In the film Casa Blanca, Rick Blaine, played by Humphrey Bogart, says “The problems of two little people don’t amount to a hill of beans.”
The problems of two little people may not amount to much for the world, but they sure mean a lot for the people. And in the end Rick shoots the Nazi and disappears into the fog. The line becomes legend and Rick Blaine becomes an archetype. It’s not what he says but what he does.
If the film were being made today, at best Blaine would be a rogue agent for the CIA, like Matt Damon’s character Jason Bourne. Bourne has no memory of his past. Blaine who can’t help remember, only wishes for amnesia.
In Deep Economy, McKibbon begins with the global warming and the end of the era of cheap abundant fossil fuels. Then he talks about food, why food in France, Italy, Spain, even England - not known for cuisine - is better than in America. (In the proverbial nutshell, they care, it’s fresh and grown locally.) Then McKibben talks about community.
Today we can be anything - we can even change genders - but as a result we don’t know who or what we are. We spend lots of time working for stuff but we have too few connections to other people.
If you think to Dickins “A Christmas Carol,” and you think about Bob Cratchett, Tiny Tim and Scrooge, the American Dream is to be Scrooge; not the generous Scrooge of the end of the tale; but the lonely old miser of the beginning.
Even “Progressives” think about money. They see there will be no safety net and hope to enjoy their years without having to work.
I see it where I live. I don’t hang out with any of my neighbors. I used to in the old hood.
Yet I have “communities” where I work, work out, and hang out, where I talk politics and shop with various people.
Fed up as I am with what has been done in the name of the Lord I haven’t to a religious service in months. One of the great Jewish Rabbis, Nachman of Bratslav, the “Rebbe” of the Bratslaver Hasidim, said we must each become our Rabbis. But he did not mean we should be congregations of one.
Communities. This might be what Hillary Clinton was getting at in “It Takes a Village.”
One of McKibbon’s points is that to feel secure and connected, and to be healthy, we need a family and a community. He teaches Sunday school, and he teaches college, but he probably did not home school his kids.
One of my friends, a single mom with only one year of college, asked me what she could do to improve her life. By improve her life she means owning a small home and getting the guy she loves to commit to her – or finding another guy. College would be difficult – her job doesn’t pay much and she has a child. The juxtaposition of her question with Deep Economy led me to suggest she volunteer for an hour each week working for my candidate of choice. “You might meet some guy like me,” I said, “but single.” Then added “and it might wake your boyfriend.”
Or, I told her, very seriously, “you could move to Canada.”
, attracts hundreds of visitors each week to spend an hour swimming with, playing with, feeding, and getting to know dolphins. In Mexico and California, people have also realized that whales are worth more alive than dead. Whale watching tours make more money than whaling ships could - and the apparently sentient whales like to ‘hang out’ with the people in the whale watching ships. They know the people aren’t predators; they don’t try to capsize the ships.