Living in a Messy World

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“History is written by the winners” is a popular expression.  You have your choice of authors since it has been attributed to Orwell, Churchill, Hitler, Franklin, Bismark, and probably Genghis Khan.  History is always sanitized by those who record it, read it, and teach it.  It is impossible in the written, spoken and or acted word to truly convey the chaos of a place and time in history.  We always lose the tension, the sensory influences, and the real emotions that drove the events of the day.

Today, living with our sanitized history and known outcomes, it is so easy to condemn the overt racism that drove the United States government, led by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to relocate and imprison over 110,000 Japanese-Americans at the onset of the second world war.  Unfortunately, few alive today can appreciate the emotions of fear and outrage that come when your self-image of the strength of the US, and a bigoted view of the enemy are shattered in a single instance?  Today’s touchy-feely society is all about making right the sins of the past, but they miss the point of those sins.  Man’s inhumanity to man cannot be made right, it cannot be undone, and it must not be excused.  Rather, it must serve as reminders of man’s weakness and inhumanity.  Guide posts and lessons along a path we should learn from as we struggle for a better society.

But we don’t learn from them, we use them as sledge hammers to beat our opponents senseless as we make the same mistakes for different reasons.  I would say our society is at a crossroad, but then I realize we are always at a crossroad where we must choose good or evil, right or wrong, or better or worse.  The only question is who knows which is which?  Perhaps we will never know, until it is all over and the historians tell us who won.

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For example, take the crisis of mental health here in America. 

Progressives in the 19^th Century thought it best for society that we condemn those who suffered from various mental defects to large institutions where they could be looked after and controlled for both their own good and good of society.  Various state governments used their dollars to build these institutions and everyone was happy.  That is everyone who was not condemned to these places where care ranged from adequate, through miserable, to horrific.

Then, through the advancements of medical chemistry and pharmacology we invented drugs that would mitigate the outward effects of the mental disease and seemed to be a good path towards solving the social stigma of long term hospitalization.  Progressive people in the 20^th Century said we should close these horrid institutions and return the population to live among a society where their care and treatment would be compassionate and the drugs would solve all the problems.   Of course, the politicians were happy to eliminate that expense, so the hospitals were closed and the money used elsewhere, but just how many of our society are now on these wonder drugs?  Did we become the society described by Grace Slick in the song White Rabbit?

Now we are in the 21^st Century and the issue of mental wellness seems again at the forefront of our society as it is linked to the murder of so many people in the discussion of gun violence.  On the one hand those who hate guns suggest everything would be better if we just took away all the guns, on the opposing side we have those who suggest only crazy people use guns to kill people, suggesting we should do something about crazy people and then everything would be okay.

Unlike past generations where there seemed to be a more moderate media, centrist politicians, and a compliant society we are now a bi-polar and schizophrenic nation without an ability to act effectively towards one solution.  There are so many voices in our head.  Which one do we listen to?