A Massive Cultural Shift

Warning: My content this week is a cry from the heart, and it is political.

In 410 AD, when the Roman troops packed up and left Britannia, returning to their homeland to protect it from barbarian invasion, there was a massive cultural shift in the country we now call England. I have touched on this startling event several times as I have blogged about the fifth century in Britannia. After nearly four hundred years of occupation by the Romans, who had forced their own culture on to the native peoples of Britain, there was suddenly no one around to administer Roman law. The locals were left to do whatever they chose. It must have been a time of massive upheaval as those who still chafed at the hand of Roman oppression sought to bring back the old ways of being British. And those who enjoyed the lifestyle the Romans had introduced struggled to stay in control. But I wonder how would anybody have remembered what it was like before the Romans arrived, since they had been in control for so long? What was still known about the Celtic culture of the native people must have been kept alive largely in secrecy and passed from generation to generation in legends and stories told around the hearths in the homes of British families.

And eventually, with the help of waves of migration from Europe and Scandinavia bringing in new ideas and shaping the ways things were done, British culture survived, albeit in a significantly altered version, and even thrived.

We are living through a period of massive cultural change right now. Ideas and values that have been held dear for two hundred years are being questioned, ignored, and overturned. First let me say that I am totally in favor of questioning and of always seeking a better way. Every government should do that, because no government is perfect. However, the changes that have been made, so far, run counter to all that I have held dear about this country. Many of us have been watching in horror and shock as values like compassion are sneered at and as social structures that were put together to protect the poorest among us and have been in place for decades are removed.

This massive cultural shift must be evident to people on both sides of the rapidly widening political divide, surely. Obviously, some people agree with what is taking place. But what is the moral grounding for the kinds of governmental decisions that are being made this year? I am unable to wrap my head around what the good is that we are seeking as a nation, and where the justice is for all citizens of the USA. And nobody has been able to persuade me that the changes being made are congruent with our country’s founding values, or our religious underpinnings. Certainly no one has been able to comfort me by demonstrating that we are moving in the direction that Jesus of Nazareth preached and taught to his disciples. Far from it.

Before I came to live in the USA (nearly forty years ago) I watched from afar as the cold war against communism was filling the news feeds all over the world. It was clear that the USA was deeply threatened by communism taking hold within the nation. But as an outsider, I always felt that communism was never a realistic fear for the USA. The regime to guard against was fascism.  And that is what I am terrified of today.  As our cultural norms shift from compassion to efficiency, and from caring for our neighbor to primarily taking care of ourselves, I feel a great weight of despondency about our future as a nation.

It took the Britons several hundred years to recover from the Roman occupation, and it took them several hundred years longer to rise to being one of the most powerful nations in the world.

All cultures rise and fall, of this there is no doubt. It’s just that I thought I was living on the rising tide of a successful, compassionate, empathic society that was spreading justice and equality for all people. But at the moment I see only the opposite: an ebbing tide that is sinking down toward fascism, where the rich and privileged are captaining the boat and where the poor are despised, and left to sink or swim.

Prove me wrong, America. Your great social experiment that was the hope of the western world is drowning in a tide of avarice and corruption. For the love of all things good, prove me wrong.