WHERE AM I?

I have never felt more isolated from American society. I say this without reservation. And it is saying a lot.

I grew up in the 1950's and 1960's as the youngest person in a multi-generational household. My brother, who ranked above me by 6 years, lived in a relatively autonomous universe beyond the reach of my childhood mind. I may as well have been an only child. The adults in the home ... parents, grandmother and maiden aunt ... paid little attention to me unless I was happily occupied elsewhere, needed for some helper task or got caught doing something unacceptable. I was my father's gopher, interpreted by my mother as his favorite. I was my mother's obvious frustration. 

The women of the household eyed me warily between occasional expressions of affection. I always felt suspected of something they disliked, without knowing what it was. Later I realized it was my maleness. Despite being shy and generally people-pleasing to an extreme, my maleness seemed destined to be a problem. Little did I know in those early years that my natural homosexuality would be even a greater problem.

I knew loneliness, deep and profound, among a crowd of extended family. Male cousins saw me as not masculine enough. Female cousins had been initiated into the cult of feminine suspicion of all that is male. Uncles and aunts gave me the hairy eyeball, but grinned when my parents presented my academic achievements as a shield against the unspeakable assessment that I might be 'one of those'. I knew that I would never be smart enough to avoid that assessment and its inevitable consequences.

Today's America has tapped into those early feelings. My advantage now is that I do know who I am, and I am OK with that, warts and all. But I cannot help but be cognizant of the return of social hypocrisy which I knew in my early years. Being a developed and centered individual in a society which is hurling itself into regressive tribalism is a lonely place. 

Today the layers of post-television society are beginning to merge. In my youth, I knew that TV was a fantasy portrayal of ideal family values. Fifteen minutes in my family's house would convince the most skeptical of that fact. TV families were actors: Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriet. Ike and Anne, my parents, were real in more ways than one. My father was a direct and uncorrupted cop who worked for years with child protection and anti-gang programs in our tough city. My mother was an adult child of abusive alcoholic immigrants. She shielded herself with a constant aura of potential rage. She was tougher than most men around us, including my very masculine father.

We lived with the dichotomy of TV vs reality comfortably. My father and mother mocked Donna Reed's meticulous and hyper-feminine persona. My Russian grandmother looked at the TV as though it was a magical window into a parallel universe which she could never visit. My parents worked constantly, at home and at their jobs. My grandmother, an illiterate seamstress, worked in an unheated warehouse for an exploitative capitalist until she was 70. No pension. No health insurance. But they were all committed to a program of pushing my brother and me to higher education. He was to be a dentist. I was to be a medical doctor. No discussion.

The inherent struggles I faced with my reality never seemed to depend on what I saw on TV until the Gay Liberation movement of the 1970's. By then, I had sorted out who I wanted to become as a person, not just a gay person, but a person. My aspirations did not include being a bourgeois physician, my parents' dream for me, patterned on the husband of a friend of theirs who was just that.

But this is Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/YouTube Age. This is the age of gangs. Street gangs, bourgeois techie gangs, political gangs, racial gangs, gender gangs, etc.. The media successors to broadcast TV have far exceeded Marshall McLuhan's worst fears. Social media, social networks, have tied a noose around the neck of social reality and are jerking it this way and that (trending). Thought has been reduced to less than 140 characters, links and GIF's. Bang! Gotcha. It is a Wild West of Mind Games. If I do not belong to a clique, where do I belong? How vulnerable am I to being targeted? What are the dangers of independent thoughts plainly expressed in my virtual or real neighborhood?

I am not unprepared for the inevitable isolation of having an independent mind in such a society. I was an out gay man in a female profession (Nursing). I was a gay man who refused to imitate the nelly affectations of my peers. I was a gay man who lived intentionally in what I perceived as an integrated straight-gay and male-female society. Ghettos were not appealing to me. I never forgot the images of The Warsaw Ghetto from my post-war childhood. Why should I create a ghetto for myself, I thought.

So, I saw my greatest social strength as my willingness to work for multiple worthy causes as both professional and volunteer. I did not demand acceptance or respect. I entered work and social environments as a provider of support, acceptance and respect. In my way, I helped two of my domestic partners attain their educational and professional goals. I served the lesbian-gay community of my time as counselor, nurse, health administrator, board member, volunteer receptionist, etc.. I showed up at marches. I gave money to social and political causes. In these ways, I felt part of a dynamic society on the move to improvement and away from war.

Now I feel I am living in an age of "me first". We live in a country with blood on its hands from conflicts largely imagined to support an arms industry. The poorer among us are traumatized by that violence because they have provided the voluntary canon fodder. Those who are better off are clueless about that cost. They are floating on fake credit-based affluence, provided to the shadow of a middle class by exploitative banks, insurance companies and the illusion of corporate ownership. The young adults of that class are either indoctrinated into a cult of fascist victim-hood or are living the 'it's all good' materialist's existence of travel, drunken parties and promiscuity without concern for social justice, just politically correct platitudes. .

I have returned to a life of greater solitude. From the junkyard Web, I am salvaging whatever intelligent content I can find. Peter and I manage to keep each other grounded. We discuss. We question. We share. I cannot express how fortunate I feel to have this kind of relationship in our shared home. 

I recently heard Stephan Molyneux say with characteristic zeal that he felt the only way to survive the future collapse of Western civilization due to economic collapse is to live in community. Making a community in place and on line. Sounded great. But I wouldn't know where to begin. I just do not see the openness of others around us to real community. I do not see it on my Facebook pages. I do not see it on Twitter. There are those who consider belonging to a country club and playing in golf tournaments community. Perhaps it is for them. I have experienced communities of open sharing and communication. These communities were comprised of real people with honest bonds. They were not networks or gangs. They were not about showing off or competing. They were about self-revelation and cooperation. 

Some greats of medieval Europe who managed to survive famine and war to old age took the monk's hood or the veil. They discarded fortune and family for prayer, quiet community and mundane work.  Routine, humility and productivity guided them back to something positively human, something valuable. They sought this within sight of their impending deaths. Perhaps I am living out that part of my classical Western education. Perhaps, in this, I am exactly where I am supposed to be.