2020: The Year that Shook us Awake

As an undergrad English major, I was immersed in British and American authors. American poet T.S. Eliot was one of my favorites. Even though He isn’t the poet with the most positive outlook for the human species, his poems come to mind during our current political and pandemic crises. In “The Hollow Men,” Eliot asserts that civilization will end “not with a bang, but with a whimper.”

This 1925 poem sheds some light on the dilemma facing human civilization in 2020, one hundred years after the poem’s publication. "The Hollow Men" is stuffed with allusions and allegory, with which I do not intend to bog down the reader. Let me simply point to Eliot’s “the hollow men” who are described in the poem.

“We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men. /Leaning together/Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when/We whisper together/Are quiet and meaningless/As wind in dry grass.”

Eliot is describing a world in which people have lost their ability to be heard, even together, their voices are like whispers “like the wind in dry grass.” I see parallels with the predicament that we face in society today. We see injustices happening all around us, with people of color being murdered by the police and incarcerated at a shockingly higher rate than other citizens. We see women being the most affected by the pandemic, with a majority of frontline health care workers being women, and a large percentage of women having to stay home with children who are not in school. Women are also at higher risk for eviction. In poor Black and Latinx neighborhoods, eviction of women and incarceration of black men are intertwined. Since incarcerated Black men are a poor risk to sign leases, their partners have to sign them. Then an eviction is filed against the women lease holders.  (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/covid-19-eviction-crisis-women_n_5fca8af3c5b626e08a29de11?ncid=newsltushpmgpolitics).

As of December 26, 2020, 19,000,000 in the US have contracted the coronavirus with 330,000 deaths (https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_deathsper100k). Millions of Americans are out of work with benefits and stimulus payments held up for months, and now by a President, who won’t sign the bill to provide some measure of relief.

Prisoners are being put to death with a reinstated federal death penalty while convicted felons who are associates of Trump are being pardoned.

“Job losses from the pandemic overwhelmingly affected low-wage, minority workers most. Seven months into the recovery, Black women, Black men and mothers-of school-age children are taking the longest time to regain their employment” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/business/coronavirus-recession-equality/).

It is easier to get a presidential pardon these days than a stimulus check. I am painting a bleak picture. Is there no light at the end of the tunnel? When Biden takes over as president on January 20^th, the country will get some relief. However, the neoliberal policies of the democratic party will not solve all of society’s problems. I will address this issue in a future blog.

My point is that as a human civilization, we are degrading miserably. Instead of advancing and taking care of our population better with all the knowledge, wealth, and resources we possess in this country, we are spiraling backward into darkness. It will take a major shift to propel the country into the light. Are human beings inherently evil and selfish? I don’t think so. What I do put forth here is that we have become mesmerized with the disinformation we are fed by some of the major news outlets and by actors in our government. We have been told time and time again that our opinions don’t matter as popular protests are met with violent police actions, and even most recently, that our votes don’t matter, in the long, extended attempt by the Trump administration to steal the election in the guise of correcting imagined voter fraud.

Eliot asserts, “Those who have crossed/With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom/Remember us—if at all—not as lost Violent souls, but only/As the hollow men/The stuffed men”. We are searching for the light much as a dying star becomes a red giant and then explodes, also in Eliot’s poem's  symbolism. Let’s not kid ourselves. Unless we come together and work to make our government responsive and dedicated to taking care of our people, all our people, not just the wealthy and super-wealthy, we are very like the hollow men in Eliot’s poem. What does Eliot say will redeem us? “Sightless, unless/The eyes reappear/As the perpetual star/Multifoliate rose.” Here Eliot is referencing his personal Christian theology in which angels are spiraling above in a Divine Order. I believe he is saying that as a species we need to find our inner guiding light. As all good poets do, Eliot is pointing the way as a seer, guiding us to a brighter future.

Dawn of the New Day

What IS the way? We must forge for ourselves a spiritual, ethical, and humanitarian foundation for a new society, a society that is for the good and happiness of all and is based on an economy in which all beings matter. I invite a conversation on what such a society will look like. As sculptors shape their creations from clay, we must shape a new society from the chorus of all our voices. We must regain our voices now. We cannot let the world “end with a whimper” as in Eliot’s poem. Let’s take courage, speak our truths, and watch a new world take shape before our newly seeing eyes and recovered voices.