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Dr. Herb Ruhs & grandson
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As soon as you are ready,
stop obsessing about politics
and all the rest of the hoopla
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by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News May 13, 2008
Politics is just the scum at the top of the boiling cauldron of
individual ambitions of a society. Ideology is just the collected
rationalizations of the ambitious for actions that would otherwise
inspire guilt. War is the culmination of countless spasms of
greed festering in a society.
The reality beneath all of this noise
and tumult is that the
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people of a society ultimately determine the system they are willing to live under, compromise with, and,
hopefully, take advantage of. If the dominant theme in the self-told
narrative of a sufficient mass of a society is personal advancement
over moral honesty, then all the rest, the
dirty politics, the crazy
ideas and endless war leading to inevitable destruction, is
predetermined. A Greek tragedy played out on a world stage. Hubris
leading to destruction.
The Pennsylvania Colony, lead by the Quakers, lived peacefully with
the Native population for decades. Ambitious people like Ben
Franklin saw in this peacefulness an obstacle to wealth, and so the
Quakers were removed from power, and the ambitions of land speculators
and ethnic cleansers took over. People in general (though even then
there were a few voices of moral objection to the project of
expansion) loved the idea of taking Native land and killing Native
people, in a campaign of terror designed to force them to vacate their
ancestral lands.
Thus the aggregate moral imperfections of the
society determined from that point forward that ours would be a
country dominated by dreams of exploitation, dispossession,
oppression and greed,
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What goes around, comes around.
We have caused immense suffering in the world during the brief time that we have existed as a society.
Now will come the time of our discontent, and out of that suffering there may yet emerge a society that we can be sincerely proud of participating in. |
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whose history would move determinably and
irresistibly toward Imperialism as a way of life and consequent
endless war, destruction and suffering that would guarantee a tragic
end.
It reminds me of the life histories of so many acquaintances who were
lured into a path of self-seeking and self-indulgence. On rare
occasions such individuals really do enter into recovery from their
various addictions and become better people than any I have known,
including those upright individuals that succeeded in avoiding all
moral pitfalls. But the prognosis, as we physicians like to say, is
grave, both for the addicted individual and the addicted
society. The concept of an "addicted society" was explored in a fine
little book entitled When Society Becomes an Addict by Anne Wilson
Schaef. Sounds like it is time to reread.
But who knows, maybe the shock of hitting bottom, an event that is
just around the corner for US society, will, analogous to the life
history of the rare addicted individual who enters a life long
recovery, result in a reawakening of the majority to the supreme
importance of living an honest, moral, caring and compassionate
life.
In the event of such a recovery, all the shouting and arguing
about politics, ideology, propaganda, climate change and the total
commodification of life will quiet down and much quiet contemplation
of the distressing reality we have constructed for ourselves will
take its place. If this transformation toward a more mature way of
life happens, current obsessions will ether change radically toward
positive concerns or, in most cases, simply become irrelevant. Maybe
we will all join in a massive twelve-step process that begins with a
confession that we are powerless over our addictive obsessions and
are resolved to rescue our lives from the crazy making thinking that
brought us to this very, very low point in our trajectory as a
society. One can always hope.
It is not that we don't collectively know what it means to lead a
value-centered life, it is just that we have, like spoiled children,
refused to believe that we had to actually practice moral behavior if
any sacrifice of egotistical goals was required.
What goes around,
comes around. We have caused immense suffering in the world during
the brief time that we have existed as a society. Now will come the
time of our discontent, and out of that suffering there may yet emerge
a society that we can be sincerely proud of participating in.
Whatever happens, it is certain that all the sound and fury of
current events is but a mirage, just so much smoke waiting for a
fresh breeze to blow it away.
© by the author.
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