Who Are We Anyway?

If you read this blog on a regular basis (and I am very grateful to both of you), you may be wondering: What the heck do dead poets and tawdry parades have to do with Daughters of Catastrophe? Well, I'll tell you: Nothing. On the surface, nothing. But if you turn down the volume on the Seattle angst, and scrape off the extra makeup, you may find the same basic themes and obsessions here:

Throwing away what was perfectly good in favor of the trendy, the sexy, the must-have, which dissolves in our hands.

Failing to learn from the past because we do not examine the past.

Fear. Pure fear. The kind that drives people to take not one but two jobs they hate, in order to pay the bills. The icy fear that wakes people in the night and makes them wonder why they live this way, and why their whole society has become high-end.

Shopping and showing off as substitutes for what is real and can't be commodified.

Concealing identity behind what we own, and letting our things speak for us.

Dividing society into the cool and the uncool, instead of the real and the unreal, or the fair and unfair.

How comfort leads to smugness and inertia.

We are not the people we claim to be. We are not spiritual. We are not forgiving. If we (and I do not, ever, separate myself from my compatriots when I examine these values) tolerate the poverty of our neighbors who live on the street; and we go along with an unnecessary war that further destabilizes our world; and we sacrifice our lives and happiness to pay for a "starter" condo that costs half a million dollars---who and what are we?