Wise
As I get older, am I getting any wiser, or am I just accommodating to what is happening? That question keeps coming back to me as I think about America and Trump. In these horrible times, I want him stopped, thrown out, so steps can be taken to heal a broken country, and measures put in place to make it a better, a more liveable place for everyone. I am angry about what I see happening. The man is an unmitigated, divisive, self-aggrandising disaster, careless uprooting what has been achieved over the past two hundred years. Yet at the same time, and especially when I am being told this is the worse situation we have ever confronted, I sometimes become philosophical and suggest things will get better; we go through cycles, things will change. “This too shall pass”: the wise words of an older person? It doesn’t console me about the here and now, but it helps me see what is taking place in perspective. Haven’t we had bad times before?
The phrase ‘this too shall pass’ is Persian in origin, and I read that a twelfth century poet and Sufi, Attar, retold a possibly much earlier story about a powerful king who asked his council to make some device that would make him happy when he was sad. Eventually he was given a simple ring, inscribed with the with the words “This too shall pass”. According to Attar, the ring did make the king happy when he was sad. However, the converse was also true, as it became a curse for whenever he was happy. I like the phrase, but now I’ve read more, I can see it doesn’t really address cyclicity. It is a corrective to extremes, but not a reminder – or a positive reflection – concerning the regularity with which good and bad times reappear. I guess the ring could just have said “Things will change”.
The phrase I use, that things will get better, might be more of an accommodation than anything else, helping me live with the present, a tired nostrum to offer to everyone else. There is something about a phrase like that which covers up a feeling of powerlessness. Things are bad; Trump is a disaster. However, I can’t see anything I can do that will make a difference, so why not offer a perspective that gives a little hope and mediates despair: things will get better. If that is what I am doing, it isn’t working well. Accommodating implies some kind of acceptance. In some ways that is true. Donald Trump has been so outrageous for so long the sense of outrage, of horror at what is happening, is being dulled. But I still know that. I might be living with events in these bad times, but I am not accepting them: in fact, I know they are getting worse.
What is the difference between wisdom and accommodating? There is another saying, “you can’t step into the same river twice” which implies that change is always taking place. You can never go back, and perhaps the idea that seeing things in terms of cycles is misleading. As it happens, that phrase was the focus of a recent short and entertaining commentary on Heraclitus and Wittgenstein. [i] Wittgenstein has long been one of my heroes, and I was delighted to see his response to Heraclitus was brief and clear, ‘yes you can’! [ii] I do like Wittgenstein.
Long ago, the point Heraclitus was making is that nothing remains the same, and that change is continuous. You and the river have both changed by the time you dip your feet in a second time. It’s not the same water (different molecules etc.) and you have changed, too. No moment is the same as any other one. In disputing this view, Wittgenstein is making a different point: he is challenging our use of words like ‘same;’ and ‘different’. It’s a river, the same river in the same place, and you are still you. You can step in twice, or twenty times, but all you are doing is dipping your foot into the river again. From that perspective, nothing has changed.
It’s a nice point. Very practical. Wittgenstein was interested in words and meaning (he was an advocate of the view that words mean what we choose them to mean). He was fascinated by word games as a way of illustrating the logic that is to be found by different people using a word. He wasn’t talking about Scrabble or Word Scramble, but rather how words can be used in ways to convey alternative or unfamiliar meanings. In commenting on Heraclitus and the river, the point was that ‘river’ is a word used to describe an object (water flowing down towards a lower altitude within constraining banks – or something like that!), or it can be a way of referring to the flow of moments (a never ending series of river-water moments, ceaselessly changing and disappearing). And that begs the question: what do I mean when I use the word ‘better’? Is this about a state of being that on some objectively measured criteria can be seen as more enjoyable, productive, rewarding etc.? Perhaps we should avoid such tricky questions, and assume there is a commonsense meaning of ‘better’ and leave it at that.
