I FEEL THE EARTH MOVE UNDER MY FEET

 

I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down, tumbling down

I just lose control
Down to my very soul.

                                    Carole King, 1971

This is a very personal post--about a very personal apocalypse, one quite different from the Biblical one imaged above.

Carole King's words come to mind because they describe how I feel about this upside down, ass-backwards moment in time.  While there are good things happening in the world, their scale when compared to the bad things that are happening seems to me pitifully dwarfed.  When you look at this short list of events and trends, can you tell me what's right with this picture?  Do these items upset your even keel and threaten to drown you in pessimism?  Consider...

• Russia and Israel are killing, maiming, starving, and freezing thousands of their neighbors in the name of "national security."
• Governments have fallen in Germany, France, Syria, and South Korea within weeks of each other.
• 2024 is the latest "warmest year on record"; greenhouse gas emissions are soaring; and more coal was burned in 2024 than in any previous year.
• FIFA awarded Saudi Arabia, the kingdom that sliced and diced a renowned journalist, the right to host the 2028 World Cup, giving MBS the opportunity to do a little "sports washing."
• The owner of an electric car company controls the US Congress from a social media platform he owns and no one vulnerable to being primaried utters a peep of protest.
  
• Global temperatures have blown right on by +1.5°c. over pre-industrial levels.
• 41% of American adults under 30 think it's at least "somewhat acceptable" to shoot a health insurance executive in the back.
  
• Arctic glaciers are melting at unpredicted rates, mystifying and terrifying climatologists.
• AI developers are warning that AI could be the Great Replacement, yet the amount of investment in the technology itself and the energy needed to power it is mind-boggling.
• Covid mandates and lock downs have triggered a fierce backlash against science.
• Only 35% of Americans have confidence in the federal judiciary.
  
• Loneliness is endemic, yet people continue to voluntarily(?) self-isolate with their screens.
  
• Citizens all over the globe have lost faith in their governmental institutions, often justifiably so.
• Deep fakes and siloed information have destroyed perceptions of what is real, rendering an electorate incapable of giving informed consent to its government.
• Critical thinking is down; superstition and conspiracy theories are up.
• Wealth around the globe has become even more concentrated.
• The US now has 756 billionaires, and a few of them have bought Cabinet and other positions of political influence in the incoming Administration, bringing what was once kept in the shadows by both parties out into the open, making it crystal clear that the more money you have, the more political and economic influence you have.
  
• There have been 85 school shootings in America so far this year (on average more than seven per month), and there's still time to rack up a few more.
• News outlets are self-censoring in fear of legal action by political leaders.  Experts on tyranny call this "obeying in advance." 
  

Is it just me, or is this stuff bat-shit crazy?  Are you as troubled by it as I am?  Do you feel like Alice, who passed to the other side of the looking glass, where everything is the opposite of what it used to be?  Do you feel like you've lost the plot?  Do you feel that everything has changed and nothing is the same?  Even worse, do you feel that not only is the “way forward” unclear, but that today is unrecognizable?  Do you feel that it's all just a bit too much?  I do.

I feel:  

That I am illiterate.  I cannot read the past, knowing it has been selectively edited for me. 

That I am losing my grip.  I cannot hold onto the present, knowing it is a carefully curated algorithm some tech company custom-made specially for me.   

That I cannot predict what will happen next.  I cannot imagine the future, knowing it will be envisioned by others for them, but not for me. 

In short, I feel that either everything I was told then about the past is a lie, or that everything I am being told now about the present is a lie, or both.  How did this happen?  How did I become so apprehensive, even afraid.

What do I fear?  I fear that the future the astronomer and cosmologist Carl Sagan prophetically predicted in 1995 is now.  He nailed Zeitgeist 2024 and the source of my anxiety:  

I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

"...especially a kind of celebration of ignorance." !!! 

Something has gone terribly wrong.  This is what happens when facts are in perpetual dispute and distorted and the truth is buried in lies.  This is what happens when we watch a violent riot in the US Capitol with our own eyes and are assured it was just a tourist visit.  This is what happens when we watch a slack-jawed, dead-eyed President lose the thread in a campaign debate and are assured he is cogent and fully in charge.  

Like Sagan, Hannah Arendt anticipated this moment of inversion some 50 years ago, writing:

If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.

And just like that, believing nothing becomes a belief in nothing, which is nihilism, a different thing altogether and a very dangerous place to be.  Nihilism is a loss of control down to one's very soul.

What to do about this?  How to defend against the disorientation that occurs when everything everywhere changes all at once?  I find it difficult to cope.  It becomes a daily challenge to remain intellectually engaged but emotionally detached, to simply observe without editing and still not retreat.  I want to remain engaged but without sacrificing my well-being.  For now, my bottom-line requirements for survival in this topsy-turvy world have been reduced to a pathetic, bare minimum:  "So long as we don't lose all our money and no one is dropping bombs on our heads or shooting at us, everything is gonna be all right."

But what if it isn't?  2024 has been a rough year.  2025 could be even rougher---or not.  Who can say for sure?  No one and certainly not me.  But just in case things go horribly wrong, if necessary, I can always pretend that I don't really care. 

And if that fails, I can resort to bluster and turn to that fake Latin phrase:  Illegitimi non carborundum.  Or, to quote another great female songwriter,

I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off.

Of course, all of this cavalier pretending and false bravado in the face of deep uncertainty about "What the hell is going on and where is it all leading?" is nothing more than self-defense.   But it's all I've got--for now. 

Keep it real!  Happy Holidays!

Marilyn