Has Hope Lost Its Perch?

Details: Created: 02 July 2024

Has Hope Lost Its Perch?

Chuck Cascio

The direction in which we are headed has become more clear everyday. As a nation, we have to choose between a bloviating liar who is a convicted felon 34 times or an elderly, though productive, man who has difficulty articulating views he has developed during several decades of government service. We are also faced with a Supreme Court that is nothing more than a political lackey of the bloviating liar. And then there are the members of Congress who reiterate talking points without caring whether those points are based on lies or purposely misconstrued facts.

Nor can we avoid those hatred-spewing fakes in the "news media" who use purposely use language to fuel anger. And we never know if the angry person sitting next to us in the local coffee shop is carrying a loaded weapon. And we hear about how the minds of the youth of the country are rotting due to their reliance upon social media technology that continually distracts them.

So where do we look for hope? Where is the core of good...the capable...the caring...the people who can lead us to respect the nation of immigrants that we are, the "thing with feathers/that perches in the soul/and sings the tune without the words/and never stops at all" as Emily Dickinson described it?

Don't tell me that it is through religion. There is far too much extremism in the name of religion to make it the core savior we need. Don't tell me that we simply need to shut down technology usage among young people; doing so would ignore the obvious--technology is not going away so we have to use it positively rather than destroy it. Don't tell me that it is by having confidence that our institutions will reform themselves, because the corruption and hatred that has, and will, infuse them makes them unreliable.

So where do we look?

Well, for me, a proud Boomer, the answer starts with looking inward. At ourselves. At the core beliefs upon which we were raised. By objectively questioning what we have learned and experienced as we have aged. And then to share as much as possible with the younger generations. Not those members who spew hatred--they have been compromised hopelessly. No...we need wherever and whenever possible to talk to the open-minded youth, the members of those generations who show respect for themselves, and for one another, and for the guidelines that have led them to be the people they are.

We all have grown up making mistakes, doing things we have regretted, and making commitments we believed could not be broken but have been broken. There are some in high-level political offices and businesses and religions who believe that they do not have to apologize, nor do they have to reconstruct themselves. Sadly, they are not the answer to reconstructing the core values that this country needs because they are the ones who have destroyed those values.

So we must look beyond them.

We must discover those of younger generations who can think broader than themselves. They are out there. They exist. They are of a different thought process than those of us of older generations. They have witnessed more hatred, more exclusion, more threats at a much earlier age than other generations. Many of us are too old to fully understand the source of those thought processes, but that does not mean that those people do not exist. They do.

We must find them. We must work with them. We must help them to see beyond themselves, beyond ethnicity, beyond levels of wealth, beyond technology, beyond vacuous hatred and directly into the everyday actions that are supposed to make this country exceptional.

Right now, we are not exceptional. Right now, we are in a dangerously transformative state. Right now, we must do whatever little--or large--things we can do to make the transformation a positive experience for all. To find that “thing with feathers” and to not let it disappear.

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