I write this now in the knowledge that my beloved city is going to be engulfed in a winter storm of epic proportions.
Historic, the meteorologists say. The coming weather formation even has a name – the rather benign moniker of ‘Olive’.
Safe to say that Winter Storm Olive gives me hope in our species; And, perhaps more importantly, enormous gratitude for the same.
Gratitude…for society.
To not be grateful for our intricate social organization at times like this feels a little idiotic.
For I am unimaginably grateful right now, for those members of our society who clear the roads, keep the gas & electric on, ensure the food-shelves are stocked, and so much more. Without them, I would not survive very long. (Definitely not now with a badly busted right knee courtesy of an icy sidewalk while walking Molly yesterday.)
Philosophies of the “hardy individual” really wither away when we realize we are so very dependent on society.
Preppers start looking like anxiety-ridden, dangerous morons who just want to die alone, clutching their buckets of apocalypse gruel for final comfort.
All of a sudden, the public services we take so much for granted don’t get berated as “big government”. It’s only when the proverbial shit hits the fan that we realize we need each other.
I’m starting to now understand why the wealthier parts of our current age, like America and Europe, are obsessed with apocalyptic pop culture scenarios focusing on a few (inexplicably good-looking) survivors. It’s equal parts fear and fantasy, spawned from reckoning with generations of self-aggrandizement. Past wealthy nations and empires have all done the same. Having it so good, they have to imagine their own hellscapes.
People, even large groups of people, who have it good in life tend to disavow the communitarian nature of our existence. Hardy individual types can’t get enough grey cells firing together to realize that everything they have or acquire is because of a larger society with mind-boggling human cooperation at various scales.
People who don’t have it as good in life tend to be much more cognizant of our intricately intertwined lives.
To be sure, I’m not dissing individual rights, liberties, or responsibilities. Far from it in fact. I believe those aspects of our social evolution need to be upheld for the precious ways of being that they are; But the very fact that they need upholding ipso facto indicates that society is an equally core part of our being; a collective that the idea of the individual must be necessarily juxtaposed against.
In short – there is no individual without society.
To think otherwise is foolhardy.
(*he quietly muttered to himself as he hobbled away looking for the Ibuprofen and knee brace his long-suffering wife bought for him*)
love liberation struggle 