Week 98.
Elder Advice hardly knows where to begin. The predictable and horrifying Russian effort to grind Ukrainian resistance down to dust - oblivious to the justified outrage. The 19th century decisions of the United States Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and upending a century of sensible gun control legislation in New York - oblivious to the justified outrage. Ottawa mandarins attending Russian embassy cocktail parties - oblivious to the justified outrage. The federal government’s stonewalling of the reason for the unnecessary invocation of the Emergencies Act to end the idiotic Ottawa protest - oblivious to the justified outrage.
For those who feel poorly about the state of things, there is an embarrassment of riches.
I remember Harrison telling me when he was about 10 that the biggest problem in the world was “obliviousness”. Now, to be honest, I recall that complaint stemmed from his belief was that folks were not paying enough attention to him. But there is no doubt he was on to something.
Elder Advice thought back to that conversation late last Thursday night when his flight landed at Pearson and the flight attendant gamely and reasonably suggested that everyone leave the aisle clear to allow those with connecting flights to deplane first. The fact the flight was two hours late, and that we had spent another irritating half hour waiting for the arrival of a gate agent, made the connecting passenger predicament more serious. Yet, when the seatbelt sign switched off, the 24 rows ahead of Elder Advice immediately rose as one and jammed the passageway. Oblivious. Plaintive requests from those unfortunates in the back with flights to catch were ignored. Inexplicably, the flight crew said and did nothing. Oblivious. Minutes tick by. Their requests for what used to be called “common courtesy” having gone unheeded, tempers of the trapped flared.
Now in the increasingly witless world in which we live, Elder Advice understands his first reaction should have been sympathy for the 144 people in rows 1-24 A through F. Who must all be assumed to be blind, deaf, or suffering from late onset aviophobia. But Elder Advice hails from a time when people still shaved routinely with Occam’s Razor. When the simplest of competing theories was preferred to the more complex. When blatant incivility was recognized for what it was. And so, after a period of positively Christlike patience, he expressed irritation, at the top of his lungs: “What is the matter with you people? Sit down. Behave yourselves. And let these people pass!”
Now Elder Advice is used to being ignored. After all, he is married and has children. So he was unsurprised when the majority of offenders pretended they did not hear him and a small group briefly shuffled about with their oversize luggage and sat down only when enough time had passed that they could pretend it was of their own volition.
Sheepish and Shamefaced both texted me to complain that no one has appeared like them for years.
Obliviousness. In 2022, it is the elephant in the room.
One of my favourite American clients is a zoologist. He warned me that, like people, many animals cannot be relied on to do the right thing. For example, he said, oysters, clams and lobsters are irredeemably shellfish. Anyway, he let me know that the New York Court of Appeals ruled last week that Happy the Elephant, which animal rights activists sought to have declared a “person” illegally imprisoned at the Bronx Zoo, is not a human being entitled to the rights and freedoms accorded to humans. Elder Advice could not help but think, especially after last Thursday night that, if asked, Happy would decline the dubious honour of personhood, whatever rights accompanied it.
We are increasingly not an admirable species. The battle we are required to wage against inherent human nature, which makes us tend toward self interest and self deception, in hopes of moving incrementally to greater self discipline and caring for the community, is plainly in danger of being lost. Frankly, no self respecting elephant would want to be one of us.
Elder Advice? Obliviousness. If you are oblivious to it, you are part of the problem.