- [30] In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down
from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They
stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.
[31] A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw
the man, he passed by on the other side. [32] So too, a Levite, when he
came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. [33] But a
Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him,
he took pity on him. [34] He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring
on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an
inn and took care of him. [35] The next day he took out two silver coins
and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I
return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'
-
- [36] "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor
to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"
-
- [37] The expert in the law replied, "The one who
had mercy on him."
- Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."
-
- -Luke 10:25-37
-
- In contrast to the seriousness of Christ's message, consider
a related irony that is comically absurd. Commonly referred to as the "U.S."
our nation consists of grossly deformed social, political, economic, and
cultural systems that indoctrinate us in the quasi-religion of "it's
all about me" while conditioning us to reflexively reject nearly all
things related to the collective "US."
-
- Self-satisfied and narcissistic little careerists that
many of us are, we remain oblivious to the immense suffering we are inflicting
on the world as we gleefully pursue the American Dream, replete with the
requisite Hummer, McMansion, trophy spouse, 2.5 "perfect" children,
and all the trappings to which our American Exceptionalism entitles us
at the expense of billions of other humans, hundreds of billions of non-human
animals, and Mother Earth herself.
-
- Sure, many of us hear Jesus's parable and think of ourselves
as the Good Samaritans. After all, our humanitarian imperialism has made
the world safe for freemarket-dom and corporatocracy for years. And those
"ignorant savages" whom we have "rescued" by bringing
them the "stability" of ruthless dictatorships and showing them
how to put their resources we exploit to good use damn well better be thankful
we bestowed our "compassion" upon them. So in a very perverse
sense, we are Samaritans when it comes to our foreign policy because we
often involve ourselves in the affairs of others, but no argument based
on a shred of intellectual honesty would support us being "Good."
-
-
-
- Generally speaking, we have much more in common with
the Levite than the Good Samaritan. From the moment the doctor retrieved
us from the birth canal and severed the umbilical cord that nurtured us
for nine months, our sponge-like minds began absorbing the idiocies of
the distinctly "American" myth of rugged, hyper-individualism.
We devote such exhaustive levels of emotional and mental energy to aping
the ridiculous archetypes personified by the likes of "go it alone
hard asses" such as John Wayne, Sylvester Stallone, and Bruce Willis
that our capacity to experience empathy, compassion, and deep connections
with human and non-human animals is severely stunted.
-
- How beguiled are we with a cultural dogma that elevates
the individual to the level of a deity and portrays collectivism as a plague
of Biblical proportions?
-
- Let's examine some of the contradictions and distortions
to which many of us are blind.
-
- Even the "lone wolf" legends of the silver
screen can't escape their humanity. They were conceived by two human beings,
developed in their mother's womb for nine months, brought into this world
by doctors or mid-wives, raised and nurtured, educated, and remain(ed)
highly interdependent with the rest of the human race.
-
- Few people other than Ted Kaczynski can claim anything
close to true independence, and even his wasn't life-long or absolute.
Yet many of us conduct our lives with a thinly veiled "me first and
to hell with the rest of the world" attitude, as if we are the only
ones on the face of the planet who really matter and as if we don't need
a soul to help us as we bull-doze through life to attain our goals.
-
- As a nation we have seriously defaulted on the social
contract to which we are each bound as long as we participate in society.
Our moneyed elite, petite bourgeoisie, and wild-eyed libertarians insist
that society provide them with Rock of Gibraltar assurance of their negative
rights to attain profit and protect their infinitely precious propertyand
they want heads rolling if someone violates these "sacrosanct"
privileges. Meanwhile they struggle (often successfully) with nearly every
ounce of their being to minimize, diminish, or obliterate the use of public,
communal resources to uphold and fulfill positive rights, such as access
to health care, education, food, and housing.
-
- In the propagandistic jargon of the ruling class and
libertarians, negative rights are "freedom" and positive rights
are "welfare." Associating their coveted "rights" to
profit and private property with the word freedom, a universally beloved
ideal, and positive rights with the word welfare, a pejorative term, is
a clever way of keeping the masses working against their own interests.
-
- For instance, what decent human being would argue that
we don't have a moral obligation to tend to our sick and dying? Even in
the amoral chaos of war soldiers do their utmost to care for their wounded
comrades. Yet as is common knowledge, Michael Moore recently made a documentary
which clearly demonstrates how depraved and grossly inadequate our profit-driven
health care system is. And there is still incredible resistance to universal
health care. In the "me first society" we have no problem telling
Christ to go to Hell with all that compassion nonsense.
