I left the field of Human Services for several years because I was sick of bearing daily witness to the neglect of elderly people. I simply wanted to work with objects and things that didn’t experience pain and depression. I found myself at a factory-type workshop where we assembled and constructed parts for commercial vehicles. I found myself on the “Indicator Line” where we glued pieces of cut glass into plastic holders. Each one of these pieces of glass had a word or short phrase cut into its surface, things like “low fuel” or “engine fire.” Every word or phrase was a warning of some kind. Each of the plastic holders that housed one of these pieces of glass would eventually be installed into the control panel of an airplane or another kind of vehicle and act as an indicator light. After several months of this tedious job, I couldn’t stop myself from remembering certain elderly people at the nursing home where I had previously worked as a housekeeper. I especially thought of those who didn’t have families and were essentially forgotten people. I thought about how we are so ensnared by excesses in food and conspicuous consumption that we find it inconvenient to care for our weaker brothers and sisters. I thought about the words and phrases etched onto each piece of glass, how they were serious warnings. I started to develop metaphors and analogies in my head using all of this information. I thought to myself, “If our country had a panel of indicator lights, they would be flashing constantly… flashing words and phrases like ‘gone astray’ and ‘feel empathy.'” I thought to myself, “This is an American story. We own this story— good or bad—and all share the responsibility.” I came to the conclusion that I had been a part of the problem by not more fully sharing in this responsibility. This was the birth of IndicatorArt.

IndicatorArt, a Movement

At IndicatorArt, our mission, as it develops, will be to look for these flashing indicator lights and to address them, before the systems they are monitoring completely fail. Something that distinguishes us from our Human Service industry counterpart is our understanding that we are at war. How can an agency fight a culture war when it doesn’t even know that it has an enemy? It’s actually about the survival of our country. We see this issue in an eternal context, through the lens of failing churches. We see it in a historical context, through the lens of fallen civilizations.

 

It is true that we are in many ways very advanced. We have great cities, a powerful army, food to throw away. But what kind of countrymen and countrywomen are we turning out? Do the defenseless have to fear the strong? Do the weak have to be afraid that they will be forgotten? As a people, are we compassionate or are we greedy and self-serving? From a spiritual point of view, is America actually a backwards society?

Let me illustrate these ideas with a few stories.

The Burning Ant Log

When I was a kid, my parents took us to the Adirondacks every summer. Each night we had a campfire. Even though it has now probably been thirty years, one fire in particular stands out. One of the adults threw into the fire a log that was serving as a home to an ant colony. I still vividly remember watching in awe and sadness as the ants that were on the side of the log still facing outward and away from the flames, ran around in all directions. Carrying their eggs, they attempted to escape until the entire log was eventually eaten, swallowed whole by the intense heat of the blaze. It just makes me think. In a spiritual sense, is our nation on that log? Is this abandonment of the most defenseless among us—the elderly, for instance—an indicator that we are on this log? Maybe we are on the side that is still facing outward and away from the flames, away from civil war, away from ruthless dictators, and away from famine. But what does that matter if we are still in the fire? Place America’s priorities next to the scorching light of the world’s atrocities, and it will become terribly apparent that we are lost in self-gratification, self-indulgence and excess while much of the world is being destroyed by fire. How will we be viewed in history? What will they say about us? What will our legacy be?

Caught in the Farmer’s Snare

When I was growing up, I read the book Watership Down by Richard Adams. It’s a story about rabbits and the adventures they confront attempting to find a new home. At one point in the story, they come across a warren of rabbits living in denial. The farmer has been putting fresh vegetables near the entrances of their home with the intention of trapping them. These rabbits all know this fact, that one by one they are getting killed by the farmer. They choose instead not to acknowledge this and remain living there in order to continue eating well. I believe that in America we have an obsessive focus on self-gratification and pleasure; this obsessive focus is continuously grinding down our service-centered belief system and the idea that we have an obligation to help the people who can’t take care of themselves. Like these rabbits, we are choosing a fat, self-centered lifestyle over doing what is right. Like these rabbits, we are living in denial, since we, too, will most certainly get caught in the farmer’s snare. We, too, will someday become vulnerable in some regard. This is the truth: We may never become ill and spend time in a hospital or become homeless or become disabled in some way, but if we live long enough, we will become elderly. It’s simple: We die young or eventually we become vulnerable through an aging, dying body. As a people are we not living in an utterly irrational way? Are we not living in denial? Is this some kind of strange sickness, the fact that we are helping to create a society that doesn’t take care of its elderly, even though each one of us will eventually become elderly? Will this epidemic of irrational selfishness eventually destroy our nation?

