The ultimate positive myth, that civilization ensures progress, now confronts barbaric rejection of consensus, compromise, co-operation, compassion and enlightenment
It’s vital these dark days to recall how life offers both comedic outcomes (happy endings, reconciliation of differences, evil rebuked, revitalized community values, even optimism) and tragic ends (irredeemable loss, might rules right, no happy ending, even bitter acceptance of the dark side). If reality is our sanest guide, life over time is hardly a bed of roses (loaded with cakes and ales), instead orchestrating stark lessons that evil is formidable, even insurmountable, power often merciless, public morality an illusion, disasters strike, and final consequences are horrific, whether from chance or corrupt human nature. Thus, the peerless Shakespeare pens both heart-serving comedies to buoy up spirits but equally heart-rendering tragedies that define a bleak, value-shredded universe, per Macbeth’s rancor, “full of sound and fury/ Signifying nothing.”
No one lives a positive, fulfilling life believing in nothing, though evil-doers cynically use nihilism to justify selfishness: if nothing matters, why obey restrictive morality that impedes appetites for control, possessions, and recognition, whether fame or infamy? Fond of film noir (to offset my optimism), this week I re-watched the tragic drama of an outstanding, disturbingly relevant movie for our times, Chinatown. After all, the story only spans insatiable, oligarchic greed, predatory land development (of L.A.’s water systems, with historic context), murder, brutality, corruption, and underhanded machinations. With great casting and acting, legendary direction and film craft, 1974’s Chinatown is timeless, though now older than most Americans.
The movie’s finale dramatizes an unforgiving tragedy, closer to King Lear, lacking nominal resolutions of Shakespeare’s other tragedies (Romeo, Hamlet, Macbeth). Not only don’t any of the good guys win, but the definitive bad guy, Noah Cross, takes home all the prizes—more money and his daughter/granddaughter (via incest) while escaping investigations of murder, extortion, and profiteering. Heroic but flawed detective Jake Gittes (Nicholson) is left utterly bereft, failing either to snag the Trumpian-like antagonist (addicted to “owning” the future) or save his client/lover. An incensed Gittes is finally dragged away to avoid police custody for complicity (and being right). The flawed co-protagonist, client Evelyn Mulwray (Dunaway) ends up shot by police when fleeing to save her daughter/sister from the grasp of their abusive father. But Cross wins, escaping all scrutiny, let alone indictment, thus impugning both the police and defective justice systems owned by the rich.
On point, we are enduring the most extensive, tragic chapter of government demolition in our history (the violent Civil War pivoted on secession, not toppling the north’s Constitutional government). For at least three more years, Never Trumpers must find ways not only to defy the conspiracy of systemic mugging, but how to survive without debilitating despair (aiding fascism). We must foster ways to manage creeping cynicism (that things are bad, will only get worse) and adjust to a shockingly abrupt dismantling of our sovereignty, without direct political reprieve. The corrupt U.S. Congress, on top of handing over a $trillion to the richest, paid by ruining Medicaid, awarded the already most infamous agency, I.C.E., 45 billion dollars to corral any random victims that crude, rogue operatives tag as undocumented. That’s 15 times its historic annual budget—more than all but ten nations’ total annual defense spending.
Solace, if not solutions
First, we need to confront outmoded, unrealistic (even spoiled) beliefs that America fosters progress for its vast majority of residents (like 80 percent), let alone still advances world enlightenment, stability and progress. Done that, now blunted. We must get past assuming happy endings and comforting resolutions (with politics, nothing is ever finalized). Until today’s crushing, well-heeled Trumpist assaults on truth, reason, majority rule, due process, election integrity, expertise, education, diversity, tolerance, and legacy values are countermanded, we must now embrace a tragic view of existence. Hatred, division, racism, manipulation, intimidation, and extremist tactics, including violence, are in. Outrageous egotism, unalloyed greed, tunnel vision and denial of history, plus dangerous concentrations of power stripped from once democratic systems, are in—along with fueling ignorance, reductionism, mendacity, and intolerance for the non-white, the right kind of Christian nationalist, impoverished, needy, disempowered or sick.
Second, we must cultivate a big, philosophic picture and learn that no single moment (Congress or presidency) defines our collective destiny. Despite today’s battering, a critical mass of sane voters and U.S. systems in part resist the onslaught on fairness, equity, voting and economic opportunity. Yes, fascists once installed are sticky, formidable foes, demanding as much energy to exile as they took to take over. The present crowns five decades of relentless right-wing attacks on Constitutional democracy, legitimate, nearly fraud-free elections, the rule of law and respect for not politicized judicial systems, let alone our history as a nation of immigrants. Staggering achievements from our vital, progressive history (across civil, gay, women’s, voting and human rights) speak to greatness, even redemption (despite global attacks on democracy). In short, bad guys are in charge, breathing down victimized necks. But it’s not yet over.
Third, we must find emotional diversions to avoid being obsessed with the daily machinations of devilry, a great many calculated PR distractions. Sanity demands we resist the inevitable fascination with observing train wrecks, as if nothing else is real. The endless media addictions are magnified by obsessive technology like ever-ready mobile phones. Leave the house, walk through nature, go to parties (but don’t talk politics), hell, visit the mall (but continue to boycott those complicit with the government wreckers). Listen to uplifting music, whether bluegrass, pop, ragtime or Mozart. I have for years enjoyed audio books, especially English murder mysteries, with heroes named Maisie Dobbs, Lady Georgiana Rannoch, Veronica Speedwell, Flavia De Luce, Matthew Shardlake, and Ian Rutledge.
I also recommend subjects that depict wide, even infinite perspectives, like geology, astronomy or astrophysics, all providing frames that minimize our one life-time duration. A favorite intro to geology, well-written with updated cultural insights is Reading the Rocks; The Autobiography of the Earth by Marcia Bjornerud. Experience whatever big picture brains you revere, like Neil DeGrasse Tyson or Stephen Hawking. Or reread Hamlet with care, The Great Gatsby or Homer’s Odyssey (by Fagels).
To fail and not learn is a double failure
The ultimate benefits from experiencing, then fully understanding the nature and persistence of tragedy is how loss, pain, and suffering serve our truest learning curves. As happiness and success tend to reinforce themselves, harsh, unexpected, disturbing realities, from severe personal blows to wider disruptions, provide the most critical means to change our mindsets and direction, even personal values. If we don’t learn from failure, do we then not forfeit the “sapiens” (wisdom, intelligence) that in the end allegedly sets our species apart? To never acknowledge flaws, failures and shortfalls (vs. those who never apologize) cements a closed personality, unable to process the rare, genuine input life delivers, emotional and intellectual. Closure stops growth with a vengeance, inducing the stagnation of the putrid swamp.
The difference between healthy and defective people is less abstract than what religious thinkers mandate. Let us instead divide the world between those willing to acknowledge pain, tragedy and weakness, thus needing others (and mercy), vs. desperate predators whose gut instinct endorses only their drives must rule their lives, families and world. The next few years, well after MAGA peaks, may well replay the classic battle between secular humanism, capable via reason to transcend private, selfish needs (to honor ideals and virtues like compassion) vs. those relatively few power-hungry control freaks stuck in an insatiable cycle where more is never enough—because nothing satisfies inner emptiness or dread of worthlessness.
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