Mad Men

Mad Men

The economy sucks and retirement savings have been slashed. And those are just the cyclical traumas. The more unnerving truth is that everything is changing and the rate of change seems to be accelerating, in: Technology, the media, the acceptance of gay people, the rise of women into positions of real power, Communist China as a formidable capitalist, a multi-racial America… and most of all: a BLACK man in the WHITE House! A black man who saves Wall Street, who is changing the way we respond to pollution, the way we interact with the world, the way we buy and distribute health care.

Making it all the more of an affront to those who resist change – is that Barack Obama won’t play his part. He’s a black man who appears more: intelligent, grounded, successful and noble than any of his white competitors. It’s a world turned upside down. To those who resist change, it’s felt as an attack on their ideals, their status, their world view and even their grip on reality. That is scary!

That fear then morphs internally into anger and that is understandable and completely natural. But make no mistake. It is reactionary to its core. As such it is powerful and dangerous. It springs from the oldest part of the animal brain – the reptilian stem. It’s very much part of all of our natures – and when activated by fear, we have little control over it. Congressman Joe Wilson admitted as much when he said that yelling “You lie!” at the President during his speech to Congress was “spontaneous.” At that moment, Wilson is the crocodile snapping at splashing prey, he is the front line soldier firing at sounds in the dark.

It’s important to remember that his appalling outburst comes from a southern conservative – the kind of person who reveres rank and is schooled in good manners. All the niceties of our mammalian and analytical brains are no match for the reptilian stem when we are scared and mad -- in both senses of the word.

Resistance to change twists even the most sophisticated minds. I know of bright, discerning, globally-minded individuals who loathe Barack Obama. They honestly believe this elegant, calm moderate is ruining the country. Their children are shocked and whisper that it can only be latent racism. It may be that, but I believe it’s simply that those who do not accept the reality of change become ever more isolated, fearful and angry.

The problem for Joe Wilson and millions of older, white, straight traditionalists is that their world is rapidly shrinking. The local newspaper is a shadow of its former self, or gone. The computer is ever more baffling. Employers push diversity. Young people are coarse and demanding. Even money doesn’t insulate anymore. Brown people, gay people, strange invaders of all shades and persuasions now populate the media and workplace, if not one’s own neighborhood. Just like Clint Eastwood’s, Walt Kowalski in the movie Gran Torino, the islands upon which these static personalities sit, grow smaller.

It reminds me of America in the early 1960’s which is so brilliantly portrayed in Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men. The world is shifting beneath people’s feet. Everyone’s a bit off balance. We know how history plays out. Women and African Americans demand opportunity and dark, fearful forces fight back. Blood is shed.

Change is exciting to healthy psyches. Change can be liberating to the downtrodden. But change can also be dangerous, because those who refute it often have no control over their reactive, reptilian and sometimes violent responses.