Waking The Dead 6

We're easily jaded, and I think that our natural preference is to remain comatose. There was a time when art was considered the perfect vehicle for slapping the bourgeoisie out of their smug complacency. Pablo Picasso, whose art did shock and scandalize for a while, is famous for saying that a good painting must be full of razorblades. Fair enough. Then came the Dadaists, then the Surrealists, all with the same motive in mind: knock us out of our slumber through increasingly outrageous and irrational works of art. It was tried in literature. Remember James Joyce? Virginia Woolf, anyone? Samuel Beckett? Now they are all bourgeois accoutrements of status and social position. What once shocked is now wallpaper, or screensavers. Artists still are compelled to disturb and shock through their art. What Warhol must have done Campbell Soup stocks (pun not intended) But it doesn't appear to be working. We also have the real life events: terrorism, President Dump in the White House, Fentanyl and overdoses causing three to four deaths a day in my city, homelessness, and everyone just gets used to it, it all loses its shock value and we go whistling (please don't, it's so irritating!) in the dark on our way to our own cold and inhospitable graves. Naturally, the more jaded we become, the harder it is to really slap us awake. We are, Gentle Reader, that self-absorbed and pathetic. I believe it is called coping. I remember how chronically upset and distressed I was fifteen years ago over our already burgeoning homelessness crisis, and that with survivor guilt. Now, I still don't like it, but I have grown used to it. We do have to get on with our lives, I suppose. I think a lot of us feel paralysed. There isn't a lot that can be done to eliminate homelessness without massive political will, and there are still a lot of ass-backward conservatives in this country and conservatism, worse than any political ideology simultaneously breeds ignorance, fear and complacency. Our politicians always keep their ear to the ground because they don't want to offend or alienate their support base, otherwise they are going to be out of work. Likewise with fighting climate change. Democracy, in some ways, is one of the worst things that has ever happened to us, even though it is also the best of all bad political ideologies and , believe me, Gentle Reader, none of them are good. We are basically reduced by the governments we elect and the culture we help nurture and enable, at least by default, to zombies, barely living beings that simply have to cope and survive for one more day, with whatever pleasures and bucket lists to make the great general owie a little more tolerable. Deplorable, yes, and I still say there are ways of subverting and undermining this nasty reality we are stranded with. Gratitude is huge, and gratitude also clears our vision so that we can see a little better those around us and what they are needing and what we can do to help. The whole thing is to get our heads out of our butts, and to keep our heads out of our asses. This is an act of will, and this has to be repeated over and over. We can begin the process of change by refusing to see ourselves, or live, as mere consumers, and to cultivate the ability of seeing others as persons, not as obstacles in our way, not as a means to our own ends. This can be very difficult, because we are so conditioned by this insidious culture of self-esteem and narcissism. We have to acquire tool kits to help us cope and overcome the darkness that surrounds us, and we have to look into the great religions, and other ethical and philosophical systems from which we can develop an ethos of kindness compassion and selflessness. Extreme conditions call for extreme measures and we have to start rising to the occasion before we all get flushed down that huge collective toilet.