On Friday morning a new BevMo! store opened in San Jose near Westgate. As part of the celebration of the grand opening, management was giving $25 gift cards to the first 500 customers, and some $100 gift cards to a lucky few. I didn't think that many people would show up, since it was a weekday and the gift card could not be used for alcohol, but I was wrong. I did snag a gift card though, but I think I must have been at the end of the 500.
The check-out line was too long so I decided not to get anything today.
I couldn't wait to leave that place. The Uhmerican sheeple was a depressing sight. "I see dead people." (The Sixth Sense) or "All I see are dead people." (Twelve Monkeys) There is a memorable line of dialogue in J.J. Abrams's Star Trek, spoken by Karl Urban's Leonard McCoy: "Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence."
For some reason that line comes to my mind frequently - probably because it was used in the trailer to introduce us to McCoy. We need something comparable that describes this "society" in which we find ourselves, something fitting for Uhmerica, a swirling tempest of ignorance, pride, narcissism, entitlement, impiety, propelled by the pursuit of self-interest and pleasure. A veritable catalog of the vices of the megapolis. Society is a word that is used loosely with respect to the Uhmerican megapolis. We may live among more people but have we less friendships in comparison with other and earlier polities. The people in line - all strangers. How many of them will I encounter again in the future? I would not be surprised if the number is 0.
I, too, was waiting in line for a freebie, and more than a few of them would probably agree that there is more to life than shopping and consuming. How many of them are Tea Partiers? True conservatives? Do they not know how dire our situation is? How problematic our political system and economy are? How ignorant are we of its complexity, or of the various exchanges and productions that are not obvious to us because they take place somewhere far away! What of our faith that this will all continue definitely? Our political economy is morally insane, but we act like this is all normal because we were born into and raised in it.
How can we take a magister seriously when he, too, is ignorant of first principles and has bad habits into which he has been trained in order to live and function in this society? Does he not become a mere "expert" with no moral witness?
In such a society a man who is naturally inclined to work for the good of the whole and "social altruism" is not sufficiently appreciated. He is not rewarded for his loyalty and affection; he's just another nameless individual, except to a few. Many do not believe in reciprocity or even simple gratitude; they pass over the chance to develop the requisite social virtues because "it's all about me."
Is it so "rational" to be so generous rather than acting like everyone else? How can this culture not turn men who should be virtuous into self-interested men? It's what everyone else is doing, and they are not looking out for him and his own. We may not live in Hobbes's dog-eats-dog state of nature, but aren't we close. Relentless competition for wealth, comfort and pleasure, promotion of one's own, living with narrowly defined associations instead of fuller civic friendships.
In such a fragmented "society" what can he do but live according to the order of charity as best as he can, fulfilling his obligations and duties to his family and his friends and work to consolidate wealth, power, and influence in whatever group he finds himself? Isn't that the rational thing to do, since he cannot expect anything from the strangers who live nearby and probably have different priorities and moral attitudes? Wouldn't a simple cost-benefit analysis show this to most people who understand the world they actually inhabit?
I expect that the number of disaffected men will grow, and after a certain point the elites may feel threatened by them. When vets begin to feel underappreciated or discarded, what then?
On Thursday, I was in the staff lounge for lunch and I heard an one of the teachers, a man in his 50s or 60s, asking a woman teacher (in her late 20s?) when her wedding date was, and when she would "no longer be living in sin." They were openly joking about it, and then another teacher, a woman in her 50s, added that she was cohabitating with her fiance, and his father refused to step foot in their residence until after the wedding. The first teacher proclaimed that he couldn't understand why people were like that. Really?
Not only is there no shame because they do not think cohabitating is wrong, but they are not aware or do not care about the opinions of others who might overhear their conversation. They are "proud" of living in such a manner. They may mock traditional mores but they are the ones who are lost but do not know it. They may think they are fine, upstanding individuals, but such attitudes and behavior is indicative of vice.
Vice is not necessarily knowingly doing something that is wrong (that might be incontinence), but doing something that is counter to reason, being dominated by one's appetite so that one believes that the good one wants is the true or complete good.
Such moral blindness may be more the effect of vice than the cause of vice for those who were raised with true opinion or with Christian faith. Those who sin knowingly because they love the apparent good too much eventually reject the truth in favor of their own moral truth? However, those who are raised with very little or no moral guidance become vicious if their appetites are not disciplined; living in accordance with [disordered] appetite is becoming vicious. Even though they may be so ignorant that they are excused with respect to sin.
One of the teachers mentioned the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. I've never been there.
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