-
- Let's follow the twisted logic here. John Calvin told
us that the quickest way to ascend to heaven is to get rich. Universal
health care is a form of socialism. And if we begin to surrender our beloved
capitalism, 'evil Commies' will eliminate our freedom to think what television
tells us to think, our "right" to buy more stuff, and our one
in a billion chance to be like "The Donald."
-
- So, without yielding to the abject malevolence of collectivism,
how do we deal with the problem of 46 million uninsured, the tens of millions
more who are under-insured, the indigent whom the hospitals dump on Skid
Row without treatment, and the millions of seniors who choose between having
enough to eat and filling their prescriptions?
-
- Quite simple really. We PRETEND to be the Good Samaritan
while continuing along our private little "roads to success"
like the Levites we are. We pass laws requiring that people carry health
insurance (again we can thank John Calvin-this time for imbuing us with
the tortured notion that punishment is a form of love for one's fellow
man since it cleanses our sinful nature). We produce scandalously deceptive
commercials in which Montel Williams shills for a Big Pharma front called
the PPA and leaves viewers with the impression that the major drug companies
are going from community to community dispensing free prescription medication
(when in reality the PPA merely provides information on public and private
assistance available to the uninsured). We push for medical savings accounts.
We shift the costs to those with insurance by raising premiums, deductibles,
and co-pays. We shout down those who decry the obscene state of health
care in the wealthiest nation in the world by telling them to quit whining
about "entitlements" and to move to France if they hate America
so much.
-
- In the 18th Century Rousseau recognized that the ruling
class was enforcing a grossly one-sided social contract which ensured that
they maintained their wealth and power. Little has changed, even in the
"land of the free." How peculiar that we profess to be a nation
of Christians yet tenaciously cling to a system that ensures extremely
polarized socioeconomic strata, causes suffering for billions of sentient
creatures and violates nearly every principle for which Christ was martyred.
-
- Perhaps the most telling sign of our shattered moral
compass is that many of the millions of US Americans who are finally recognizing
that the United States is a brutish monster have stampeded to support a
libertarian reactionary from Texas. While Ron Paul is principled and courageous
in his stances against the establishment's murderous foreign policy, he
remains wedded to the libertarian ideals which rest on the deluded infantilism
of hyper-individualism.
-
- Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are
no libertarians in homeless shelters. Libertarianism is simply a rather
transparent guise for the myopic selfishness and naked greed that accompany
our obsession with "me first and only." To justify maintaining
their negative rights under the social contract while minimizing or eliminating
positive rights (which actually place a burden of responsibility upon all
of usand this very jejune bunch is apparently incapable of accepting
such a load), they attack laws and regulations that "threaten"
the "free" market and the use of public monies to provide for
the well-being of society as a whole.
-
- Some of the more rabid libertarian "thinkers"
such as F.A. Hayek went so far as to remind the poor and working class
to thank their oppressors and exploiters for their very existence.
-
- "The proletariat which capitalism can be said to
have 'created' was thus not a proportion of the population which would
have existed without it and which it had degraded to a lower level; it
was an additional population which was enabled to grow up by the new opportunities
for employment which capitalism provided."
-
- Or in other words, forget about a living wage, safe working
conditions, or reasonable hours, you miserable ingrates. Without us, you
would not have been born. Bend over and say thank you!
-
- Once presented with the glaringly obvious moral and practical
deficiencies of libertarianism, capitalism, and hyper-individualism (each
of which we have been conditioned to embrace as "normal," healthy,
and inevitable), most decent human beings recoil in horror. Objectively,
we want to be the Good Samaritan, but have been dogmatically trained to
be the Levite.
-
- While most of us aren't evil by nature, the psychic disfigurement
caused by our dedication to hyper-individualism manifests itself in some
very ugly ways. However, we have the power to regurgitate the intellectual
manure we have been digesting since birth and focus our time, energy, thoughts
and actions to honoring the social contract as Rousseau prescribed:
-
- "Each of us puts his person and all his power in
common under the supreme direction of the general will; and in a body we
receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole."
-
- It's time to abandon the childish notion that it is "all
about me." The world is in flames, in large part because of us. We
need to be Samaritans, not Levites.
-
- Jason Miller is a recovering US American middle class
suburbanite who strives to remain intellectually free. He is Cyrano's Journal
Online's associate editor (<http://www.bestcyrano.org>http://www.bestcyrano.org/)
and publishes Thomas Paine's Corner within Cyrano's at <http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/>http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/.
You can reach him at <mailto:JMiller@bestcyrano.com>JMiller@bestcyrano.com
|