On the basis of that assumption, one of the problems with my assertion that things will get better is that it does seem to be contradicted at times. I might be able to sustain an argument about the political climate swinging between more conservative (right-wing) and more progressive (left-wing, socialist?) phases. History gives me some support, and based on recent history we can see evidence a shift in one direction will be replaced, in time, with a shift back towards the other extreme. However, what about climate change? Wasn’t I arguing just the other week that we are in the middle of a massive period of climate change, close to a tipping point, and once we have passed that point, we will not be able to go back to the way things were?
Perhaps we can stand back from what is happening right now, and ask about change on a longer time scale. Over the past 4-5 billion years, roughly the time for which we have evidence of life forms, there have been at least five major ice ages, each followed by a much warmer climate world-wide. The most recent of these huge cycles began around 2.6 million years ago. As it happens, this was at a time when precursors to humans appeared on the scene (what evidence we have suggests Homo Erectus was around at least two million years ago). The flimsy records available suggest humans, Homo Sapiens, were present some 300,000 to 500,000 years ago (although there is still considerable debate as to when Sapiens can be identified as a clearly separate species). [iii] But perhaps Sapiens is an example of a major, irreversible change.
Since the beginning of the recent ice age, evidence suggests there have been some twenty of so smaller ice ages (shifts within a major ice age, comprising shorter periods of increasing glaciation followed by warmer phases when the ice retreats). Each of these ‘mini’ ice ages lasted around 100,000 years. Using past evidence, each warmer phase seems to be present for about 20,000 years. Based on previous cycles, we would expect the earth to start moving towards another ice age in 6,000 years or so. However, it seems we’ve messed that up! At present, rather than the warmer period beginning to come to an end, we have successfully extended it, and now we are on course to an atypically long warm period. Current climate change isn’t about a bit of global warming, it is about a profound change to the world’s environmental cycles. [iv]
In the long arc of the earth’s history, warming will not continue for ever. Eventually, perhaps as a result of wiping out a lot of the planet’s animal life, carbon dioxide and methane release will slow down and begin to dissipate. It might take tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of years, but ultimately temperatures will drop, and almost certainly the postponed ice age will return. That leaves us in a muddle. As a public servant would say, on the one hand (minister), climate change is creating alterations to the earth’s environment that are irreversible. On the other hand, over a much longer period, we are going to revert to the usual pattern of periods with ice ages, and periods without. Like all the best advice to a minister, we leave the person in charge with two contrasting stories, no real reason to prefer one over the other, and neither leading to a clear set of actions. As all public servants know, the best thing to do is to leave the minister confused, assume the status quo, and make small changes where appropriate!
At the outset, I said I was concerned about whether or not I was wise when I came out with a statement like ‘things will get better again’ (you can step in the same river twice). There are at least two puzzles in this. First, how strong is the evidence confirming we live in a world where politics are as cyclical as the world’s climate (assuming even that is true)? Second, how have I changed, and what do those changes mean for how I look at things? Reluctantly, I want to return to Donald Trump, and carry out an ‘on the one hand and on the other’ assessment.
On the one hand (!), the man is a wrecking ball, smashing things as soon as he is encouraged to do so. Without dwelling how much of the decision-making is his, or by those that advise or manipulate him, one area for wrecking is anything that had been achieved by his predecessor. The fixation to obliterate anything and everything achieved by an African-American President is both frightening, and at times almost unbelievable. If Obama created a new national park area, let’s drill it for oil. If Obama had a huge crowd at his inauguration, well, Trump’s was bigger. Any step to make the US a better place for everyone, from health care to reducing domestic violence, is a move to be smashed apart, obliterated. Obama drew up an agreement to stop Iran developing a nuclear weapon: let’s rip that up. In fact, Obama supported co-operation between nations, consideration and care for others. Better destroy all that, too. And it’s getting worse.
