Red-headed robins, challenged by the weather, and Oklahoma mythology, including serial killers, mass murders, and werewolves. Imaginative subversion of the terrain. Students are not co-teaching. Two-headed chickens. A homeless freestyle rapper named Big Weiner. And from the notes of Kris Saknussemm: -Rapper 50 Cent, age 48 and trying desperately to look like a cartoon version of someone my students’ age, says to his 12 million X followers, “It’s almost over,” as in Humanity. This while he’s embroiled in collateral flak from the federal investigations of Puff Diddy for sex trafficking, rape, domestic abuse, drugs, guns—the usual. And where did all the playground-sounding names come from? Puff Diddy. Charlemagne Tha God. Megan Thee Stallion. Strange mix of adolescence (if not childishness) and sexual perversion. -Sawfish. Improbable creatures that look like they were designed for sheer novelty. They’re somehow going crazy and committing communal suicide in the shallow waters of Florida’s beaches. Perhaps a strangely apt metaphor. -Weirdly echoed by parents (particularly white parents) in epidemic numbers seeking professionally certified diagnoses of their kids as being autistic, ADHD, clinically depressed, or neurodivergent. Why? In order to secure more time on tests like the SATs and ACTs. -Meanwhile, Harvard, the jewel brand in the Ivy League (and the pressurized Holy Grail of the test taking frenzy) sees the first drop in applications ever. Antisemitism and plagiarism scandals are credited as causes in the decline. The Harvard Corporation (note that term) has also come under legal fire for DEI discrimination against Asians, artificially promoting underqualified African American applicants—while it’s been revealed that a disturbing percentage of white admissions are solely legacy based—children of alumni, faculty, and staff, who are in the main unable to compete outside the nepotism advantage. -On a broader, global scale, scientific experts from many fields debate the concept of the Anthropocene as umbrella label for the current era / epoch. But what no one ignores is that the Human Impact in question is viewed as entirely destructive. And on perhaps the principle of compounding interest, a great deal of the “damage” has occurred since the mid-20thcentury, which mirrors the rise of Environmentalism and green ideologies. Say one thing, do another. This inventory of Dysfunction could go on and on. We know. But like many curious and concerned thinking people today, you and I have talked about the Dysfunction often in terms of mass psychosis. A spiritual, psychological vortex-disease on the Cultural scale. I now wonder if the truth isn’t conceptually much simpler. Let’s take our sawfish death spiral despair as the emblematic end result of the ambient, atmospheric Dysfunction. If 50 Cent says world doom is at hand, what hope do sawfish have? Talk about a marginalized community. But what links these other crises (and so many more)? I’m coming around to viewing the “problem” as a fundamental collapse / erosion of Morality. Morale. Moral. How often do we connect those two notions? Are our problems today really all that complicated? Don’t they in fact amount to people knowing what the right thing to do is and not doing it? Each of the above examples from recent news is about a failure of moral conscience and basic decency. Perversion arises from selfishness. We can break down or address each of these issues (selected from far too many others) in almost child-level moral terms. Many people (particularly NPR followers) now embody a genuine hatred of Humanity for our environmental destruction. Does this mean they’re trying to live and consume more sensibly and sensitively? Nope. For the most part, they just complain about what governments and corporations are doing or not, while they go on consuming like it’s 1999 or 1979. Ivy League schools, and now so many downstream schools, companies, and government departments know that DEI policies are inherently unfair, divisive, and illogical. Racism in the name of combatting racism? Victimology in the supposed service of reducing victimization? Doesn’t work. Can’t work. At the same time, admitting mediocre white candidates because of legacy loyalty is actually an advertisement of total failure in the institution’s nurture of academic and intellectual excellence. How is it that legacy applicants are mediocre if Harvard is such an incubator of brilliance and achievement? All of this is just disingenuous maneuvering for personal, political, and identity politics gain. It's in the realm of lying and cheating—basic morality. Nothing complex or clever about it. Same with parents (especially parents of underachieving white children) pleading to psychologists to designate their kids as Special Needs. Work the System, milk the System. Everybody else is. Could it be that our core problem at this point in history isn’t nearly as ...
