Trust your nose

In my last post I suggested the need for more regret, guilt, and even shame, to balance the titanic impulses in our culture. What else might curtail the hubris of corporate executives who continue to buy new private jets and collect fat bonuses with one hand, and knock on the taxpayers door asking for a bailout with the other? What planet do these people occupy? Maybe we should take a page from Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter and insist that the Wall Street mavens and CEOs and other architects of the current economic suffering each wear a big scarlet "G" (for greedy), sown onto their Armani suits. This might jumpstart the return of a US based textile and tailoring industry (the absence of which, is major cause for our dependence on sweatshops around the globe).

Of course we are all participants to varying degrees, and share some measure of culpability. A culture, a society, is a collective. But what can we do as individuals, to feel deeply what is wrong and also carry those feelings into the shared, public sphere? It's important not to pretend that we don't each share in the blame, that we never long for the free lunch or exploit the American largesse because it's convenient. But it's equally important that this awareness not become a solely personal burden, mea culpa, mea culpa. Both of these moves, an assumed innocence or inflated sense of guilt (and importance) are deadends.

What we're talking about is actually feeling bad, and responsible, for the actions we take as a society, and bringing those feelings into the public discourse. This transgresses against some of the "rules" that govern public, especially, public policy, debate. For one thing, the problems are big and complex so better be knowledgable, if not an expert, before you say much. In addition, being negative is not good, not helpful, so you've got to have a positive spin. Finally, the people who really have the right to speak up are the people who know what to do, right? The ones with solutions to offer. Well, look at what that has wrought.

I think we should free ourselves up to just protest, to give voice to our outrage recognizing that expression, in itself, as a meaningful action. There is an alternative to silence (which registers as agreement with those who control the bombs and the tax code) and going crazy reading and thinking and pondering and trying to grasp the myraid details, and joining up with the ideologues on either side. We are killing an unconscionable number of civilians in our so-called war on terror-- that needs to stop. We are threatening the survival of the entire human race (and that of many other creatures) with our gross overconsumption---that needs to stop. We let people live in the streets, we send children to crumbling schools without breakfast---that needs to stop. I wonder if we can understand the problems and develop the desire and will to solve them, without first feeling our regret and guilt and outrage.

Point out what is wrong, what you know in your gut is wrong. Trust your nose. You know what stinks.