The ones FuxNoise and their ilk can't control. And are terrified of.
A lot us have been casting about and asking why things have gotten so out of control and crazed over the past number of years. The polarization, the increasingly hair-trigger reactiveness, the rampant screaming meemies that seem to have infected and taken over the world in recent decades. What on earth has gone so wrong?
The world has always been larger than humans. We’ve always been tiny and relatively helpless against our environment and greater surroundings. And we’ve fought that, all along. I believe we have a deep, unconscious understanding/memory of how much we lack real control of our world; it drives us to learn and try to figure out, (and then control), as much as we possibly can. Our understanding has grown, our expectations have changed, but anxiety about being blind sided by Nature or other people has always been with us, throughout the eons of our evolution.
We’ve evolved from explaining drought and flooding as the rain gods being angry at some piddling transgression of ours to having weather satellites and reliable micro-climate predictions. Now the whole subject of climate change and its accelerating effects has thrown us back into a greater anxiety state than we’ve seen in generations.
Defaulting to an older order of things is a natural response, a reasonable part of troubleshooting; backtracking to when things were working well is perfectly reasonable. But a ‘return to fundamentals’ can also be a response of those who can no longer comprehend the rules, or keep up with the reasons underlying them- or have confidence that we’re charting the correct, (or at least best available), course. Fundamentalist religions multiply when the world gets more complicated, they promise simplicity and safe harbor in exchange for blind obedience. They promise that the leader will make all the judgement calls, relieving us of responsibility for the potential mistakes in navigating a complicated world. In exchange for our autonomy.
A significant percentage of our world population doesn’t have either the education or the capacity to understand the lasting implications, (and project the reasonable likelihood of different outcomes), of the effects of climate change on our immediate circles, so they are suddenly back on high alert for profound danger; and looking for foci to offload that anxiety.
Our world is much larger now, but there’s suddenly a threat that’s even bigger, and people are scared, but many can’t consciously acknowledge those fears, or even recognize them, much less soothe them, so they instinctively hark back to what worked for our ancestors, scapegoating.
Scapegoats are a historic, deeply traditional method of displacing collective anxiety, (designating and sacrificing a single goat to carry away the supposed ‘sins’ of a group to assuage the anxiety of a village or other group of people). It’s been documented as being practiced in various forms since ancient times, it has literally thousands of years of precedent. The current focus on various minorities, (‘Libs’, trans people, LGBTQI, Jews, POC, etc.), is of a piece with this tradition. As were the Nazi efforts to corral the same various ‘others’ to pin all the sins and bad effects of their times, (left over from WW I and its punitive aftermath). It’s a throwback cultural response to a world too large, and the terrifying feelings of lurking disaster. A profound survival anxiety.
Scapegoating didn’t solve actual problems, but it did give people the confidence to keep going and expect positive change. A reboot. Unplugging the group and drawing a line before plugging back in to their daily lives.
FDR’s line, ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’, is what we need now, an acknowledgment that we are afraid, that it’s not unreasonable of itself, and that we need to take courage in our fellow humans to face whatever comes together. Turning away from formless fear and floating anxiety to the promise that we can still work together to make a better world.
But we have to disseminate this outlook and feeling broadly enough to seep down to the less aware, to those less capable of recognizing the true source of their unease. Or of dealing with it.
Techniques like local Civil Defense associations, Victory gardens and scrap drives helped in WW II, giving everyday people something substantive to do, to focus on, to contribute with. Riveting Rosies and everyone pitching in to the collective efforts to win gave us a cohesive identity- We were all Americans working together to overcome an awful, world threatening Enemy. The very embodiment of evil, which would steal our lives and liberty and devour the free world if not defeated. (Then we had to spend decades deprogramming the identification of said ‘enemies’, but the existential threat had been resolved).
Once WW II was over, we began the biggest investment project in history: Rebuilding the previously developed world- with very specific expectations of plenty and generosity as foundations. Liberal democracies. Responsive to their citizens.
That rebuilding/retooling laid the foundations for half a century of peace and the greatest prosperity, scientific advances and liberty our species has ever known. Europe, the US and Japan became the dynamo that produced the computer revolution, the satellites and software capable of predicting micro-climate forecasts, space exploration, fighting cancer, eliminating small pox, taming pandemics … and much, much more.
The Green New Deal is that same opportunity, rebuilding an outdated and crumbling, inefficient system with something more robust and respectful of the earth’s resources and capacities. And human needs as well. There are currently more young, energetic people than have ever existed, recruiting them to pitch in and save us all is both essential and easier than one might think. They’ve been watching all this develop all their lives, they’re immersed in it,. They’re well aware of how dangerous things have become, and they are, for the most part, willing & eager to get to work.
Let’s help them finish what many of us saw and started so long ago, civil rights and liberties and a clean, renewable environment.
