Economic crisis and its roots (unedited)

It is, one can assume, easy to have libertarian leanings.  Nothing seems more obvious.  In fact we all wish we could have such leanings.  We all wish that we could cut ourselves off financially, emotionally, and intellectually from those around us.  Our Libertarian friends believe this to be just what the doctor ordered.  Forget those banks or deadbeats who let us down.  It is their fault, let them suffer the consequences.  Well, unless you have been hiding your money in your mattress or are named Ted Kaczynski, you will probably see the error in this argument. 

“No man is an island,” as John Donne put it.[1]  This of course is a most unpleasant realization to people.  We like to think of ourselves as self-sufficient.[2]  We would like to believe this myth and we do adhere to it with a religious fervor.  We hold to the religion of self-sufficiency in our neighborhoods, our marriages, and even our churches.  When I was younger and at college, I found church much duller because I would go to church but never get involved.  It was never that I wasn’t a Christian, it was just that I didn’t care.

Apathy breeds apathy, and it is ironic that something that can only produce more of itself should be so prodigious.  It is also odd to see just how fired up people can become about apathy.  However, we must remember that apathy is a black hole and that even though nature is ambivalent towards a vacuum, human nature abhors it.  Structure and order are our gods.  Each age finds it in a new form and visage.  Long ago, it was Baal worship, then the work’s-based-righteous Christianity (which as much to say, not Christianity on our terms), and today it is the evolution without thought.  It is hard to say what it will be tomorrow.

Our politics is the same way.  When things go right, we complain that too many politicians get in the way.  When things go wrong, we are outraged that politicians didn’t get in the way.  Even on the individual scale, everyone is a libertarian, until bad things happen.  It is interesting just how many people decry everyone else’s government waste, but not their own.

I share the blame.  Mute to the impending doom in our shiny cities, like Roman edifices covered in marble, but built on inferior and temporary materials; I should’ve spoken against such evident crises.  This too is congratulatory.  We know the truth, why do we not follow it?  We know how to build happy places, why do we not care?  How many things would we nail to a cross, hoping against hope for a resurrection?  That is where the rules come in and the laws and the structure and the order.  We bury alive our humanity for the sake of happiness on own terms.  We are not even honest about the whole thing.  If you would deny God, and neighbor, and a moral law inside you that is one thing; but please, let us be honest about it.  Let us be joyful in our muck and mire; and not try and cover it up with fancy names and silly systems.

And so we are, like it or not, condemned to share a ship with people that we may find unpleasant; but we cannot say that their plight is not our own.

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[1] Unless you have seen “About a Boy.” Then the obvious answer is Jon bon Jovi.

[2] A comical lie on par with that the financial crisis was caused by other people and had nothing to do with ourselves.