America’s Wednesday

I dearly loved my dog who died because, for whatever reason, she ate part of a carpet. I think this may have occurred on a Monday or Tuesday. Since she wasn’t showing any ill effects from eating the carpet, we did not take her to the veterinarian immediately. In fact, I remember distinctly that on Wednesday, she was playing with the other dogs up by the pond. She was actually at the top of her game when it came to catching the ball and doing tricks that we had never seen her do before. It was beautiful and fun. Unfortunately, over the next day or so, she started showing serious signs that she wasn’t well. We brought her in, and the doctor performed an emergency surgery. We got a phone call on that Saturday morning telling us that she had died peacefully during the night after complications. When I thought back to everything, I understood that this dog—whom I dearly loved—was actually dying on that Wednesday, the day that she was running and playing and catching the ball like she had never done before. The United States is seemingly as strong as it has ever been. We, in a sense, are running and playing and catching the ball like we have never done before. For example, we are creating new forms of technology and making advancements in medicine at an astonishing pace. It makes me think: Is America in its Wednesday time period? In a spiritual sense, are we actually dying right now? Does the habitual neglect of weak people by strong people represent a corner piece of some symbolic carpet that we’ve eaten as a society? Have we swallowed something that represents the devaluing of human life, something that’s going to destroy us if we don’t act upon it now?

 

The way a society treats its most vulnerable people acts as an indicator of how advanced that society is, in a spiritual sense. How we serve our nation’s suffering, defenseless, and weary acts like a canary in a coal mine, warning us when our culture goes astray. We at IndicatorArt believe that there is great suffering among many of our nation’s powerless and dependent. We believe, as well, that our culture values pleasure, entertainment, and comfort so much that a concern for the weak becomes minimal or nonexistent. We believe that our canary is not only dying, but may be already dead.

In a culture that has become comfortable with using something once or only a few times, and then without a thought, throwing it away, it would only make sense that this attitude would seep into our interactions with people. You have only to witness the factory-like mentality of the morning routine at any nursing home to truly understand how, as a community, we have devalued the lives of our parents and grandparents. You have only to witness the way people, on their way to get coffee before work, many times will sidestep a homeless person lying in garbage, to truly understand that we have created a human hierarchy of importance and worth. So much of our society has become disposable, from the plastic hot mustard chicken nugget containers at fast food restaurants to the millions of homeless dogs and cats that we put to sleep each year to the patients of a hospital who have no visitors to advocate for them. We are a “throw it away” country. We use a plastic cup once and throw it away. Think about the food we throw out… why not people? We unnecessarily leave the water running, the heat on, the lights on, the television on. There is single use everything… ketchup packets, hotel tooth brushes, plastic creamers for our Styrofoam coffee, plastic silverware that comes in clear plastic. Think about marriages and the divorce rate in this country. It is not surprising that this attitude of throwing things away has saturated our attitudes towards people who are viewed as damaged and without usefulness.

Where a society puts its money and resources and time is an indicator of where its heart is. I think of professional sports, the billion-dollar entertainment industry, the latest gadgets, products to make us more beautiful, more comfortable, and more amused. Consumed as we are, that doesn’t leave much time for considering the vulnerable people among us.
Think about the resources we put into storytelling. Think about how much money it costs to make a movie—all the people involved, all the different jobs that are involved in physically creating an environment where the story can be told. The stories themselves are wonderful and beautiful evocations of people—where they came from, where they were born, how their lives progressed—their successes, their struggles, their failures. However, we as a society have made the unconscious decision that we are going to value a person’s story over the person. A perfect example is how, in the last decades, there have been several remarkable movies made about our involvement in World War II. I am sure most people were really moved by the stories they saw on the screen and the individual sacrifices that our soldiers made for the freedom of our country. It is also safe to say that most people were not moved enough to become a volunteer at a local nursing home and visit with the men and women who were a part of the generation who saw us through this war at home and overseas, who made sacrifices for our nation that few can understand. Any way you look at it, our money, our resources, and our time are not going toward the improvement of care for our nation’s most vulnerable. Apparently, we are the richest nation in history. The money to truly take care of our helpless is out there. We are just choosing to spend it on ourselves. How did we get so far off course? It’s simple: We value entertainment—our escape from reality—over people who represent the sadness of reality. While some evils are caused by not having enough (for example, those who commit robbery because of a lack of money), our epidemic of ignoring dependent people who are suffering in silence and isolation seems to be the result of having too much. We have become so self-indulgent as a society that anyone who becomes an inconvenience, who is messy, who is not fun to be around, who takes a lot of our time, is viewed as a burden.

In many ways and on many levels, our culture finds value in the temporary. Our culture seems to elevate people to a higher status when they produce flowers. Even though these flowers—a symbol of someone’s “accomplishments” or “successes” or “power”—eventually shrink and die, our society places great value on them. We as a people put great worth into things destined to end, such as fame, talent, wealth, and physical attractiveness. It’s sad how we define “attractiveness” in our culture. One thing is for sure: Attractiveness in our culture is not an elderly woman who has bad breath and is sitting in her own poop in some corner of some random nursing home. Attractiveness in our culture is not a person with a developmental disability with thick glasses, crossed eyes, and a bad haircut. A person with rotting teeth and old clothes, who lives day to day between cold pavement and a cot at a homeless shelter, is not considered attractive in our culture. I wonder how God would define attractiveness. It is my belief, that in God’s eyes, an elderly woman who is desperate and crying out for help is much more attractive than a younger person with skin-deep beauty, who is spoiled, self-focused, and overly prideful of what he can do and what his plans are.