Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee and quite likely the next President of the United States. Right wing trolls, anti-Semites and fascists are coming out of the woodwork everywhere in the country, threatening the very existence of America’s constitutional democracy. Immigrants will pour over the United States’ southern border creating societal destabilization that expands the crisis in American cities from existing immigration trends. The Democratic party is irreversibly split into a leftist faction and a shrinking moderate faction; their divisions over policy make them ineffective and will hand the election, the Presidency, the Senate, and the House to the fascists that have taken over the Republican Party. The economy is a shambles, with Americans falling into poverty and the middle class disappearing; the wealthy have taken over and are running the economy into the ground; a recession is coming. Global warming is spreading at a rate that surpasses anyone’s predictions and the consequences are terminal for human and other lives on the planet. Anti-trans and anti-abortion legislation is being passed all over the country. So what to do in 2024: “Find a place to hide.”???
I could go on with this list. It is reflected in news stories, television presentations, media spokespersons and opinionators from Sean Hannity to Rachel Maddow. It is the end of the world, the trends are ominous, the outcome certain, and it is not pretty.
Hiding is tempting. And yet, these are illusory, all of these so-called “trends.” I call it the “illusion of continuity,” exacerbated by media and social media which thrive on fear, hysteria, and extreme thinking making every one of these trends in illusory thinking more severe and, in a strange way, more likely, because the illusion is being recycled and accepted as reality.
I have not lost my mind and suddenly departed from “reality.” These messages are all around us. They are linked to things that are actually happening in the world. AND they are “illusions.” They assume a linear trend line from things we see to things we are told will happen. That is the illusory part.
Niels Bohr once said “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” Every one of these supposedly linear outcomes forecasts crisis, fear, and disaster. It seems to be part of the Zeitgeist right now. We hunker under our emotional covers and expect the worst.
Let me be clear. I am not talking about the need to “tell a better story” or “provide positive messages about Biden’s successes.” Those are nice things to have and stories do matter in politics.
I am talking about something deeper than a war over messages. Instead, I am focusing on broader movements in history, movements which ought to give us pause in repeating the horror stories we read and see. To me, trends in history are not linear. One thing does not necessarily follow from the other.
Not just me talking. My reflections on these supposed “trends,” any trends, really, is influenced by two different, but overlapping, views of how history moves and what change is about.
The first of these is the importance of looking at “contradictions.” There are cycles in history, more than there are linear trends; the rise of a social or political or economic trend stimulates a contradictory response. The most obvious historical example is the tension Marx identified between classes – a working class (along with social and political expressions) emerged out of the very success of capitalism. It is the “contradiction” to capitalism, born out of the very growth of a capitalist economy itself.
But one does not need to be a Marxist to see contradictions emerge. Our own history is full of them. Enslavement begat the Civil War. The depression begat the socio-economic reforms of FDR. The civil rights movement emerged from the repression of blacks across the country. Feminism arose out of the patriarchy. Defending the planet arose out of the destruction under way. Rock and roll, dare I say, arose out of the reaction to Frank Sinatra and Doris Day. One trend is linked to and emerges from the other. G.W.F. Hegel may have captured it best – ideas (and I would argue, trends) are inherently contradictory, action and reaction, in what he described as a “dialectical” relationship.
So as we look at all these foreboding trends, it makes sense, to me, to look for the contradictions. This is not as simple as saying: “well, the economy is great, not in trouble.” That is a political argument, useful, but not very deep; that is the clash of rhetoric we will see for the next ten months. In reality, the economy will do better (or worse) following its own logic; many of us get to ride the wave right now; we will ride the downside at some point. The trends give rise to greater organizing and to funding interventions to tide America over the COVID hump. But social media sells doom and gloom, reinforcing the notion that things are heading downhill fast.
This sells newspapers and we get to ride the emotional wave of negativity. I prefer to dig under the ground cover of negativity and find out what small shoots of contradictory trends are starting to grow.
Small examples: the vast reduction of poverty in America and in the world. The vast expansion of female attendance in institutions of higher education. A rising minimum wage. Falling unemployment. Changes in the job market creating new and different jobs. Pick your trend; look for the contradiction growing directly out of the trend. The media do not do this; contradictions do not sell media. So be wary of media and politician claims about the doom and fear; what new is coming?
The other perspective which reenforces a search for contradictions, comes from the Buddhist tradition: the concept of impermanence, or anicca in Pali. Simply put, everything changes all the time. Impermanence, not permanence, is the rule. Our bodies change and die; political movements and ideas change, grow and die. Even things we assume are solid, like rocks disappear as the ever-moving rivers and seas assault them. Everything, literally everything, is subject to the laws of change. So when I am startled by the crises and failures we can expect from the long litany of fear we are offered, my reaction is “yes, maybe, but also, this will change.”
It is helpful to me to look for the contradictions and hold the thought that things will change. I don’t think it is cockeyed optimism, for trends can go in many directions, some of them harmful to us as humans. It just lets me step back and say “maybe so,” but “maybe not.” And look for the other possibilities, the other trends. For social trends that are emerging from the crisis, for the hope that may resurrect my optimism, without delusion. Not looking for the place to hide this year and let the illusory trends sweep me into despair.
For me, this is a useful stance facing 2024 – a year of possibilities and change, not just media-driven trends. So ignore those scary polls, the inevitable doom for the planet, the end of our politics, the crushing of the human spirit of gender freedom. Look, too, for the rise of renewable energy, the gathering of support for democracy, the liberation of spirit in the next generation discovering who they are.
Don’t go sightless about what is happening, but let your eyes be full of the prospects for change, human growth, and recovery from war that also lie in wait – the contradictions, the changes that are taking place in front of us. Turn away from the illusion of continuity of negative trends.
That is where I am turning my gaze today.