FROM BLEAK TO BLISS? (Or not?) Are we undergoing a massive cultural transformation?

If so, then what kind? What will be the nature of the new baby about to be born?

As any woman who has given birth without sedatives or painkillers knows (count me among them), the yet mysterious baby pulses through the birth canal only after untold hours of unimaginable labor pains.

 

Late yesterday afternoon, I was in Petco to get flea meds for Scampi. Spoke with a cashier (likely in her late 30s) who told me she and her partner had just moved to Bloomington from Louisville.

I asked what had brought them to Bloomington.

She said that her partner got a job catering food for IU Athletics.

“Oh wow! Great!” I responded, expecting that to be the end of our exchange.

But no: instantly, she shot back, as if she had been holding it within, a concealed bitterness that she then managed to express ironically: “Well, she’d better get a job, to start paying back all that tuition for her Culinary Arts degree. We’re going to owe on that loan for the rest of our lives.”

To my puzzled look, she continued:

“The loan is not a government loan, but a private loan, and there’s no way it can be forgiven.”

“What do you owe now?”

“$70,000, which is what we owed to begin with; once we got it down to below $70,000, but then they increased the interest rate . . . .”

“Geez! How much do you pay monthly?”

$200 on the balance, $300 interest.

How many folks are in a similar situation? Impossible to “get ahead,” or to even “stay even”?, thanks to bankster (and academic) chicanery?

 

Warming up, she then told me a story of what their life was like in Louisville, another college town. One day she saw three young women walking down the street, all with their phones out, when somebody crashed a car into a nearby building. Within minutes, five police cars, sirens screaming, had converged upon the scene.

“And you know what? None of the women even glanced up from her phone.”

Finally, with a bleak stare:  “I don’t look forward to the future.”

A long moment of silence followed.

Finally, our transaction complete, I reluctantly turned to depart, saying “All we can do is keep our eyes open.” She nodded her head.

“And keep our hearts open,” I added.

I could feel her agreement: for that single, extended moment, the two of us were ONE.

 

The contrast between this woman’s bleak, cynical world view and her sweet, open, helpful nature as a clerk could not have been greater.

 

Let’s enlarge the perspective. Here’s one way: which doesn’t even transcend the materialist perspective: abundance vs. scarcity.

https://x.com/brivael/status/2120079773682577654?a=jmlTjlvGu5OLoN-mxVM&s=61