Thank you so much for this. You're right that we don't have to do it again. We've done it before, and we can decide to engage in brand new ways this time.
"So I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m going to do, if it happens . . . ." You and me both!
I am in a privileged position, retired with financial security and Medicare (thank you, LBJ), so I don't need to worry about my job, a mortgage, the cost of bringing up kids. Yeah, bread and bacon cost a little more, but my Social Security check has kept pace. So I too can still envision having friends over for dinner, enjoying an evening together, and cleaning up afterwards - although probably that night rather than the next morning. And yes, I have come understand that my moral conscience has been unfairly exposed to distant injustice and unthinkable cruelty by living in a world of national and global media, atrocities over which I have no control, no way to influence, no way to change for the better. The question then arises what to think about the gap between one's moral conscience and one's inability to do anything about the immorality one witnesses. Kant's Categorical Imperative works in my private life, but not when I witness distant trauma. Still, to put it crassly, is it acceptable that I throw and enjoy dinner parties while I know an immigrant's life is being destroyed by sudden deportation or a January 6 felon is pardoned and released to do more of the same?? I have no answers, only that I'm sure that any academic dinner conversation over wine would still leave me the following morning not with dishes to do but with scruples and unease. Somehow that moral compass keeps pointing north regardless of where you are.
This is a really lovely piece & I loved the closing line. As someone who’s not in the US - I feel for you all, and subsequently, the rest of us for whatever happens. And I agree with your messaging - time is our own, no matter how much some people in power try to suggest otherwise!
I will open a bottle of bubbly because, as Napolean noted, in victory you deserve champagne and in defeat you need it.
Thank you so much for this. You're right that we don't have to do it again. We've done it before, and we can decide to engage in brand new ways this time.
"So I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m going to do, if it happens . . . ." You and me both!
I am in a privileged position, retired with financial security and Medicare (thank you, LBJ), so I don't need to worry about my job, a mortgage, the cost of bringing up kids. Yeah, bread and bacon cost a little more, but my Social Security check has kept pace. So I too can still envision having friends over for dinner, enjoying an evening together, and cleaning up afterwards - although probably that night rather than the next morning. And yes, I have come understand that my moral conscience has been unfairly exposed to distant injustice and unthinkable cruelty by living in a world of national and global media, atrocities over which I have no control, no way to influence, no way to change for the better. The question then arises what to think about the gap between one's moral conscience and one's inability to do anything about the immorality one witnesses. Kant's Categorical Imperative works in my private life, but not when I witness distant trauma. Still, to put it crassly, is it acceptable that I throw and enjoy dinner parties while I know an immigrant's life is being destroyed by sudden deportation or a January 6 felon is pardoned and released to do more of the same?? I have no answers, only that I'm sure that any academic dinner conversation over wine would still leave me the following morning not with dishes to do but with scruples and unease. Somehow that moral compass keeps pointing north regardless of where you are.
This is a really lovely piece & I loved the closing line. As someone who’s not in the US - I feel for you all, and subsequently, the rest of us for whatever happens. And I agree with your messaging - time is our own, no matter how much some people in power try to suggest otherwise!