In the early 1970s, I attended Cass Technical High School in Detroit, an American school unique in its day. My classmates came from diverse racial, ethnic, religious and economic backgrounds, traveling from all parts of the city and suburbs. The curriculum was ambitious and varied, including home nursing, radio speech, food economics, journalism, theater and performing arts, and clerical skills, as well as literature, science, history and math. A group of us aspiring writers and thespians founded a theater company and valiantly produced and performed original plays in church basements and school auditoriums, cultivating our own creative environment. Dan Austin, founder of HistoricDetroit.org, quotes Marshall Weingarden, a 1961 science and arts alumnus, saying “Cass Tech was a different world. It was cosmopolitan. It brought together people from all over the city. … It was truly a melting pot.”
In today’s world, we are more socially and culturally disconnected than ever before. We often find ourselves rationalizing or, worse, becoming insensitive to the needs of society as a whole. Walking along the littered streets of Boston, New York or Portland, Maine, I marvel at how many people actively avoid harmless homeless people buried under their rag carts and private mutterings. The eyes of the displaced reflect back on all of us, our culture. An unexpected shift in life variables could propel a good many of us into their same worn shoes.
When I think of human fellowship, I recall childhood shopping excursions to Detroit’s Eastern Market with my mother, whose parents were born in the West Indies. Meat butchers, vegetable grocers, as well as fish, seafood and cheese mongers — many were second-generation Greek, Polish, Jewish, Irish and Italian immigrants — sold their products. My mother’s proud, respectful and engaged mien engendered goodwill among most of the vendors.
To witness volunteers at a soup kitchen or food pantry devoting countless hours of their time and energy to help people in need is heart-rending. But, sadly, in this hurried, thoughtless, reckless planet, good deeds often go underappreciated.
While technology has given us unprecedented communication access, it mysteriously leaves us bereft of appreciating the lives of others. Media reportage that laces serious social and economic topics with entertainment has made us more indifferent, cynical, suspicious and uncharitable. We worry more and feel a great deal less. Advertisers draw us into products and resources we can ill-afford and usually don’t need. Whether from television, radio, print or Web, our innate sense of reason and independent thinking mercilessly is suppressed. At a recent dinner party with friends I thought to be politically progressive and socially engaged, I was astonished by how subdued many of them seemed, preferring to talk about less weighted subjects, such as new movie releases, sports and weather.
To varying degrees, we all are distracted and frightened by the economics and politics of the days. Manipulative interpretations of language and social statistics by pundits, politicians, pollsters, professors, philosophers and preachers alike divide and ultimately threaten our ability to relate to one another. Many people involved in academic, political and corporate life, who often have little familiarity with the way everyday people, live, make analyses and decisions that adversely affect our lives and wellbeing.
Nearly everything on Earth has become a commercialized commodity from spirituality and parenting to interacting with co-workers. We are consumers of products that tell us how, when and even why we should interact with one another and what to wear while doing it. Just walk down any Manhattan street almost any time of day and you’ll observe an onslaught of designer bag-carrying zombies in a hurry having clipped conversations as they rush across the crowded streets.
“Consumerism breaks people by de-valuing human connectedness, socializing self-absorption, obliterating self-reliance, alienating people from normal human reactions, by selling the idea that purchased products — not themselves and their community — are their salvation,” Bruce E. Levine, author of “Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy and Community in a World Gone Crazy,” writes.
For me and many of my friends I grew up with, what it took to “weather the storm” was building an empire of shared aspiration. Even in a techno-crazed world, to fully understand and value the significance of other people one must actually interact with them face to face, shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm. Even though we may live in a virtually helpless state of being confounded by manufactured noise, information technology and bill collectors, it is always in our best interest to believe that compassion and empathy help to smooth out the paths of all our lives. When we start to think otherwise, we are left only with only remnants of a humane society.
Leigh Donaldson is a Portland writer. His writings on international, national and regional politics, business, social issues, history, art, culture and travel have appeared in a number of print and online publications.