"I'm not going to spend the extra money on organic jelly," my teenaged son huffed to my 5th grade daughter, "just because of something Mom saw on TV about corn syrup."
"If you don't shop at Wal-Mart," my mother warned me, "it's your own fault if you can't afford to replace your microwave!"
"Idealism is nice," confided the elementary school teacher, "but we have to live in the real world, too."
I'm not the only one in the world with a conscience, am I? I can't remember the last time I received anything except condescension and derision for not only having standards, but for trying to live up to them.
I have come to expect this attitude from my son. This is the boy who, many years ago, tried to convince his little sister that there is such a thing as an "itos" food group: Doritos, Tostitos, Fritos, Cheetos.... He's currently writing a major 12th grade Language Arts paper about our school district's switch to a healthier breakfast and lunch menu. The boy is against it and wants his microwave burritos back. (Clicking on School Food Project will take you to a site explaining what we're up to.)
As he is only 17 years old, it can be futile to try to reason with him, resistant as he is to my perspective from age 51. Nevertheless, I have tried and tried again to explain my position on safe, cruelty-free food. I point out that the effects of fat, HFCS, and other additives are cumulative, and that his 17-year-old metabolism isn't going to last for the next 70 years. I talk about the conditions of the farms where animals are bred for slaughter. This works on my daughter, via the "cute animal in peril" effect; my son, though, first began to tell me 14 years ago, "I'm not listening!"
Mom is another matter. I don't like to argue with her. She gets too angry with me when I must disagree with her; although honoring that pesky 5th Commandment causes me more discomfort than the other nine combined, I do my best to keep it.
"The folks who work at Wal-Mart all feel very lucky to have a job," she tells me. She flat-out refuses to believe that a corporation would deliberately under-employ someone to avoid having to (help) pay for health insurance. (I should explain that she's a CNN junkie and has been for years; I tried to get her to switch Keith Olbermann, but the program moves too quickly for her.)
Mom is all about saving money. She triumphs when she snags a bargain, and she (apparently) does not feel her victory is diminished if someone whom she doesn't know must get shafted in order for the bargain to manifest itself.
I expect a 17-year-old to be full of himself, just as I expect an 82-year-old to be set in her ways. My colleague's comment about "living in the real world," though, came as a disappointing bolt from the blue. In the first place, I'm not convinced that "living in the real world" is anything other than a way to soothe and lull one's conscience for living far, far more comfortably than most of the rest of the planet.
More importantly, to me, my idealism is reality. I cannot escape, or delude myself; it's useless to attempt to distract myself for more than a few moments from this uncertain, troubled world. Climate change is real; the haves and the have-mores, versus the rest of us, is real.
I was at a loss to find support to justify my convictions, even to myself, until dim memories of studying English poet John Donne emerged in my brain:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Source
Meditation XVII, John Donne
Dr. Donne had it figured out, way back in 1623. For something a little more recent, the following excerpt is the final paragraph of Franklin Roosevelt's 1942 Flag Day radio address:
"Yet most of all grant us brotherhood, not only for this day but for all our years- a brotherhood not of words but of acts and deeds. We are all of us children of earth—grant us that simple knowledge. If our brothers are oppressed, then we are oppressed. If they hunger, we hunger. If their freedom is taken away, our freedom is not secure. Grant us a common faith that man shall know bread and peace-that he shall know justice and righteousness, freedom and security, an equal opportunity and an equal chance to do his best, not only in our own lands, but throughout the world. And in that faith let us march, toward the clean world our hands can make. Amen."
Source: FDR Flag Day 1942 complete radio address
What my son, my mother, and my colleague all seem to lack, is acknowledgment of and submission to this undeniable and compelling sense of connectedness to the rest of the universe. What some Wiccans call immanence - what some Christians call the Holy Spirit - what John Lennon called "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together." I wish I had more experience, and especially learning, to be able to write about what others call it.
With people like Dr. Donne and FDR on my side, not to mention John Lennon, I don't seem to myself to be quite all alone in my "idealism." By publicly adhering to my own conscience, I may nudge other people into acknowledging their own still, small voices. (As long as I'm doing it because I have to, not because I seek admiration or approval, or want to lord it up over anyone else.)
So, although right now I'm simply another insignificant middle-aged lady, who is becoming used to hearing the words "Boulder hippie!" snarled at her on a regular basis - by my own blood kin, even, though not in those exact words - though I am physically alone, I have the strength and the confidence to keep the faith. Thank goodness for Daily Kos.