#megeneration

  So the other night, I was eating dinner with my family when the topic of Florida’s new law requiring drug tests for welfare recipients came up.  One of my family members immediately went into a rant about how, if she’s going to be paying for those slobs to be lazy, they should at least be drug tested, as she can be at any time for her job.  Besides the obvious fact that her job is far better than the benefits of welfare, or the fact that welfare is a social safety net that is there for her as well and meant to give a helping hand to people in a tough spot regardless of their own decisions, she dismissed the reality that drug tests for welfare recipients will cost the government even more money without offering any particular results.  No one aims to be on welfare, and those with drug addictions are often the ones who need the help the most.  Of course, this does not mean that we should give them a pass to receive assistance and continue to stagnate in addiction, which is why it is good that Florida’s law also includes some (though meager) access to substance abuse treatment.  Yet, when I brought up this part of the law and how I thought drug testing could be reasonable if the people were given the resources to then address their addictions, she became even more indignant.  Is she supposed to fund these people’s therapy for stupid habits that they are too weak to get rid of?  My response was that yes, of course the government was to help with these services, as many people would not be able to afford it otherwise.  Additionally, addictions are physical, and thus more than just a “strength of motivation/will” problem.  When I asked her what was to happen to these people and families if the government was not to assist them with “her” money, she said they can just fail.  That was where I lost it.

Maybe part of my objection to just letting people fail or “rot in the streets” (outside of the obvious fact that it would become a public safety and decency problem) is that I cannot possibly accept giving up on people, on seeing them fail.  Maybe I’m just not selfish enough, or, as my dad continually insists, I haven’t paid enough taxes to become conservative and jaded yet, but really I believe that we either fail as one, or we rise and prosper as one.  The most failed societies on this planet are those where the elite hide themselves from the torment and tumult of a crumbling middle and lower class.  Income inequality and poverty breed social strife, tension, and unrest.  This is often what has, historically at least, differentiated industrialized societies from the developing ones.  (Of course, in some ways, these industrial societies were simply ‘outsourcing’ the inequality that still was an elemental part of the global economic system to the poorer regions of the world).  If others fail, and find themselves with little available resources, (especially if drug addictions or mental illnesses are involved), society at large will suffer the consequences, consequences which can span generations.  The failure of the poor is the externality of a system built on inequality.  And people with nothing to lose are dangerous.

But that, while a good argument, is not my main reason for supporting welfare programs.  As I said before, I cannot stand to let people fail, to see others fall through the cracks.  Somehow, my success is cheapened by others’ failures; I cannot in good conscience be wealthy, nor happy, while others are in misery, pain, and oppression.  And there are more forms of oppression than simply those created by guns and tanks.  To me, we all can do well, or we can do what we can to make sure that we all do.  Seeing others fall and doing nothing is not an option.  That is how bound up in the well-being of others is my own happiness.  As the infinitely wise Lilla Watson, of the Aboriginal Activist movement of Australia said; “But if you have come because your liberation is bound up in mine, then let us work together.”  Maybe I feel this way because I know, had just a few aspects of my life, or the timing of my existence, been slightly different, it could easily be me that is in the need of help, or maybe I feel this way because of some universal bond to humanity and all its forms.  If so, is there a spirit that others have missed, or choose to ignore?  It is true, I have yet to feel the full impact of providing for others on my own life or income, and my perspective has been influenced by having a strong and successful family, but I will not believe that this is simply a monetary issue, just as I do not believe that any one person is helpless.  Every action we take has implications and consequences, and the system, while designed to control our actions, cannot fully control our decisions.  There are always alternatives to the narrative that we are being fed, and when that narrative no longer works, it is possible to find another way, whether you are the poor person looking for some help or the well-off person feeling the pinch of taxes.

Thus, this reaches my last two points.  The first is an observation about our generation, or rather, a comparison of it to the two that came before us.  Part of the strong opposition to taxes and government spending on things beyond the purely concrete or directly beneficial is our generation’s “me” mentality.  We have grown up in an age where everything is designed and built for us; the customer is numero uno, whether that means he or she gets a phone tailored to work for any possible interest or fancy or that he or she can get a slurpee at any hour of the day that he or she pleases.  In some places, stores close for siestas, or do not open until usually when everyone else is at work.  But America has pioneered the customization of consumption, for profit is number one, and long ago some businessmen found that customer satisfaction was the number one way to increase profit.  The consequence of this lifestyle, I believe, is partly that we have become a self-absorbed generation.  And retail companies and producers love this.  We consume more now than ever, despite global warming, conservation, and the whole environmental movement.  To me, this has manifested itself in very direct ways in our social movements.  Once upon a time, social movements were about the poor innocent children being killed by our tanks, the exotic animals that were being driven to extinction by climate change, or about the equal rights of the people of small nations far away.  Those crazy hippies really fought for other people, and believed that “a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  But social movements have changed.  Now, they are about how global warming is going to cost us humans lives and money, how the big man screwed us, or how the government is interfering too much with our stuff.  Me, me, me me.  Where have the mass movements for the people we’ve never even met gone?  Where is the concern for the whole?  It is even obvious in the disconnect of social movements, where in the past numerous campaigns could team up to help each other’s causes, now the motivation isn’t there to put the time into collaborations and coalitions.

