better than...

"We live in a world where too many people won’t go far enough, wont do what they know is right - what they believe. I don't know how or why it got this way, where the world has become so complicated that to involve yourself in someone else’s problem is to invite them needlessly on yourself."

-Chris Carter via Frank Black in Millennium, The Well Worn Lock.

It doesn't sound nearly as impressive without Frank Blacks gravely voice. It doesn't sound quite as prophetic either. Reading over it separate from that the scene, I'm not even sure it sounds true. It is true that we live in an impossibly complicated world. Trying to gauge the complexity of our lives alongside the lives of our ancestors would be futile, impossible. The difference isn't even one of degrees, but of planes of existence.

The number of variables that we juggle in our daily lives. The layers that our minds work on. Multi tasking as a survival trait. Compartmentalizing is survival of the fittest. And it's not even that we are deeper thinkers. Our philosophers are rock stars, or movie stars who don't even speak their own words, but recite the lines of other men who lack the conviction to quote themselves. We are stretched thin, a membrane pulled tight as a drum, and infinitely tangle skein. Our complexity is not our strength, it is not our survival trait - it is our snare, it is the variable by which we will achieve our summit, our stagnation.

But to say we don't go far enough is a grotesque understatement. We do not go.... period. There was a conversation recently, between two people I care about, and two people I respect. Party #1 and Party #2.

Party #1 had just voiced the fact, in passing, not as a center piece to the conversation, that they had decided not to go to Wal Mart any more. For reasons molded purely from conscience and social awareness. Party #2 inquired as to why this choice had been made. A congenial inquiry sounded mostly from curiosity, maybe just a sliver of disapproval.

Reasons were given. Their validity debatable, as always. The tactic towards small town, the initial low prices until, to the very calendar month, the neighboring small businesses disappear, and the sudden rise in prices. The misleading advertising. Take the test yourself. 80% of all items are made overseas in this "all american" store. The lawsuits from employees. The unfair wages, the sexual harassment, the unjust terminations. And the conversation ended. Thank heavens, all that social awareness was getting boring anyway.

Until party #2 calls back later that night. I'm not in on that conversation, so all this is hearsay mind you. And yet, two things from that relayed conversation, monologue maybe. Stay with me.

First, the assertion that Party #1 is only hurting itself by going someplace with higher prices. Wal Mart has the good deals.

Second. That what party number one is doing is pointless. The mere and small fact that they won't shop there anymore is too small to make a difference anyway.

And that, somehow, sums up so much of what is wrong.

You're not going to go stand beside the woman who was sexually harassed and then fired for it, her supervisor given a verbal warning, took a corporate sensitivity class, and was promoted. You're not going to help her now that she's homeless, or stand outside a wal mart telling her story. I mean, you don't even know her. You wouldn't be expected to. I don't expect you to. I'm not helping her.

But would you even quite shopping at the store that did this to her? Stop giving money to the corporation that lets this happen? I mean, heck you're against sexual harassment, in principle at least. But it's not like it was your wife who was had her ass groped and humiliated. And besides Wal Mart does have the good deals.

You're a good person, you know sweatshops are bad. You don't think that's a good word, and you wouldn't wan to work at one. But you don't know those kids in any of the at least three factories that Wal Mart purchases products from, keep financially afloat.

In general, you don't like the idea of children being paid $2.13 for 14 hours of labour without so much as a break for the restrooms, with no healthcare, no safety procedures and no hope for anything better.

But you aren't about to chain yourself to the machine that makes the shirts. You aren't about to confront the floor manager as he scowls at children as young as 8 years old. And who would blame you? Not me. I'm too god damn lazy to even look up where the place is, much less go there.

But would it kill you to quite buying the shirts that their little fingers bled on? But it's not like it's your granddaughter being mistreated, and they do have the good deals.

It's not that we don't go far enough - though we don’t, I don't - it's that we don't go at all.

We are not a socially conscience people. We don’t' see beyond our lives. Our little lives with the shiny car, the well trimmed lawn, the clean house. We lack that thing that allows us to view ourselves as part of a greater society. We are fractured and disconnected and apathetic.

Which is fine. Maybe we've always been that way. But I wish we'd quite pretending that we are something better if we aren't going to really strive to be something better.