WHO ARE WE?

  At various points in life one assesses who one is. Are we good? Are we bad? Have we done enough in our lives or have we wimped out on responsibilities? What has become of that young idealist? Where has all that energy gone? Does anything remain within to 'do something'? Who am I, if asked to define myself?

That question extends to every part of our lives, all the categories - public, private, domestic. That question reaches into another world, another class - that of the nation. Who or what is a nation? Is it a real thing or a made up vision that may not have any basis in reality to even exist? Has the definition, use and importance of 'nationhood' changed , particularly in relevancy? Particularly in its contribution to danger for the world, for every individual "I" combined to make up the "we"?

These are questions that have ever increasing importance in our lives. Since time immemorial, authors of fiction and non fiction have attacked that question, that group of questions. They have landed on all sides of them, leaving us with no definitive answer. And perhaps that is the best answer, for it demands that we constantly examine ourselves, improve ourselves, adapt to changing situations and circumstances.

In quite a frightening novel, The Noise, Patterson and Barker raise these very questions, particularly as one approaches the ending, in the understandings that arise, in the shocking truths that face mankind, in the ultimate responsibility for the condition of the world and the possibilities of its future - if any. Read it. It is a good read, even as it just might wake you up. But do not put it down, or put it away, without thinking, ruminating on the issues it raises.

Now look around at the world. Trump and his idiots continue to contest the 2020 elections, contending a patently false 'steal', the vanishing of millions of ballots or the opposite - the inclusion of mysterious Chinese ballots, or any weird and innately moronic, yet oh so dangerous challenges. Anything to contest reality if it does not please one. 

Well, that can be a good thing, if one attacks the reality of not such goodness. Hunger. War. Savagery towards others. Murder in the name of  G-d - and is it not time we stopped doing that!!!The old, yet continuing dangerous weapons race, complete with ever bigger and "better" weapons with which to kill the world's population several times over. Dead is dead. So what the hell!!! Does the sea truly belong to any particular nation? Why can we not share in its bounty in a fair manner, even as we all take responsibility for its rapidly deteriorating life consuming state of existence?

Twenty years after 9/11 we are still at war with terrorists, still waging war in the name of Allah or Jesus or any G-d that is convenient. Twenty years later we are waging a war of defense against homegrown terrorists who refuse to recognize a shared responsibility of all for all within the nation and within the category of mankind. I believe there is not one soul alive today that can actually demonstrate that G-d has indeed spoken to him/her. Served as a team coach. Nary a one.

The phrases of people seem to indicate that there is some level of understanding. "It still feels surreal....it was just horrifying, beyond ability to grasp." A child of a father, a victim, at the Towers, says she just "wants to live her life" even as she volunteers at the Memorial, even as she mourns his absence where a father should be.

And the war continues. Now we are in an existential war, much of it our own doing, a war against a tiny little nigh onto invisible bit of matter. We refuse to see the truth if it does not fit our political views, making no sense at all, and indeed, actually digging our own graves, and worse, the graves of those who depend upon us to defend them, to protect them.  Our kids, the elderly, the unthinking masses among us. Yet we do the polar opposite. Stupid. Dangerous. Unthinkable. And yet - there it is.

Vaccinate and get better odds - one in 5,000 of getting COVID. Vaccinate your kids. Stop the horrifying statistic of today - that one quarter - 25% of new cases clogging the hospitals are kids ! What the hell!! What is the matter with parents who will not vaccinate kids where possible, who will not vaccinate themselves, who fight against a mask mandate meant for protection, who continue to resist sense in activities. What the hell indeed.

We have hard truths to face. We have extremely difficult, perhaps impossible to solve, problems front and center. We have masses of deluded people who follow a false god, refuse measures meant to save their lives, die, for this fatal error, and worse, some of these people are within our own circle of friends and family. In The Noise an affected, infected child is asked to explain who she is. Outside, ever growing, is the mass of people who run without will, run into their death and then are consumed by their own madness. No cure, and when one character tells another that she knows how to fix it all - she shoots herself.  

Not an uplifting act is it? But perhaps the people in the novel, the USA, have reached that point of no return, and in fact, threaten the very survival of the nation, the world and certainly life as we know it. City dweller, small town folk, outliers and survivalists  - it matters not. The responsibility? Right on our own shoulders.

The answer, if any? Perhaps we get a clue in the mystifying statement of that little girl. 

"I am we."

There is no longer any true to Nature divide amongst the people of the world. We are all Musketeers - one for all and all for one. The sooner we recognize the truth of that motto the better we are, the more we increase our chances of somehow preventing the erasure of the human race from the face of this earth of ours, lent to us for the generations to follow - which we have apparently short circuited. 

"I am we." And the converse: We are I.

There are no more separations. The consequences for one devolve upon the we. Simple as that.