Self & Society
Poverty, Democracy, And The Urban Inferno
by Anthony Maulucci
Every
American
city, regardless of its size, has an underground -- its lower depths.
It
is often the final dwelling place for those who have lost their
livelihood,
their families, or their grip on the rungs of everyday reality.
For many
Americans,
the economic downturn of early 2001, accelerated by the terrorist
attacks
on 9-11, has triggered an emotional downturn, a precipitous plunge into
the twilight world of a marginal, hand-to-mouth existence. Many face
the
agonizing choice of paying the rent or buying decent food and clothing.
When unemployment insurance benefits run out and savings accounts are
depleted,
the slide into the lower depths has begun.
It is this
underground
world of modern American cities that I call the Urban Inferno. In order
to imagine it, we must refer to the stark images in great literary
works
by Dante, Gogol, Dickens, and Dostoevsky -- yet it is a place which
exists
in reality. And like its literary counterparts, the Urban Inferno is a
place
of relentless suffering.
“I am a
sick
man . . . I am spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my
liver
is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do
not
know for certain what ails me.” So begins Dostoevsky’s short novel,
Notes From the Underground (1864). This could be the voice of many
inhabitants
of the Urban Inferno. And what ails most of them is not a mental
disorder
but the social disease of poverty and the shocks and knocks and
buffetings
that come along with it. Their heads are spinning as they fall from
grace,
and they don’t know what hit them.
In a
country
as rich as ours, poverty is a national dishonor. In a society we call
civilized,
we are obligated to eradicate it. Unfortunately, the most recent
melodrama
of corporate greed gets more attention than the latest family to hit
rock
bottom. And to those for whom poverty has become a permanent way of
life
we pay absolutely no attention.
Sadly, the
Urban
Inferno has become the denizen of many men and women caught up in the
turmoil
of lives disrupted and thrown out of balance by the sudden dislocation
of
job loss or divorce. The price they must pay in our highly
consumeristic
society where you are what you own is devastating to the psyche. Those
who
pass through the gates of the Inferno must abandon hope of every being
the
same. All previous patterns of existence are shattered by this
subterranean sojourn. All perceptions are forever colored by fear,
hunger, and deprivation.
In the
cities
of modern America, many are sinking beneath the surface of everyday
life.
The population of the Urban Inferno is swelling. In the world’s most
economically
successful democracy these infernos are signs of failure, and in
America
we do not like to look at our failures.
But one
need
look no further than the front pages of our daily newspapers for
corroboration.
The economically disenfranchised are lining up at soup kitchens and
occupying
beds in record numbers. More than ever before, people are being turned
away
from homeless shelters in the richest nation on earth. It is a human
tragedy
equivalent to the major dislocation of entire villages in Bosnia and
Afghanistan.
In America, we have our own refugee population wandering at loose ends
in
the urban underground of our cities, and it is a national disgrace.
Not since
the
Middle Ages have so many people been cut loose from their moorings and
left
to fend for themselves in the brutal world of the Urban Inferno. They
manage
to survive by taking shelter under bridges, in viaducts, and inside
abandoned
buildings.
The answer
to
this horrific problem is not broader social services or more soup
kitchens
run by more churches. Soup and subsistence allowances alone cannot cure
the evils bred by poverty and desperation.
For many
Americans,
the howling chaos is only one short step back, over the precipice.
Western
civilization has always walked a tightrope over an abyss. Now many are
trying
to run across that tightrope with the dogs of devastation snapping at
their
heels. On the national level, there are probably tens of thousands who
have
entered the Urban Inferno and who will probably never be rehabilitated
to
ordinary life. The wide spectrum of human emotion has been narrowed
down
to the fear and anger syndrome -- these people feel nothing but varying
degrees of fear and fury.
On a global
level,
thousands more are being radicalized in the crucible of dire poverty
and
any day their rage could erupt in another act of terrorism. Compared
with
the rest of the world we Americans are rich -- the poor in the streets
of
Bombay and Karachi do not make subtle distinctions about our relative
wealth.
Widespread poverty and the glaring income gap between rich nations/poor
nations
engenders an atmosphere of mistrust, insecurity, and fear. Fear of
power and envy of wealth breed hatred, and hatred leads to violence.
The global village is our neighborhood, and the suffering of others on
such a grand
scale as it exists today has a profound effect on the quality of our
lives.
Directly or indirectly, violence touches all of us.
If America
isn’t
safe, then there are no longer any safe places left in the world.
Potential
danger is everywhere, and paranoid distrust or xenophobia is becoming
less
irrational. We are caught in a rather devilish cycle. Stress, anxiety
and
fear have pushed many to their breaking point. Some have snapped, while
others are edging closer day by day. When the threshold is crossed,
those characterized by Thoreau as leading lives of quiet desperation
slide quietly into the Urban Inferno But others go berserk. driving
their trucks into restaurants, charging into former places of
employment like deranged marauders, taking the lives of many others
along with their own.
Both in
America
and the world, the poor have grown in both numbers and impoverishment,
while
the rich have indeed become richer. Furthermore, the sporadically poor
have
become the chronically poor, and we now have a new category: the middle
class poor. That these social conditions are tolerated by the world’s
most
powerful democracy seems nothing short of a sustained program of
cynicism
and cruelty. A government that considers itself enlightened must help
create
an enlightened form of capitalism. A democracy founded on the rights of
man must foster compassion and tolerance for all of its people all of
the time. Compassion and a decent standard of living should be the
first conditions of any society that considers itself both enlightened
and democratic.
For the
sake
of world peace and our own health and safety, we Americans must share
our
wealth before any more of the deserving poor slip silently into the
Urban
Inferno.
Anthony Maulucci is a poet, publisher, professor, and the
author
of three works of fiction, most recently THE ROSSELLI CANTATA, a novel
about
forgiving the unforgivable.
Copyright 2002 by Anthony S. Maulucci, P.O. Box 975 Norwich,
CT 06360
