Reflecting on 75 Years

Yesterday was my 75th birthday.  Usually I treat my birthdays just like any other day, although a cause for some celebration.  I have always felt good about birthdays, as opposed to the way many people feel.  I’ve never felt myself “growing old.”  

But at 75 years, it does seem to warrant some reflection.  I have lived through 3/4 of a century.  That sounds like a very long time, and yet it doesn’t seem long at all really.  Yes, my childhood, even my 30s seem like a long ways back, but not 3/4 of a century.  That concept is hard to wrap my head around. 

Our concept of time seems to vary depending on whether it is personal experience or whether it's historical.   When it’s personal, we don’t feel like we are part of history, that we are part of the march of time.  And yet we surely are.  If I think of all the periods I’ve lived through … Vietnam, AIDS … to name just a few, I have been witness to a lot of history.   But I don’t feel like I’ve been part of this vast moving scope of humanity and the cosmos, ala watching an American Experience episode.

The other thing is that on reflection, I’m aware that I almost feel distant from this historical period, probably because I don’t or didn’t feel part of its sweeping movement.  And I don’t feel like it’s a period I’m particularly proud to have been part of.  Quite the contrary, it has been a period filled with pestilence of one sort or another, whether war or disease or various forms of inhumanity and dysfunction.  

We tend to look back at past epochs with nostalgia, at the great things, the transformational things that happened.  Even the disasters are remembered with nostalgia, again think of American Experience.  

WWII is always held up as something that people were very proud to be part of, which is great.  But was WWII uplifting?  Not really.  It wasn’t fought to save the Jews … hardly.   African-Americans were segregated and treated shamefully in the armed forces.  It was entered into by the American leadership because they wanted to save Europe, and ultimately save us; so it was largely self-interest.  

But for most people it was an exercise in patriotism, answering the call of the country.  And since almost everyone was involved in one way or another and everyone pulled together, it was something people honestly could feel proud about.  In this sense it was uplifting … people were ready to sacrifice even their lives for a larger cause.  There was a sense of community.  

The cataclysmic events of my historic period had no such upside.  Some would say that within the gay community AIDS had an upside, but that was I feel very limited; there was far more fear and distrust than caring for your fellow man.  

Even the often-cited coming together of the country after 9/11 only lasted perhaps a few days.  The potential was possibly there, but the people were never asked to sacrifice, other than their privacy.  The main drumbeat from the government was one of fear, not duty.  The period’s wars impacted mostly our disadvantaged class who enlisted as a way out of their dead-end lives.  Yes, some enlisted out of a sense of patriotism, but they were isolated in our society.  For the returning troops there was little support at home, not even among those who supported the wars.

When one looks at these cataclysmic events, past and present, one sees clearly how our sense of community, of our all being fellow citizens of our country, has deteriorated if not vanished.  That is not good for America.  And that is the root cause why I feel distant from the period in which I have lived, why I don’t feel part of its sweeping currents.

But aside from these cataclysmic events, life is not really different now than in the past, viewed objectively.  There have always been and will always be bright spots, inspirational things that man has achieved, random acts of kindness, but they always occur in the larger context of overwhelming misfortune, suffering, and pestilence.  

Truly such is life, and all I or anyone can do is to live his life as well as he can by offering himself and others joy … meaning this in a spiritual, not hedonistic, sense.  To the extent that there have been bright spots over the millennia in the midst of so much suffering, it has been because of those individual spots of light.  I have certainly been blessed to have received such light and love from many people throughout my life.  The truth of the old proverb is revealed: better to light a candle than curse the darkness.  That is our purpose in life, our only purpose.

The Damaging Impact of a Lack of Community on Children and Our Society

When Hilary Clinton wrote her book, It Takes a Village to Raise a Child, there were many, especially on the right, who ridiculed her for making this statement.  Bob Dole in his 1996 presidential nomination acceptance speech said that it doesn’t take a village, it takes a family to raise a child.

But this ancient African proverb is as true today as it was when it originated in the village-based societies of Africa.  Of course it takes a family to raise a child.  The influence of the immediate family, for better or worse, has a dominant impact on a child’s  development, emotionally and otherwise.  

Children, however, do not live in an isolated world bounded by borders of their family home.  From an early age they come into contact with many other influences ... mass media, peers, teachers, strangers.  Unfortunately, in our culture, most of these influencers, even teachers, have very little interest in the healthy development of the child.  Each has their own interest that prevails.  

Media wants to influence the child to do what its bidders want the child to do.  They want to manipulate the child.  

Other children are often quite selfish and can be very cruel.  They deal with their own insecurities by acting out against others who are weaker in any way than they are.  

Teachers ... and of course there are many exceptions ... are so burdened by the number of children they must deal with and the often chaotic condition of the school and classroom that they are overwhelmed.  They go through the motions of teaching, rather than really teach.  

And strangers, except for the occasional good samaritan, have no interest in the child and will act on their own interests and needs.

What I’ve described is the antithesis of growing up in a village, at least the communal villages of primitive societies.  Even before the industrial revolution, the village in western cultures, while a self-contained society, was not communal in nature.  The impact of individualism, while so much more pronounced now, was present even in those nostalgic days.  And so the child came into contact with many people who had little or no concern for its wellbeing and development.  And its insecurities were deepened.

In the communal villages of primitive societies, the attitude towards children was very different.  Every child was in many ways everyone’s child, not just the parents’.  Everyone in the village had a concern for a child’s wellbeing and development.  That was the culture.  The strength of people lay in the combined strength of the village, not in their individual attainments.  You of course had individuals who excelled in various areas, but their work was dedicated to the good of the whole, not themselves as individuals.  A child brought up in this atmosphere felt secure and wanted, a part of a larger whole.

It is this absence of community in our society that has resulted in the prevalence of gangs and other antisocial organizations, and more recently of growing ultra-religious groups, that provide the feeling of community that everyone yearns for but at the cost of the larger society’s cohesion.  It is the absence of community that results in a heightened insecurity and an attitude that the only thing that’s important is me, and perhaps my immediate family.  We live in a dog eat dog culture because of the absence of a feeling of shared community and responsibility for each other.

I don’t know how we revive a sense of community in our country.  We are farther from that ideal now then ever, I fear.  And there appears to be precious little interest in turning back from the polarized state we are in.  It does not bode well for the future of our country.