Conspiracy to Evolve

I'm getting a lot of conspiracy theory calls from friends. And it's not that I think these stories and their related theories sound far-fetched -- they don't. I can believe that a classist/racist world would feel less anxious about a stadium full of poor black people than it would about a stadium full of rich white people. That's almost a Duh. But do I think that the Bush administration intentionally withheld funding to fix the New Orleans levee system because they knew the big storm was coming and wanted to commandeer the city for oil shipping and receiving purposes? Not really. For one thing, I didn't see Clinton (ya, I know, Republican Congress -- point granted) fixing it, either.

I really think Bushness is like most other evil: banal. What we're seeing now is the semi-accidental, mundane convergence of short sighted, callous, greedy, (yes, classist/racist) decisions. I think the Bushettes hoped the Big Storm just wouldn't happen on their watch, wanted to use the money for Iraq, wanted to cut taxes for the wealthy. What we're seeing now is the natural result of those short sighted, callous, greedy, classist/racist decisions. This result highlights some pretty uncomfortable truths:

We have no real leadership.

In spite of Bushite reassurances to the contrary, we have no efficient, coordinated emergency response system.

There are actually poor people in America.

And there appears to be (gee wiz) some correlation between race and poverty.
Poverty makes it hard to get out of town when danger approaches (i.e., ya can't get out of town if you don't have a car/gas/money).

In a way, deep conspiracy would be easier to deal with. It's something concrete to point to, easy to separate oneself from. But in the end, it's easier to create an us/them dichotomy in that instance as well. Easier to demonize, dehumanize. While it might be rather difficult for most of us to sympathize with or even relate to poor planning, inefficiency, hopeful thinking, bureaucratic ineptitude, and lust for money, at least we have to admit that those are basic human behaviors that we're all guilty of to some degree or another.

Then again, when September 11 happened I said to my students, "No one could possibly predict planes flying into towers, for heavens sake!"

On the positive side:

Human nature in these two major disasters has shown itself as something far more heartful and generous than, surely, most of us knew. People offering their homes to hurricane refugees is in the hundreds of thousands. Offering them free. No questions about race or religion or previous employment. Just offering their houses. People are crawling out of the woodwork to send money and water and food. Apparently what the opinions of crowd psychologists (prior to Sept. 11) was wrong: we don't think of #1 when the shit hits the fan. We think of one another.

And maybe this is really what we need to know about ourselves right now. Maybe knowing this about ourselves will help us break our addiction to the so-called leaders who want so badly to convince us that we need their protection, or the Russians, Arabs, hurricanes will get us.

The truth is, there is no safe place, no all-knowing and protective big daddy. We have to grow up now and realize this. We have to. It's the next jump in evolution, and if we don't take it and therefore start taking care of ourselves, well, we just aren't going to last all that much longer.

There is no big daddy. There will always be danger. Those are hard things to know. But we have each other. We really do -- as long as our hearts are open. Imagine if we could keep our hearts always as open to one another as they are right now. Just imagine for a second.