Tag: dysfunctional society

Can It Happen Here?

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Do you ever get the sense that human civilization is a juggernaut that basically has no one steering?  Our activities have become this unstoppable force that tramples anything that gets in its way but basically has no idea where it’s headed.  Now there are lots of people and their leaders who try to direct things but most of them seem to be idiots or so completely selfish that they only recognize their own priorities or even if they seem to exhibit some altruism, they’re completely mistaken in their beliefs about what are the important problems or at least what are the right things to do about them.

And now that humanity has increased to more than eight billion souls and with our capabilities to destroy enormous numbers of people with weapons of mass destruction, we seem to be constantly on the brink of blowing the whole furiously spinning human enterprise to smithereens.

I am aware that this is hardly anything new.  Going back to 1945 and Hiroshima we have been living in the shadow of Armageddon now for eighty years.  And going back to 1914 we have for well over a century been living in the seeming collapse of European Renaissance civilization.  But it does seem to have reached a breaking point.  With the current trends we have seen concerning population decline and apparent rampant psychiatric collapse of a sizable percentage of young people we must be reaching the point where either someone or some group rallies a core of people to step back from the brink of collapse or this whole civilization will break down into a dark age; something like what happened during the so-called late bronze age collapse.

In general, it looks like there needs to be a sanity check on what we value.  The current social media environment is so dysfunctional that if someone proposed destroying the internet he might become the next prophet; whether you want to compare him to Mohammed or Martin Luther.  But whatever the solutions that are selected there is no doubt at all that our present trajectory is disastrous.  And I have named religious reformers because it is obvious that the primary problem is not economic or technological.  It is spiritual, or if you prefer, psychological.  We have allowed nihilistic concepts and other harmful ideas to percolate into young minds through teachers who shouldn’t be allowed to interact with children.  And it’s having dire effects.  For this reason, it will require a reset of what we teach children.  I’ve begun to hear that some states and localities are purging the trans-gender subject matter and teachers from their schools.  But it’s going to take a much more systematic approach to get a handle on this poisonous influence on children.  And I fear that places like California it’s already too late to fix.  People will have to flee to save their kids.

The real question in my mind is, “Is it too late?”  At a certain point if a society can no longer provide the basic services and protections for its people, they will flee in search of a refuge.  It happened in the bronze age Eastern Mediterranean.  Can it happen here?  I think so.

Upheaval and Disaster Stalk the Compound

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Several days ago, I called up my cable and internet provider.  I had previously received a cryptic warning about changes that would take place on a certain date and the equipment I would receive to allow for these marvelous changes to occur.  When the day of reckoning had almost arrived and no equipment arrived, I felt I had no choice but to do the unthinkable.  I would call my service provider up on the telephone.

This may sound like a normal activity.  I simply dial a number and I talk to a human being for a few minutes and communication occurs.  I remember when I still believed in such things.  Ah, those were the days.  Back when the cable guy would be sent to your house and install stuff and adjust things and telephone calls were answered by human beings or at least what sounded like human beings.  Wasn’t that an amazing time?

But now is not that time.  After dialing the number, I was greeted by the robo-voice giving me options in Spanish and English and so began my odyssey.  First in line was the repair/technical journey.  And this was the most straightforward part of the adventure.  They had contacted me.  They had told me what they were going to do.  They were upgrading the speed of my connection and so they had to send me higher speed equipment to take advantage of this upgrade.  And since my present equipment wouldn’t function after the change date, they had promised to send me the magical new equipment.  But where was this new equipment?  What had intervened to prevent my reaching the promised land of higher speed data transfer?

So, I selected Technical.  And then the dreaded canned music began.  It was as stultifyingly boring as anything I have ever heard.  After a mere ten minutes my skin was crawling and I could feel my resolve slipping away.  I was tempted to hang up and call back later.  But I knew the foolishness of such a cowardly act.  After all this was just the first round in what I knew must be an epic struggle to retain consciousness.  I persevered and after a reasonable twenty-minute wait I was speaking to a real live person.  And it was someone who sounded normal.  A woman who spoke English and was polite and understood what I was asking her.  It was too good to be true.  She understood exactly what was supposed to have happened and she only put me on hold for ten minutes while she reviewed the facts of my case.  I was ecstatic.  But what a fool I was.  When she got back, she was noticeably saddened.  She informed me that because my contract was very old the changes proposed could not be performed without transferring me to Billing.

