Riding the subway between Times Square and Greenwich Village not so long ago, I noticed a man wearing a blue nylon jacket, red ball cap, and faded Levis. He carried a light blue knapsack. The man seemed to be Hispanic, but in this time after 9/11 when all brown people carry the weight of being a terrorist first and human second, could have been Middle Eastern. He had a carefully manicured thick black moustache, a slight white scar above his right eyebrow, and he appeared to gaze at something far away no one else saw.
As the train pulled away from the platform, he removed his cap and faced all of us other riders in the car, launching into a well-rehearsed and heart-rending speech about how he’d recently lost his job and could no longer afford to feed and house his wife and children. This was a speech getting all too familiar since the days of trickle-down economics, a phrase coined during the Reagan presidency to describe rich politicians and CEO’s pissing on us from somewhere over our heads. The speech-maker swore he wasn’t a drug addict or bum, but that he was very desperate. With an apology, he unzipped the knapsack and reached inside.
The entire car let out a collective sigh of anxiety. In these days when someone claims to be distraught and filled with despair, and then reaches into a knapsack, everyone expects a gun to come out or a bomb to go off. This time, the man was only clearing a spot for people to drop in spare change. Once we realized he intended no harm, no one responded, including me. The sad part of this whole encounter was the realization of how cynical and self-centered we’ve become in the U.S. People stared at their hands, the floor, the walls, or pretended to be asleep. One man yelled, “Get out of our country.” I felt like I should have given him some money but couldn’t bring myself to do it because I couldn’t get past my own doubts about the pan-handler’s situation or his motives. Did he really have a family in need or was he simply using the story as a con? I’ll never know, but I’ll always wonder.
Forty years ago, I would have probably emptied my pockets. But, things have changed. We live in a society where even the moral and religious leaders lie constantly and about almost everything as part of doing routine business and this leaves me as jaded as the next person when it comes to charity. It isn’t that those who choose careers of service to others have suddenly become imperfect. There have always been perverted ministers in every aspect of our society. Some preachers and priests will be perverted. Some politicians will be corrupt. Some business leaders will operate outside the law. However, in the 21st century the problem infects the system as well as some individuals within it. Now, most politicians will end up corrupting their office. Large numbers of preachers will succumb to greed or temptations of the flesh. CEO’s run huge, multi-national corporations as if they were mafia dons. Democracy has been replaced with a self-serving capitalism on steroids.
How do we turn this lack of empathy around? Maybe a step in the right direction is to start demanding accountability from our leaders and force them to set better examples. What better time than right now when some of those leaders are fomenting rebellion and fascism? Maybe part of the answer lies in examining our own priorities as a society and focusing more on altruism than self-indulgence. Ultimately, what will be required is an individual consciousness-raising. And, that makes the process of becoming better collective citizens exponentially more difficult because it requires that each one of us consider on occasion what’s best for the rest of us.
Jim McGarrah, Author 