Wounded Society

So much already has been writ­ten about the shock­ing events at Penn State, often with jus­ti­fi­ably deep out­rage. I, too, want to wail.

There are, after all, so many kinds of victims:

• the children

• the families

• the students

• the players

• the fans

• the community

• the country

• all of us — any­one at all who knows.

We could also add to this list, depend­ing on your per­spec­tive, the per­pe­tra­tor and the men who failed “to do more.”

All are wound­ed by these events. The per­pe­tra­tor him­self, who led with his own wounds, will most like­ly pay for them for the rest of his life.

And now so much con­fu­sion, side-tak­ing, com­pet­ing views of what to do, and the need for expla­na­tions, inves­ti­ga­tions, exon­er­a­tion or blame.

Yet none of that will real­ly do — ever. That’s the nature of a wound to soci­ety. There is only the shock and claw­ing grief that it has hap­pened — some­thing we must live with whether or not we can ever “under­stand” what occurred. 

In the end we only have the pain of fac­ing our human­ness and our capac­i­ty for such moral fail­ure. It would be easy to sep­a­rate our­selves, to say this is not me, not you. We are not capa­ble of such things. But the nature of the Shad­ow in all of us, and in soci­ety itself, is pre­cise­ly this mis­be­got­ten belief. The events at Penn State are a mir­ror of what human beings are emi­nent­ly capa­ble of — that’s real­ly what scares the heck out of us. We can be weak. We can be depraved. And all the expla­na­tions of how those who cov­ered up were sim­ply caught up in their own pow­er and any­thing that might jeop­ar­dize it, can­not turn out the lights on what is to be seen in that very harsh mir­ror of the soul. We don’t like to “go there.” We want to believe we can sim­ply man­age accord­ing to our strengths and pre­tend to our­selves that all else can be for­giv­en. This is the sig­nal of an imma­ture cul­ture, one that makes self-con­fronta­tion some­thing that oth­ers should do, but we do not have to do for our­selves. The irony of the Shad­ow is that we are head­ed straight for it when we claim that we don’t hold any dark­ness with­in us.

The most dif­fi­cult part is the real­iza­tion that we are in part those chil­dren. We are in part also those fam­i­lies. We are those fans and play­ers, that com­mu­ni­ty — and yes, a part of us is also the per­pe­tra­tor and those who gave the per­pe­tra­tor per­mis­sion — and this is espe­cial­ly true every sin­gle time we say to our­selves “not my prob­lem.” Because that’s exact­ly how this occurred. Some­body else did this. Not me. I’m not guilty. I am not respon­si­ble for what hap­pened to the oth­ers. And each one of these “not me’s” wounds soci­ety just a lit­tle more. 

I per­son­al­ly do not think the per­pe­tra­tor and his accom­plices were over­whelmed with their own pow­er so much as they sim­ply did not feel respon­si­ble for what hap­pened to oth­ers. And this is the per­fect result of that dark­est shad­ow side of Amer­i­can indi­vid­u­al­ism, this out­ra­geous betray­al of soci­ety, which is about hurt­ing oth­ers with impuni­ty — and then excus­ing our­selves and speak­ing through lawyers before the mir­ror indeed becomes too bright. This sor­did core on the oth­er side of pre­cious indi­vid­u­al­ism is what Amer­i­cans have to look at right now. How many more times will it need to be rubbed in our faces that this is a soci­ety with a flawed sense of soci­ety, one that that is wound­ing itself in the name of a steadi­ly main­tained uncon­scious­ness about the real impacts of our lost mutuality? 

Penn State is a symp­tom. Not much dif­fer­ent than oth­er symp­toms. The per­pe­tra­tors that caused and are con­tin­u­ing to cause finan­cial col­lapse, and the widen­ing gap between rich and poor, con­ser­v­a­tive and lib­er­al is anoth­er symp­tom of the same dis­ease of lost mutu­al­i­ty — so well described in a recent arti­cle by Bill Moy­ers. This is what you get when you build insti­tu­tions and busi­ness­es and a whole under­ly­ing cul­ture based on the overuse of say­ing “yes” to our­selves and “no” to any­body else. 

We need to regain — maybe reclaim is the bet­ter word — a sense of mean­ing­ful, humane bal­ance. Indi­vid­u­al­ism is good when its pri­ma­ry results are courage, ini­tia­tive, con­fi­dence and self-worth, a unique and mean­ing­ful life, the abil­i­ty to stand up to oppres­sion. But that essen­tial per­son­al pow­er must be bal­anced also with the pow­er to love and give self­less­ly, the pow­er to work togeth­er col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly and to trust, and the pow­er to do the right and eth­i­cal thing. Our soci­ety is far, far out of bal­ance right now, and inci­dents are like­ly to come more fre­quent­ly until at last we give our­selves a chance to look once more at our birthright, as the founders of this great coun­try did, decid­ing for our­selves what a good soci­ety real­ly is. It’s time to take stock because right now we are cre­at­ing a new kind of oppres­sion for our­selves and oth­ers based on what one writer called, a cul­ture of rape. I take that term to include but also go beyond sex­u­al exploita­tion to human exploita­tion, which starts in big and lit­tle ways with mak­ing oth­er peo­ple into things we are no longer respon­si­ble for.

If we can face that in our hearts and souls, then I think the heal­ing will find a good place to begin. 

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