My heart sank.  I had never been transferred to billing without suffering exasperation or even rage.  I have mocked and shouted at billing operators on numerous occasions.  I think it’s part of their training.  Here I was thirty-five minutes into the journey and I was being thrown off the parapet and into the dungeon.  I could hear in her voice just how guilty Technical felt.  It was as if she had given me a death sentence.  I said resignedly, “Okay transfer me.”  And the music began again.

I waited about five minutes.  It’s much easier to get through to Billing than Technical.  Then again nobody really wants to speak to Billing.  The people there are petulant, easily flustered, impolite and not very helpful.  Several times while I attempted to explain what I needed I was cut off by the rep.  And each time it was clear she misunderstood the situation.  Finally, after several system queries, she believed my side of what needed to be done.  She must update my contract to allow the normal equipment shipping order to go through.  The only thing that needed to be done to accomplish the update was to add five cable channels to my selections.  I told her to select them at random.  I didn’t care because I wouldn’t be watching them anyway.  But in an almost gleeful announcement, she told me that only a Specialist could approve the additional channels.  I would have to be transferred yet again.

I don’t think I cried out.  I think I staggered back a step or two.  I choked out the words, “Then transfer me.”  And the elevator music started up again.  I was a solid hour into the call and I knew that the wait for a specialist would be something between twenty-five and thirty-five minutes.  I put the phone down on a table and set it to speaker.  I stared out the window on a sunny fall morning turning quickly to afternoon.  Camera Girl walked by and heard the music and understood what was going on.  I could see she felt for me as a true and loyal wife should.

After the requisite half hour, the Specialist made her presence felt.  And she really was special.  She needed no information from me.  She methodically laid out the actions that she would take and the results that would follow.  She apologized for the problem and assured me that the upgrade would improve my service by a speed increase of 50%.  I was off the call in about two minutes.

An hour and a half.  This is the nature of our relationship to the companies that supposedly connect us to the world.  They erect barriers that punish their customers to avoid communication at all costs.  Remarkable.

And now I am faced with another equally maddening customer service nightmare.  My oil company also provides service on my heating system.  Or in theory they do.  A few days ago, we noticed that there wasn’t any hot water.  Because it’s been so warm for the last few days, we hadn’t noticed that the heating system wasn’t working.  I went into the basement and watched what was going on with the furnace.  When it called for heat the system went through its cycle but when it reached the point where the oil pump turned on it made an awful grinding noise and failed.  I called up the service number and told them what was happening.  They said they’d send a technician within from four to nine hours.  None hours later one showed up and after a couple of hours he had the system running again.  Apparently, a set screw had come loose in the coupling between the motor and the pump.

Hurrah, the system works.  Slowly, maybe, but it worked.  Then this morning, no hot water.  Wonderful.  Well, no shower but the promised four to nine hours later (well let’s just call it ten hours) the same tech is back.  But the news is bad.  Now it’s a part that they don’t stock.  And it’s the weekend.  And now I’m annoyed.  An hour ago, I hear the circulation loop running in the living room.  I run to the basement and see that somehow the heating system is running.  I run upstairs and manage a hot shower.  I’ve beaten the system, at least for tonight.  The weekend is sure to bring more tales of woe from the oil company.  Like the cable company they are there to make my life awful.  But this is the nature of the dysfunctional world we live in.  Customer service is a euphemism for customer abuse.  For them customers are supposed to be kept at arm’s length and prevented from costing anything more than the absolute minimum.  The idea that customer satisfaction is something that these corporations should strive for is laughable.

In both cases my providers are literally the only game in town.  Monopoly compels me to make the best of a bad situation.  Tomorrow I’ll install the new internet and cable devices.  I’m sure there will be numerous snafus.  And tomorrow I’ll begin negotiations with the oil company’s tech manager.  One way or another we’ll get something going.  And that’s the reality of life in Joe Biden’s America.  Satisfied customers are a thing of the past.  Now it’s stand in line and stop complaining if you know what’s good for you.  Welcome comrades.  Enjoy the hold music.  Next!

22NOV2021 – OCF Update – Monday Maunderings

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November 22nd 1963.  Everyone of my generation remembers this day as a nightmare.  The adults were in a panic over the death of President John Kennedy on the streets of Dallas.  I was in first grade at the time and the nuns were openly weeping which freaked the kids out.  Watching Walter Cronkite crying on tv reinforced the feeling that the world was coming apart.  But the country came together in solidarity.

November 22nd 2021.  News this morning that a crazed criminal purposefully drove his SUV through a crowd of children and their families watching a Christmas Parade.  Based on the killer’s social media profile it is strongly suspected that he is an anti-white bigot who probably wanted to strike back after the Rittenhouse acquittal.  Chances of the country coming together in solidarity not very likely.

