Light At the End of the Tunnel

The news tends to cheer lead these days about things looking up, and silver linings - lights at the end of the tunnel, and so forth. There might be some good in keeping the sunny side up, as it were, but the truth is good too.

I don't know that anything will be the same, in fact, I'm afraid that things will be the same, again. Making everybody think it's OK to go back and spend us into the next oblivion seems like a bad outcome.

When Gordon Geko said that greed was good in the mid-eighties it launched an attitude change in America that resulted in more than bad hair, clothes and music. It led to people thinking of themselves first and other people later. It gave rise to the "single combat warrior" Susan Faludi wrote so well about: the Rambos, the Superstars, cribs, and ballers and me-to-isms that made us isolate each other and wish we were someone else. I have seen signs of change.

Lately, America has reached out to the classical anti-hero of old times. This is John Doe. The Clark Kent, who in secret mind you, dives into the phone booth to become the super hero that saves us all. As in man-kind, collectively, from the dangers of the world and outer space.

A guy that against all odds lands a jet in the Hudson and saves 60 lives, and then takes no credit as a hero. He was just doing what he trained for, he says. No big deal. The captain of the ship that sacrifices his own life for those of his crew, braves certain death by pirates, and even attempts an escape by hurling his bound body into the Indian Ocean, only to be rescued later by anonymous SEALS, who take no credit and seek none. He refuses to be labeled a hero and insists on giving others the credit because he, "was only doing what he had trained to do."

When I am trapped listening to the "self-made man" tell stories about his boot-strapped rise to wealth and greatness and all the sacrifices made in pursuit of riches, I want to run away. But when I hear about others who do great things for their fellow men and women, often against great challenges, those are the people I want to be like.