THE CATACLYSMS THAT MAY BRING CARING

In Asia, where grandparents live with members of their extended family in the same home as their children and grandchildren the general culture has an appearance of a high degree of compassion and caring.

It may be that this is the case through natural kindness, or through the Buddhist philosophy that exists across these cultures, or even the historical knowledge that only by solidarity across their community can survival be better assured. No doubt it is these in combination, but there is a further factor alluded to by the final point, the relative poverty of these cultures.

When people have to work together, care for each other and nurture each other, even across genetic boundaries of family, they tend to. In times of drought, plague or war and when poverty is a constant there is an onus on everyone to group together for the common good and for the good of each family.

The West has long since moved above the living conditions lived in throughout most of Asia. In the West it is possible to live quite well without very much caring about anyone other than yourself. This doesn’t describe everyone by any means but it should be obvious that the atomization of western cultures is the general rule. We largely live apart. We may like or loathe our neighbors but often we don’t even connect with them in any way these days. We don’t need them. They don’t need us.

The trend of atomization, individualism and self-reliance so-called has come with the decades of increasing affluence after the upheaval of the Second World War. Until relatively recently this affluence was becoming increasingly available to all. This has now stalled and affluence now tends to graduate upward ever more rapidly instead of providing more life chances for those below.

In western cultures caring has gradually been farmed out to agencies other than the family. Family members still care of course but the pressures of life and the availability of other options means that the elderly in particular and most certainly distant family members and obviously neighbors and those even more distant have the onus on them to help themselves. And indeed in most cases in western cultures they do have a sizeable capacity to do so.

This trend of other agencies looking after people rather than naturally caring individuals has increased in the last few decades at times to the point where callousness is now recognized as an integral part of the culture and is almost taken for granted. To help someone you don’t know who clearly could use some help may take up too much of your time and would interrupt your plans and quite possibly get you in trouble for being late at the office. people can hardly afford to be too caring these days and many decide to eliminate caring almost completely, especially in regard to ‘strangers’. And increasingly there is a perception that many people are strange, that we can hardly relate to, who have realities that are probably alien to ours and whom we decide simply to separate out from as to engage them could have unpredictable and potentially unpleasant consequences.

This is the world that I see having emerged in the West in ever stronger form over the last four or five decades. Your experience may be different and you may disagree.

Communism was defeated, a system, no matter how flawed and oppressive it became, existed with the inherent concept that good things of this world should be more equally distributed and that by common ownership of the means of production this could be achieved. The most exaggerated forms of elitism as evidenced by the results of capitalism in the western world were to be eliminated by all working together for the good of all. Due to many diverse factors this concept now hardly exists outside of China and a few other pockets of this belief in Cuba, Venezuela and elsewhere.

The loosely-defined West has prevailed in its devotion to free market capitalism. This system was ultimately to provide for us all and ultimately, presumably bring something of the same final result of at least the basics of life to all while allowing the attributes of the privileged and entrepreneurial few to thrive and retain the wealth they had or produced for themselves. But is capitalism fulfilling this inherent and unnamed promise? I do not believe it is.

As a species living within the spheres of relative affluence (as compared to the areas of Asia mentioned at the opening of this piece) there are clear signs a great many of us feel capitalism as it now exists is failing to deliver. We are exhorted to buy into an increasingly elitist future, we are endlessly enticed and seduced into believing that surface image and materialism are pretty much all that matters and that as individuals we can ‘have it all’.

Increasing numbers are revolting against the marketing of capitalism, the cold-hearted materialism and endless lust for ever more profit at its core has begun to alienate many. There is a strong sense that this level of aggressive, terminally acquisitive, red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism is destroying something vital at the core of our humanity, the instinct to care.

How much caring is really possible in this increasingly cut-throat western world? Those working voluntarily in soup kitchens and outlets providing free food and shelter to those in need do exist and are extraordinary individuals, but how much spontaneous caring exists outside of these few within the general 'community’ that hardly feels like a community in most cases?

Unity is not recognized as a necessary or vital function in affluent western societies as it is in poor Asian ones. Our affluence makes us feel we are relatively immune to the vagaries of life, we are confident we have the wherewithal to deal with whatever comes up. Though in this time of pandemic with the resultant casualties surrounding the loss of jobs, housing and heathcare this is now coming into question.

Calls for a greater degree of socialism are now heard, especially in the United States. By whatever means a tipping point has been reached or is being rapidly approached. The recent and in some cases ongoing protests against police brutality, especially against people of color, and in recent years against capitalism and capitalist structures indicate that there has been a sea change in attitudes, particularly in the young.

Something similar happened in my generation during the Sixties of course and it was ultimately swept away by a combination of its own excesses and the rise of a consumer culture which enticed the wanna be revolutionaries to rejoin the ranks of the conformist majority.

So what might more powerfully change the course we are on to ever more individualism with cold-hearted capitalism where we are separated from each other ever more permanently, fearing each other and regarding others as competition for jobs, homes and quite possibly the last million good lives available which we are all encouraged to race toward?

Poverty, the knowledge that we need each other, the facing of great danger that affects us all, the dread of an unknown future, all of these can give rise to the awareness of commonality that can generate what looks like compassion and caring when faced with catastrophe.

To believe that true caring and compassion will emerge with catastrophe would be naive. Many are too far gone within the milieu of the separated out dog-eat-dog world of competitive avarice to think they will transform suddenly into ultra-caring individuals when the catastrophes hit.

For that is what I believe it will take for what looks like mutual caring across social boundaries to break out, a series of monumental catastrophes that threaten all of us and which are seen to have already taken millions of lives.

This is not a wish for this to happen, merely a prediction. Perhaps as Trump conveniently says human-instigated climate change is a Chinese hoax. But I think not. The chances are that the vast bulk of the scientists and their data are right, catastrophes of the kind I am imagining are almost inevitable.

And, in the spirit of every cloud having a silver lining, these catastrophes and the millions of lives needlessly thrown away on the alter of ultra-capitalism may bring the one ray of light in those dark days, that of a poignant and inspiring resurgence of what looks like natural caring.

It may not be so, and I believe it probably won’t be except in the same minority of truly caring idealists we have now, it will merely be the myriad acts of necessity required by all to survive. But... it just might create a new culture that recognizes just how vital caring is and the avoidance of the atomization that went before which lent itself to the disaster for humankind just experienced.