I’ll confess that this incident has cancelled some of my recent enthusiasm.  Evil and crazy people will always be with us.  But what makes it disastrous is that there is no longer a consensus that they are the problem.  The current reflex is to blame the victim.  If only we had made the lunatic feel loved.  Maybe then he wouldn’t have killed so many.  Or even if he still would have killed them at least we wouldn’t take it so personally if we had grown to love him for the good natured homicidal maniac that he is.

So instead of giving this psychopath the electric chair which at least validates the idea that sociopaths need to be excluded from society we will be told that somehow all of this is our fault.  Those murdered children had it coming for being privileged white people.

Not a great way to start the week of Thanksgiving.

What I Took Away from the Weekend Horror Fest

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I waited yesterday instead of writing a post.  I wanted to sift through my thoughts.

My opinion is we’re in a lot of trouble.  And I’m not talking about Democrats and Second Amendment attacks and presidential polls.  Put all that aside for a minute.

Connor Betts was 24.  Patrick Crusius is 21.  We have young men who are of an age where they should be enjoying life to its fullest.  Instead they’re flushing their lives down the drain in a senseless orgy of violence.  And it’s happening more and more frequently.  Without a doubt, the ones committing these crimes are the most damaged of their generation.  They are probably terrible misfits that don’t feel empathy and live inside the tiny world of their own thoughts.  There have always been people like this and there have always been crimes like these.  But nowhere near as many.

What I’m afraid we are doing is widening a window of people who can fall into this kind of trap.  Adolescence is a rough time, especially for males.  Without someone watching out for them it’s easy to get involved in destructive behavior.  And that someone no longer exists.  Nobody is watching out for these kids.  Mom and Dad are both working.  Many times, there isn’t even another brother or sister around to communicate with.  No one even knows or cares if they go to school.  Work doesn’t leave any room for these kids.  So, they spend their time on the internet or video games.  If they fall behind in school or get into trouble often the parents and teachers will paper over it and make believe that something didn’t happen or didn’t mean anything.

And in the last ten years we have added a new dimension.  The Millennials grew up in a world where there were no jobs to be had.  So, after spending twelve years bored in school, without a job you live in your parents’ basement and have no adult life or even prospects of it.  So, in addition to the truly disturbed individuals we are pushing the fragile normal people into the same place.  They’re angry and are looking for someone to punish for their wasted lives.

The mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton are, as always, shocking.  But what isn’t a surprise is that these two young men were dangerously mentally ill long before their rampages.  Just looking at the pictures and reading the accounts of their histories should be enough to convince people that what we have in this country isn’t a gun problem, it’s societal dysfunction causing a mental health emergency.  Look at the kid in Ohio.  The stories contain the fact that while in high school he had a list of kids he wanted to kill and a list of girls he wanted to rape.  If you’re the parent of this boy what else do you need to hear to know that your son is a ticking time bomb?  And maybe they did know.  And maybe it’s just where we are as a country that they didn’t know what to do.  What would I have done in that case?  What can be done?  These aren’t easy questions to answer.  But they sure do have to be answered.  We’ve got a whole continent full of young men growing up in a world that doesn’t value their talents and doesn’t have anything to keep them gainfully employed.  That is a recipe for extinction.

So other than a lot of talk, what does all this mean?  Well for the most deeply disturbed we have to stop thinking that antidepressants will allow criminally insane individuals to walk among us.  These people need to be institutionalized for life.  That’s for their own good but mostly for ours.

But for the run of the mill kid growing up in America there’s still plenty that needs to be done.  What my take away from this is spend a lot of time with your sons and your grandsons.  Don’t assume that just by keeping them in school and driving them to soccer practice that they’re okay.  Talk about the future with them.  Talk realistically and constructively about how kids transition into adults.  Know their friends.  Check their homework and see if they’re prepared for tests.  Pay attention!  Be aware of their activities on the internet.  Help them to socialize in a constructive way.  And don’t let them feel alone or bored.  A kid is better off with a manual labor job than sitting around alone all day.

You may think that these things only happen to the worst of the worst people.  But I don’t think that’s the case.  The world that we live in isolates us and destroys our communities, families and especially our sons.  Don’t let it.  Even the kids who don’t go off the deep end are struggling in an environment that’s almost unfathomable even for adults.  Help them!  Adapt to the problems, compensate for the dysfunctional arrangements we live under.  Save your kids.  They’re the only possession of value you have.