 am
    
    Heh. Actually I was describing myself. I hadn’t bothered reading Earth In the Balance until last summer, after I saw An Inconvenient Truth. I hadn’t bothered because I thought I already knew what it was about and everything in it. Guilty as charged.
    
    There is a passage in AIT where Gore speaks briefly about the near-fatal accident of his son. It was one of those life-changing events when everything he valued was called into question. I believe he emerged from that crisis a very different person, and a better one. The accident happened in 1989, not long after he lost in his 1988 presidential bid. Finding himself involuntarily unemployed and shaken by a deeply personal near-tragedy, he had some time to think deeply about what was really important to him. The result was Earth In the Balance.
    
    I have a standard challenge that I issue to anyone who hasn’t bothered to read the book because they think they already know what’s in it, or who dismisses Al Gore because they think he only cares about one issue. Get a copy of Earth In the Balance and a big black magic marker. Go through the book page by page and black out everything you find that directly references climate change or global warming. Now go back to the beginning and read what’s left. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I think you’ll find the book is mostly intact and quite readable. Read it carefully. Then come back and tell me that is not the person you want to be our President. That is my challenge.
    
    It is not so much the easy lies we tell each other as the hard truths that are never told at all. It has become too easy for those of us in public office to evade responsibility for the tough decisions that ought to be made but are instead ignored. As a result, there is astonishing irresponsibility in the face of grave and unprecedented crises — both in the White House and in Congress. It isn’t just the environment. Look at the budget, where we’re borrowing a billion dollars every twenty four hours and in the process endangering the future of our children, yet nobody is doing anything about it. Why not? Because genuine political dialogue has been almost completely replaced by a high-stakes competition for the ever shorter attention span of the electorate. The future whispers while the present shouts. Somehow, we have convinced ourselves that we care far less about what happens to our children than about avoiding the inconvenience and discomfort of paying our own bills. So instead of accepting responsibility for our choices, we simply dump huge mountains of both debt and pollution on future generations.
    
    Al Gore, Earth In the Balance
    - chocolate ink on April 15, 2007 at 5:23 pm
      
      Ok ib, you’ve convinced me…I’m going to dig out my copy of EIB that’s been collecting dust after reading only a few pages…hopefully I’ll get a lot farther this time.
      - ignorant bystander on April 15, 2007 at 7:01 pm
        
        Good. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
        
        What does it say about our culture that personality is now considered a technology, a tool of the trade, not only in politics but in business and the professions? Has everyone been forced to become an actor? In sixteenth-century England, actors were not allowed to be buried in the same cemeteries as “God-fearing folk,” because anyone willing to manipulate his personality for the sake of artifice, even to entertain, was considered spiritually suspect. Actors today, of course, are honored and respected for their skill at manipulating personality. And in politics, as well, these skills are now highly valued. The technology of politics and the technology of personality have been fused together by the technology of television.
        
        At least where the presidency is concerned, there is still some symmetry between the skills needed to be elected and the skills needed to govern. After all, the ability of a president to communicate effectively on television is essential. But there is this problem: while a president elected primarily because of an appealing image and personality may be able to communicate effectively, that is no guarantee that he or she can deal with the substance of government policies or provide clear, inspiring vision of our national destiny.
        
        Where Congress is concerned, the ability to communicate a winning personality on television is much less relevant to the skills needed after the election. A keen sense for visual rhetoric is almost totally irrelevant to the task of writing laws — although it is, of course, quite relevant to the nearly constant work of being reelected.
        
        Al Gore, Earth In the Balance
chimneyswift on April 16, 2007 at 1:31 pm

Thank you Nancy, I knew nothing about that show. I’ll track it down too. (BTW, hey! How’s you?)

IB, thank you, also. I would not have expected such broad writing from Gore that early. Makes more sense now why the Washington in-crowd felt the need to take him down.

All of this philosophy seems so much a pretty oil painting of a sinking ship. We can see so clearly what no one can change.

I don’t know if I agree with that personally. Seems more like we can make little differences in our lives and the lives of each other, and that these are meaningful despite the arc of history.

It is worth noting, I point out to friends now and then, that in the long view the course of human history is mostly crappy. It is the lives people live within that crappiness that matter, and these are very difficult to see from the big-picture view.

Of course, we here somewhat by self definition believe in making a difference, and in the importance thereof, or why would we bother with blogs and progressive politics…

hm.

On behalf of human dignity

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Nancy LeTourneau

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