The Hardness of Being Real
You provided an honest and precise reflection on how we have defined being civilized in America. We have refrained from calling out hatred, bigotry, dishonesty and plain stupidity except in our internal dialogues. We don’t blow our horns, yes, we don’t even toot them. We drive on in silent conversation with ourselves knowing that we must be inclusive and work to understand conflicting opinions. We then feel good about ourselves. And I agree that love and openness will overcome. That works well in the summer but it is becoming a very cold winter. . .
You touched a nerve that has been a growing point of pain for me. Our world is in a major paradigm shift and the basic truth of these periods of fundamental change is that the new rules are much more complex than the old. The brutal reality is that this requires intelligence and greater knowledge to transition from the old world to the emerging world. These things can only be partially understood until well after the change has stabilized. The model that Thomas Kuhn used to define a paradigm shift was the critical stage of the scientific revolution that produced our industrialized and post industrialized world in the late 20th century. That world is now redefining itself as the virtualized, post scarcity world of the 21st century. Those labels are simply my own and are a work in process as we all struggle to figure out what we are becoming.
And that is the hardness that causes the pain that you touched. We have all obviously assumed (and that ‘all’ includes at least the 54% of the electorate who did not vote for Trump) that the logic, and evolutionary ethics, of science would obviously prevail; that individual respect based on acceptance and rational discourse is the foundation of political action and culture; that openness fosters love and spiritual comfort in knowledge of the constantly evolving unity of our perceived universe; and that knowledge, however limited, is based in our commitment to objectivity. Sorry, but we have a problem than bumper sticker shock.
History doesn’t happen all at once. While revolutionary changes, the most extreme being paradigmatic, culture defining perception changes, can seem to happen quickly, they have a very long tail. This has come to be a greater and greater problem for as our attention span shortens and memory is selectively ignored. There is a significant minority in the post industrial world that has had a long history of difficulty with the last major change, i.e. the scientific revolution. And people wonder how can someone in the 21st century not understand human caused climate change as our species’ greatest threat? It’s very easy if they are seeing the world even partially through medieval lenses. To people with only medieval tools climate is only weather and god(s) control that. People are helpless. What we are saying makes no sense. That’s what it means to be on the wrong side of the paradigmatic change. New tools explain the world in new ways with new understanding and new opportunities as well as new threats and potential solutions.
We thought we had the religionists under control because the post industrial world is very much present in everyone's life now countering local and family indoctrination of the young. Our effort to understand, be rational, and be inclusive is correct but we live with a vision of the world that is still tenuous in many places. While fundamentalist religion is in steady decline it exists exclusively as a denial of the scientific world and it’s history is parallel to the rise of the scientific world view. The people who have and maintain power through manipulation of religion as desperately fighting to hold on to their world. We forget that at our peril. But that is only the most visible part of the problem.
Two hundred years of steady struggle against racism has gained great ground at great cost but is also tied to scientific and rational ways of seeing the world. I’m not sure it means much to most Americans that the slave trade was outlawed in the British Empire in 1808 and slavery abolished in 1833. Yet we have a person who gained notoriety and political power by pandering to white supremacists and actually was able to “win” a presidential election with racism as a major factor. Racism is closely tied to slavery as a justification based on a view of reality that is very much irrational. While we can feel good about the logical inclusion of LGBT people, in fact all people, creatures, and soon sentient beings of non-biological origins we are facing an uprising of the worst of our non-scientific, time lagged population. This should not have been a surprise. It could also not have been avoided as a major source of conflict as the rate of major, cultural redefining changes begin to overrun each other.
While I am using broad concepts such as scientific revolution and world view and forcing some attention to the last four hundred years of western and world history this comes down to the problem of what to do about bumper sticker shock. And a disastrous failure of our political system that allowed the most dangerous part of our population (a small subset of larger planetary problem) to hijack a national election. How do we deal with this?
While the article that I am responding to is completely correct and is important as guiding principles, we need to deal with this as, no less than, an attack on modern civilization and the future of open, inclusive and rational societies that must manage our planet for the survival of all.
If you are interested in these ideas please check what I have been writing alone and in response to others in an effort to find the right path through this danger. The process of change is also covered at The Other Left . . .