If that weren’t bad enough, Trump has ideas. He can make deals, with everyone from ‘little rocket man’ in North Korea to Denmark’s PM (to acquire Greenland). It turns out he is a dreadful dealmaker, but, no matter, he keeps going, and in so doing destroys credibility and confidence. He can even stop hurricanes. Did you miss that one? Soon after his inauguration he came up with the idea of ‘nuking’ them. Even his own staff tried to keep that idea quiet, but it emerged a few days ago. [v] He can help the hapless Boris Johnson make Brexit work (a similarly dangerous man and weird man, who once said: “My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive.”). Hmm.
My own view of Trump is more worrying than merely seeing him as a wrecking ball, though that is bad enough. I think he is like a fairground barker, out front capturing the attention of passers-by, selling what they will be able to see happening once inside the tent. The barker works by exciting his audience, telling colourful and exaggerated stories they know can’t quite be true – can they? The same is true with Trump, as his stories and provocations become even less firmly attached to any reality. But unlike at the fairground, we don’t get inside the tent, or if we do it is only for a short time. The real business is going on behind the scenes, as Mitch McConnell and his gang steadily work away, replacing judges, moving pieces of legislation along, blocking anything that goes against the conservative (and I mean right-wing conservative) agenda. For those inside, Trump is a gift: he can be guaranteed to keep the attention focussed on whatever he is prompted to say, leaving a veil over that which they’d prefer kept hidden.
That much we know. In 2021 or 2025 (it looks more likely to be the latter right now), there will be a new President. When I am persuaded of cyclicity, I see things swinging back, fair and due processes restored, systems repaired, a sense of common purpose and community back on the agenda. There will be a massive work needed to establish values that hold the country together, and bridge the divides that separate us today. Things are likely to be even worse by then.
On the other hand, these changes might be permanent. The wrecking ball leaves an environment quite unlike the one we’ve known to date, but with it there’s the possibility of real change. Might that be attractive? With so much wrong today, the only path forward could be to trample on the past. Look at the mess we are in. Racial antagonisms are growing. The gulf between the cities and the rural regions keeps growing. Income and wealth divisions are accelerating. Tens of thousands are dying from drug abuse and alcoholism every year, escaping from reality any way they can. Shareholder capitalism is out of control. ‘Entertainment’ relies on rape, murder and violence to women. Democracy is falling apart in an oligopolistic world, and oligarchy rules. Guns are everywhere. Millennials face a disastrous future. [vi] Climate change continues.
Right now, I can’t help feeling the best thing to do might be to let the system collapse, taking humanity with it. Nature will prevail, just as has been the case before. As environments go through catastrophic change, species get wiped out, and, each time around, a new world emerges. Dinosaurs died out millions of years ago, and the mammals slowly took over. In recent times, it was humans who changed the world. Next time, another species will emerge to dominate the globe, possibly already here but out of sight from our imperious, inattentive eyes.
Am I wise to suggest that ‘this too shall pass’? It is comforting to suggest that we are simply going through a phase, and soon (hopefully very soon) everything will swing back away from the extremes we see today, and the next cycle will commence. It helps me adjust to what I see around me. But accommodation is like a soft pillow, embracing, soporific, and likely to smother me without my noticing. Easy to imagine all will be well, when in fact we are hurtling towards a time of catastrophic change for the environment and the ability of humankind to save itself.
I wish I was wise. I know ‘I too shall pass’. I don’t know what comes next, but I think I’d sleep better by keeping to the cyclical view. As things are today, I’m not confident I can.
[i] https://aeon.co/ideas/can-you-step-in-the-same-river-twice-wittgenstein-v-heraclitus
[ii] The quote comes from Wittgenstein’s ‘The Big Typescript, published in 2012 by Wiley; it was sourced from The Literary Wittgenstein, Gibson and Huemer, Routledge, 2004
[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens
[iv] A lot to read on this, but a useful starting point might be these two sources: https://www.livescience.com/40311-pleistocene-epoch.html, https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2016-06-15/what-is-an-ice-age-explainer/7185002
[v] https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-trump-nuke-hurricanes-20190826-kunccf55wzdpdcy6pr3hw2ciye-story.html
[vi] Read this to depress you: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/millennials-are-screwed-recession/596728/