In this way, people now fight for what affects them, and largely ignore what doesn’t.  My family member fights adamantly for women’s rights (not that this isn’t a noble cause), but ignores the plight of indigenous women that are abused in clothing sweatshops and coffee plantations that make the clothes she wears and the coffee she drinks.  I think we have gotten too good at ignoring what makes us uncomfortable, or at least that we have too many avenues offering compliant comfort.  Social movements are now co-opted by businesses, letting people somehow convince themselves that they are doing something good by buying a certain product.  Even social movements have become commodified.

In today’s political context, no one wants to pay through taxes for someone else to get, sometimes literally, a free lunch.  Nowadays, people believe their taxes can only be used to pay for things that will directly affect them, which also explains why, with the increase in the number of teens sent to private schools, California’s voting population has divested from public education.  Every spending item and bureaucratic priority has been scrutinized by the population, nixed or strengthened depending on its relevance to the lives of those who hold the most power.  As an article I once read stated, the American politician is now petrified of his or her constituents, because his or her every move is criticized; every political action must now prove to be favorable among a majority of the constituency.  While this helps keep politicians accountable, it also makes it difficult to govern and threatens to turn every political action into short-term, superficial campaign victories designed to rally support.  This has become polarizing, as well as ineffective.  From the prospective of voters, it is also making politics hated, and dysfunctional.  Now, if a politician does one thing that a voter disagrees with, or approves one dollar of spending not targeted to that voter, he or she loses that voter’s support.  People now believe the fallacy that they can get everything they want.  In politics, as in life, this is not the case.  So, the consequence is that no politician is good enough, and no governmental good deed goes unpunished.  The simple solution has been that government needs to go.

Now, back on topic.  Part two of my opposition to requiring drug tests for welfare recipients is that the concept is largely based on the incorrect assumption that all welfare recipients do drugs and are probably lazy.  This is simply not true and is a gross and condescending stereotype.  Some people may have rationales behind their arguments, but in many ways, there is also a hidden disdain for the subjects receiving welfare that borders on discrimination and racism.  But the final assumption made is that the people who are receiving welfare or addicted to drugs are simply too pathetic and lazy to help themselves.  “If I was in that position, I could raise myself up by my bootstraps and do fine without the government,” or so the reasoning goes.  How amazing it is that we often have the audacity to believe that we can put ourselves in other people’s shoes and do a better job at their lives than they do.

You see, people in our generation are so consumed in their own worlds and concerns that they are losing the ability to understand others.  We start to assume that everyone has freedom, and that, if they are not doing as well as we are, then they simply were too lazy or too weak.  We don’t see beyond the effects; we don’t see the causes.  In this way, we lose empathy for others and sympathy for their situations. 

Now, part of this is also a disagreement in philosophy.  People believe that everyone has “free will,” through which they are surely in control of their lives and take actions without any stimulant necessitating that they do so.  But I believe in determinism.  All actions can be understood by the myriad of events and states of consciousness that go into their fruition.  I do not believe that there is a function in the human brain that allows us to make a choice without that choice already having been precipitated by some other trigger.  This may sound like I’m suggesting that human beings are robots, but I am not.  Indeed, we have more characteristics of stimulant-response automatons than we would like to think, but we do have the capability to think and reflect.  But doing so is still only done within a certain mindset that has already been established by pre-existing conditions, and that mindset determines the path of that thinking and reflecting.  And this thinking and reflecting can affect our decisions, such as making us decide not to drink again, but our decision not to is still only allowed by the necessary reactions of chemicals and impulses in our brains.  Nothing can spawn out of thin air.  Thus, asserting that, in one person’s place, you would have acted differently is only really saying that your own state of being and past experiences would have necessitated that you make the different choice.  Of course, people can get out of poverty, and they can get out of addictions, but it takes the right inputs, even if they are as nebulous as a thought arrived at by reflection on an experience in early childhood.

What this boils down to is judgment.  Can we judge the quality of a person’s character without knowing the depth of that person’s experience?  And if we cannot, how do we blame them for their mistakes, and condemn them to a life of misery?  I will not let others fall through the cracks, blaming them for their life, and assume no responsibility myself.  And I will not hold the pretentious position of believing that I am qualified to judge a person’s actions, or that I am of the select, “chosen” ones.  As if the only element of fate that differentiates their future from mine is some innate, eternal aspect of my character or soul.  No one chose me, but I also didn’t do it by myself.  Enough good things aligned in my life, and I got lucky on more than a few occasions.  The only life I can possibly have the credentials to judge is my own, and I won’t do that, for the sake of my own sanity.

For the economists that ask how much will we spend to pull all sinking souls out of the darkness, I can only assert that I do not know, but that I could not possibly place a monetary value on a human life.  Sadly, prices are put on people’s lives all the time, but I hope one day it will no longer be necessary to do so.  Life is more than money, and human life deserves the dignity of not being quantified by currency.

But that is now beyond the point.  I hope people can see where I’m coming from in my discussion here, for our generation is in great need of some hard self-reflection.  Everything has consequences, and I am afraid of the consequences that may come if we do not better analyze the evolving nature of our social relationships and our material world.  For this, we must suspend judgment and harsh political partisan banter.  For, we all need help at times, and we all must now assume the communal, universal values that have united us in the past and that can lift us into the future.

  Note: