One of my favorite works of science fiction is Isaac Asimov’s original Foundation Trilogy.
If you’re reading this essay then you are probably familiar with Asimov’s master work, but if it is unfamiliar to you, the Foundation Trilogy is the story of the fall of a Galactic Empire that has ruled the galaxy for 12,000 years.
A mathematician named Hari Seldon has created a scientific discipline called psychohistory which “uses sophisticated mathematics and statistical analysis to predict future trends on a galactic scale.” Seldon foresees the fall of the Empire and puts in place a plan to shorten the darkness and chaos of the interregnum period.
While psychohistory sprung from Asimov’s imagination, it is not so far-fetched. Real life Hari Seldons like Peter Turchin of the University of Connecticut, co-creator of the emergent field of cliodynamics, and Yaneer Bar-Yam at the New England Complex Systems Institute are finding ways to use mathematics and complex systems science to look at the world around us and predict, or at least postulate plausible scenarios, for the future. (FYI it doesn’t look good.)
It wasn’t Kamala or Biden or Latinos or Black Men or White Women or the Democrats. It certainly wasn’t the Trump campaign’s “brilliant” strategy or even Elon Musk’s money.
There are complex systems at work that no individual actor, or group of actors, can alter. That’s why I say the outcome of the most recent election is nobody’s fault. It wasn’t inevitable but it also wasn’t anyone’s fault.
In April 2023 I published an essay called “Talkin’ Crunchy Granola Far Right Lefty Blues” specifically looking at how the anti-establishment Radical Left countercultural rhetoric of the 1960’s eerily resonates with today’s anti-establishment Far Right counterculture.
I was surprised at the echoes of the Far Left in the Far Right, how the January 6 riot seemed like a dark version of the 60s, how the historically accepted lines between Right and Left seemed to be blurring. The essay is long and discursive, but in the final section, “Part XII: The Perils of Ecstasy”, I wrote:
There seems to be a generational cycle to the ecstatic disruption of society — the 1930s, the 1960’s, the 1990s, today. And we need to reckon with the past even while we brace ourselves for what is happening now — and what is yet to come.
What I was trying to get at is that there are always social and historical forces at work that are beyond our control. Every so often, a society - certain segments of society - feels compelled to f**k s**t up.
While the specific characteristics of social disruption will reflect the technological, political and cultural elements of the era, the underlying impulse is the same from generation to generation. Yes, we have agency, yes we have responsibility, yes, our actions make a difference, but the pendulum will swing regardless.
In June 2023 I published an essay called, “Love, Hate and Politics”, which was something of a thought exercise prompted by Marianne Williamson’s presidential campaign. She was never a serious candidate, but what if we took her seriously as a cultural phenomenon? What if we took her ideas - and audience - seriously?
I had become increasingly interested in the intersection of the New Age/Spiritual movement with MAGA and Q-Anon; how, supercharged by the Internet and social media, accepted boundaries and categories were being radically redefined. How was this type of intersectionality altering the current social and political moment? I thought it was worth looking into a bit more carefully. Towards the end of that essay I wrote:
Countering the “dark psychic force of […] collectivized hatred” unleashed by Trumpism will require a profound and radical shift in perspective. If Trump pried open the Overton Window to normalize authoritarianism and make overt racism and hate speech acceptable, what does that look like from the Left? Is it possible to articulate and normalize a vision of society that is radically, profoundly different than what is currently imaginable, offering a compelling counternarrative to the rising fascist authoritarian state?
and
…Someone will have to come up with an alternative approach to our society’s — and world’s — problems that is so unexpected that it makes everyone see things in a new way. Someone has to come up with a new way of seeing, of framing social problems, challenges and opportunities, that will destabilize all existing narratives and “shift the paradigm” in a way that rejects “Right” and “Left” as the only framework for political discourse.
Heather Cox Richardson, in an essay posted on November 8, called attention to Amanda Marcotte’s article in Salon about “the Trump voters who want progressivism”, pointing out that in “states all across the country where voters backed Trump, they also voted for abortion rights, higher minimum wage, paid sick and family leave, and even to ban employers from forcing their employees to sit through right-wing or anti-union meetings. She points out that 12% of voters in Missouri voted both for abortion rights and for Trump.”
For a long while now many Americans from the Left, Right and in-between, have contended that the system isn’t working, except for the wealthiest and most privileged (see this recent FB post by Robert Reich).
In my “Love, Hate and Politics” essay I wrote that “Democrats persist in thinking that there is a way back to “normal”, back to the Before Times.”
But after 2020 (really 2016) there was no going back to the Before Times, and nobody wanted that anyway. People wanted a new system, one that would work for them, not just the rich and powerful.
Trump’s central promise to his followers was to disrupt the status quo and destroy the system, and that’s what he’s going to do. It is just not going to work out the way a lot of his supporters hoped it would.
What’s coming is going to be brutal and horrific and painful and terrifying. And it looks like Trump is just the American version - this move towards authoritarianism, fascism, religious fundamentalism and repressions seems to be global.
While we can’t turn back the tide, perhaps we can do more than just survive. Maybe, just maybe, we can shorten the interregnum, because the pendulum will swing back again, eventually.
I had a glimmer of hope when reading Douglas Rushkoff’s post from November 11 entitled “This Game Is Not Reality” where he wrote:
The political institutions that seem to be failing us now are just one symptom of a civilization whose many institutions are no longer up to the challenge of contemporary, digital life. Their inconsistencies and compromised value systems simply can’t hold up to the stresses of this time… No amount of policy can correct for the injustices of neoliberalism, nationalism, or colonialism. So we can’t pretend that any political solution is more than duct tape.
Rushkoff continues:
Rather than focusing so much on the institutions that are failing us, what if we take on the functions that our institutions are failing to execute? The more engaged we are in mutual aid, the less our impoverished neighbors need to depend on the institutionalized social safety net for their food and shelter. The more we engage our troubled friends in our own and less fortunate communities, the less they will need to turn to welfare, mental health clinics, homeless shelters, and other failing national programs.
Ironically, I think this was kind of the argument of old school “small government” Republicans. And also “off the grid”, “back to the land” counterculture hippies from the 1960s and 1970s.
In 2024 - and the decades of tribulation to come - I think this is the call for artists, activists and anyone who yearns to see the realization of a just, equitable, inclusive society that centers care, compassion, interdependence and the common good.
Resistance will not be enough. We need to look even further into the future and start laying the groundwork for the world to come, after the darkness.
I return, as I often do, to the words of R. Buckminster Fuller:
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
Thanks for joining me on this journey. Onwards.