Craziness and our Future

Craziness and our Future

My good friend Michele Hemenway lives in Louisville & has been working in the schools there with the Americans Who Tell the Truth project for many years. She is a great educator and wrote the curriculum for the project. Recently she was talking with a group of students at Central High in Louisville and asked them to look at the website, pick a portrait that seemed particularly meaningful to them, and then say why. Michele sent me many of the responses. One especially intrigued me.

A sixteen year old girl wrote:

“When I went to check out the website, one portrait really stood out to me. The portrait of Frederick Douglass. The quote on his portrait caught my attention as well. The quote reminds me of all the craziness going on in today’s society. It makes me think and view the world in a way I never have, but it makes me worry. It makes me worry if we keep this craziness going, what does that mean for my future, for everyone’s future?”

Let me remind you of the Frederick Douglass quote that I put on his portrait:

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”

Although Frederick Douglass, when he said those words, was speaking primarily about slavery and racism and the instability that such injustice engenders in society because of the hatred, bitterness, inequality, and anger that are their legacy, his words --- as the student at Central High knew --- are equally true today. We live in a world of increasing, not decreasing, economic and social inequality. There are more people in slavery all over the world today than in the 1850s. Over two billion people live in terrible poverty. Billions are illiterate. Billions feel exploited to one degree or another for the benefit of the powerful. Billions are the objects of violence against which they have little defense. They try to farm depleted soil and drink poisoned water. These conditions are what the girl was referring to as “craziness.” And she is quite rightly concerned about the fallout of such craziness in terms of how it will affect her future. Isn’t it obvious to say that any actions that don’t promote fairness and the welfare of all are ultimately crazy?

But why is it “craziness”? Why don’t we call it simply competition, winners and losers? Isn’t competition good? Shouldn’t the winners be rewarded?

The problem is that most economic competition in the world is not of equals striving for a prize while playing by agreed upon rules. It’s the competition of the strong against the weak. Rich corporations and powerful people, who write their own laws, against poor local people. It’s what we call injustice and exploitation. It’s craziness because, as Frederick Douglass knew, people will only take abuse for so long. The exercise of such power for domination and profit does not make the world secure. It increases the likelihood of insecurity. Abused people, when their appeals to justice go unheeded, finally come to think they have nothing to lose by striking back.

When I painted Douglass’s portrait, I chose that quote exactly for that reason. It was in the wake of 9/11, and I was trying to use Douglass’s words to make it clear that people do not fly airplanes into towers out of simple jealousy of our lifestyle. A bitterness far more profound must be at work, a bitterness born of a knowledge that our military and economic policies are not bringing them democracy but desperation. Craziness. Each side becomes its own craziness.

This craziness is not only being enacted against people, but against the animals and plants, rivers and oceans, mountains and deserts, even the atmosphere. We see that as a result of climate change, the way we have degraded and oppressed the only air we have “… neither persons nor property will be safe.”

So, what to do? How does one resist such craziness and try to secure one’s future?

The first thing to do is make sure you don’t ignore injustice. Speak up about it. Organize groups to educate yourselves and then others about issues --- particularly local issues --- that you can do something about. Act out the change yourselves. A society does not become more just because people wait & hope for the government to change policy. The society becomes more just when the people insist that the government change policy. And the people don’t have to wait for the government. They have to teach the government.

Frederick Douglass also said, “Find out what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong that will be imposed on them.”