What do I mean by “the full array” of problems? I do think we eventually need a complete list, or as complete a one as we can make, but that's a big undertaking and I don’t mean to begin
it now. But I want to list a few. There are some that tend to jump to mind
(depending on your political alignment): an array of ecological crises (of
which climate change is only one), spiraling economic inequality, an
ever-increasing accumulation of power in the hands of a tiny portion of the
global population. There are others that I think get less play time in most
people’s nightmares but which I think about a lot:
- Material ugliness: the things we make—buildings, furniture,
everyday objects—keep getting uglier, flimsier, cheaper. Look at this image of a French school-room in the 1880s and compare it to this classroom in a recently-constructed school (where I happen to teach). Imagine spending your
days in the old one. Imagine spending them in the new one. What would that do
to you?
- Transience: everything is disposable, everything is knocked
down, thrown away, demolished, and new, even more disposable things are put in their place. Nothing has any
history. And people are the same way. They move and move until they have no
roots anywhere.
- Segregation: while some kinds of segregation (e.g. by race,
sexuality, religion) have lessened over the past century, segregation by age, political alignment, and
socioeconomic class have gotten more and more extreme. Each is driven by different forces and with different results, but all three are bad. I’ll talk about age, because I think it’s the least obvious: as
traditional communities break down, young people socialize less as families
and more and more exclusively through school. The resulting age-segregated friend groups and
habit of socializing only within age group persist into adulthood and create a sense of discontinuity between generations and a feeling of an
eternal present that is forever severed from the past.
- Technology addiction: most of my students (high-schoolers)
have no limits whatsoever placed on their screen time. During vacation, they
tell me, they sometimes play videogames for twelve or fourteen hours straight. On school
nights, they stay up watching movies and Netflix and YouTube. They complain
about stress and workload. Many of them sleep only four or five hours a night.
What they don’t realize is that their “leisure activities” do them no good,
leave them as bleary-eyed and drained as doing homework.
- Over-scheduling, over-monitoring: kids (at least most of them) should not be in class eight hours a day. They should be out working in
the fields or building things or repairing them, walking in the woods, taking
care of animals, cleaning, cooking, reading—then maybe have classes for a few hours
in the evenings. But not only do we keep them in class all day, we fill the remaining time with tutoring, piano lessons, summer programs—anything to give them "a leg up." And when they're not busy with those things, we keep them under careful watch, lest anything should happen to them. No wonder they’re bored and distracted. No wonder they need
drugs to stay focused and happy. No wonder, by age 22, they’re so obnoxious.
Their whole youth has been wasted.
This is hardly meant to be an exhaustive list. I present it only to give a sense of the kind of thing I mean.
Lest at this point the mouse begin to feel that these are bitter crumbs, I want to say that it is only the outer crust. The center of the loaf, I hope, is sweet.
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