Where to go, what to do?

Though there is still, and will long be, plenty of grey areas in the world and how we see it, we are, nevertheless, standing at a metaphorical fork in the road. We're faced, believe it or not, with an essential and existential choice.

If we simply follow what appears to be the main road that we're on, we're doomed. You can call me a pessimist, a cynic, a nay-sayer, a doom-and-gloomer ... it doesn't matter what ... but we'll be out of here soon. It's no joke that we're destroying the environment; it is an established fact that we are contributing significantly to global warming; it is inevitable that sea levels will rise another meter in the next 100 years, driving hundreds of millions of people further inland; we have definitive proof that fracking and transporting sludgy sand across thousands of miles of farmland and aquifers is going to poison our water; we know that the casino capitalism we are practicing is not sustainable and another, even worse, financial disaster is inevitable and imminent; we can see that growing income inequality will have drastic, most likely violent, consequences. There are so many things that we know and that are clear and so many things that too many are too willing to do too little about. In other words, our current social, economic, technological and political trajectory is toward disintegration. We have it within our power to commit collective suicide or to allow ourselves to be murdered by the irrational believers in post-modern ideals.

When we stop to reflect on what we're confronted with, it becomes very apparent very quickly that these are not just decisive, dividing issues, they are inherently divisive: take the earth apart for its oil and minerals; divide crops into specialized areas and regions in order to industrialize; industrialization is the breaking down of a whole process into its lowest manageable units; poisoning the ground water cuts us off from one primary essential for life; capitalism is founded upon the idea of taking more than one needs even, or especially, at the cost of others. In other words, these are all rational activities and approaches, but in the end, they are destructive and deadly. The ultimate division, course, is the separation of life from the body, which we call death.

On the other hand, we can change. Though time is running out, it is not gone. There is still hope that something, that a wide variety of things, can be done to avoid catastrophe. The clock is ticking though, so we really don't have a lot of time to just sit back and think about it. We must act, and each and every one of us -- as I have been repeatedly emphasizing -- is required to take part, to get involved.

One option has been taken from us: the option to do nothing at all. In not acting, or in choosing not to act, we, by default, will be moved along the destructive path we are on. To choose is to choose to act, to do whatever is within your power, the scope of your creativity, the breadth of your knowledge. And here's the important point: it doesn't matter what it is. As long as you include in your action the benefit of at least one other human being, you will, in all probability, be on the other fork in the road.

If you don't believe me, try it, and find out.

The rational reduction

Growing up, the TV was black-and-white and full of Westerns. It was easy to tell who was who, for the good guys wore white hats and bad guys black ones. It has taken me years to get over it.

As we saw last time, with the introduction of perspective, points-of-view became the way to see and understand the world. More than one is possible, of course, so the question immediately arises as to which perspective, which point-of-view is the right one. We quickly moved from a simple what-is to what-is-right. A reasonable person will tell you that it depends: when seen one way, thus-and-so is right; when seen another way, something else is right. Our sensibilities regarding right and wrong, however, don't like to deal with more than one "right". Something is right, or it is not. In other words, we developed a whole way of thinking based on what is right. The good guys, in the white hats were right; the guys in the black hats were wrong, and a whole lot of effort was put into making sure we youngsters understood the message. Like I said, it's taken me years to get over it.

The competition between competing points-of-view leads rather quickly to relativity. Everything becomes relative, it depends on how you look at it, and in the end, it means that any point-of-view is as good as any other point-of-view, one opinion is as good as any other. But this is intellectually and emotionally unsatisfactory, we feel deeply uncomforatble. We long for clarity, for surety, for certainty.

And here came the cavalry or the posse to the rescue. It was all very clear: the good guys were right because they could draw faster and shoot straighter; they were stronger and better fighters; they overwhelmed the dark forces with strength, intelligence and, well, violence. Might made right. Apart from all the possible color associations that one can spin off of this, it was by power and sheer force that right was established. And in all this sorting of the wheat from the chaff, of the good from the bad, of the right from the wrong, we added an even more insidious degree of certainty ... at least those of us who were still in doubt. It was not simply a matter of either/or, either you're right or you're wrong, no, it became a matter of you're either with us or you're against us.

Not only was this thinking approach taken to an insane degree in recent American political history, what we find quite prevalent this days is the thinking that if you don't agree with the right point-of-view, you automatically subscribe to its opposite: if you are for the Palestinians, you are against the Israelis; if you are for gun control, you are against guns; if you are against the death penalty, you are for allowing violent criminals to roam the streets; if you are against GMO foods, you are an organic tree-hugger; if you are against casino capitalism, you must be a communist. Yes, it has come to this. And this type of thinking, this type of argumentation, which is way too prevalent these days, is dangerous, for it carries within itself its own seeds of destruction; it is by nature destructive thinking. It is this allegedly "rational" thinking that allows for the clearly irrational behavior we witness all around us: the destruction of the environment in the name of profit; the perpetuation of war and oppression in the name of freedom; the ... well, I'm sure by now you get the picture.

Our rationality is at an end. The rational reduction that I have experienced throughout my own lifetime has become, well, irrational.

Reference
Gebser, J. (1986) The Ever-present Origin, Authorized translation by Noel Barstad with Algis Mikunas, Athens/OH, Ohio University Press [originally published 1949]. (EPO)