As we (writers, journalists, artists, educators, politicians, performance news celebrities, influencers, creators, and everyone else who has a strong opinion about the impact of the upcoming U. S. election) express our version of partial truths and fine-tuned lies on behalf of the soul of the nation, we ignore the larger context within which political parties and many candidates promote fear and beg for money, and corporate media make it clear that no one wins who does not buy their services—while tens of millions of U. S. citizens live month to month and watch and listen to the next million- or billionaire whose success at doing something that does not provide food, shelter, potable water, clean air, affordable medical services or quality education tell them what they and the country need.1
Caveat: I’m an unaffiliated voter, and as I’ve made clear previously—in Healing America’s Narratives (2022) and in earlier posts in this newsletter, Donald Trump embodies all nine traits of the collective national Shadow of the United States. Here’s an understatement: Giving him and those who are desperate enough to align themselves with him control of the executive branch of the federal government for another four years would be a bad idea. If this 920-page playbook is too much to read, here’s an overview (with a sense of humor).
That written, it’s essential for me to support a second term for Joe Biden and those who are aligned with him, even though neither he nor Trump nor any third-party candidates are aware of (or if they are aware, choose not to talk about) the aforementioned striving to win a dying game that’s killing the planet.
In fairness to current and prospective leaders whose intentions are noble(ish), many issues have their attention—including, but not limited to infrastructure failures, international wars, competition for and attempts to limit artificial intelligence, biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, race, gender, and identity discrimination, climate change, global warming, severe political polarization in all three branches of government, and the time, energy, and money it takes to campaign for the next election.
Again, what they don’t see, or refuse to acknowledge, is that they are trying to win a game that’s basically causing all of the problems they think they’re trying to fix.
Who’s on first in Charge of This?
Who benefits from it? And who gets hurt?
Depending on whom you listen to, somewhere between 27 and 100 trillion dollars are transacted globally every day—that includes goods, services, everything. Communist, Socialist, Capitalist. A cup of coffee, an insurance premium, a new car, a thrift-shop shirt, a new aircraft carrier, a bushel of corn, dinner out, bodyguards, acupuncture, your salary, their salaries, the drug deal, bussing immigrants north, a streaming subscription, the architect, the prison food and guards, the chemo, the legal retainer, the donation—everything.
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Regarding what a trillion denotes, a million seconds equals 11.6 days; a billion seconds account for 31.7 years; a trillion seconds give you 31,710 years. Feel free to read the rest of this using $27 trillion, $100 trillion, or some other number of trillions of dollars a day (it matters in a relative way, but not absolutely).
Consider how much you spend, and on what, every day, week, month, and year and the values, beliefs, and infrastructure that make your expenditures possible, and in some cases, necessary. Consider why you want and need the goods and services that you purchase, and consider where they come from—including the parts of your phone, your vehicle,2 and/or the public transportation you use. Where is your food grown, raised, or manufactured, what’s in it, who grows, manufactures, and packages it, and how much do they get paid?
Who gets you what you want and how does it get to you? How many people in different parts of the world would have similar answers to yours? What’s the impact of of all of this growing, manufacturing, buying, selling, and shipping on the planet?
And who’s in charge of the whole shebang? (Hint: no one, although many bankers, industry leaders, governments, and national and international organizations work to influence it.)
The “system”3 that both drives and relies on these transactions requires exponential growth (to pay interest and make profits), extracts planetary resources (more quickly than the planet can replenish them) that can be measured and exchanged, returns waste to the planet (more quickly than the planet can process what can be processed), and is led by people who have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits and shareholder dividends while minimizing costs and externalizing risks.
Said differently, the needs and desires of a small number of people4 on the planet have given us increasingly comfortable and, ironically, in many cases, unsatisfying ways of living, while making an even smaller number of people5 extraordinarily wealthy, and at the same time keeping billions of people poor and destroying the biosphere.
This “system” is called different things by different folks, who, while speaking and writing in different contexts, generally agree on some big-picture aspects of what humanity currently faces—the metacrisis, the superorganism, modernity, and Moloch are among them.6
So, while we’re speaking about healing America’s narratives, we must do so in the context of the nation’s leadership role in setting the rules and trying to win a planetary game that’s dying and killing the planet. The paradox we’re facing is that bringing this system to a halt will hurt billions of people, rather quickly. Allowing it to continue will hurt billions of people more gradually. Some folks who currently benefit from the system lean toward its gradual demise. Some who currently are hurt by the system would like their chance to play and win, while others, who spend their days just trying to survive, don’t have the luxury of choosing.7
And, as Jack Gilbert wrote in “A Brief for the Defense,”8 amid sorrow and slaughter,
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight.
How we do this, and who we need to become in order to do it, are among the many tasks at hand. We will be returning to this larger, planetary crisis—the context within which we attempt to heal narratives and integrate Shadow—in coming posts.
It suffices to say that this post barely scratches the surface of what’s at hand and at stake here.
Recommendation: Engage one or more of the following: read “A Brief for the Defense.” Listen to one (or more) of Daniel Schmactenberger’s, and Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s talks.
Something to Consider: Explore in some detail your responses to the questions in the two paragraphs that begin with “Consider how much you spend, and on what…” above. Don’t do this from a standpoint of guilt or self-flagellation. Observe and learn, and see what comes up.
Approximately 25 million U. S. citizens did not have health insurance in 2023. What “quality education” might mean is something we’ll develop in future posts.
The linked data regarding phone and vehicle manufacturing are dated. The general truth of multinational sources holds up; some of the specifics have shifted.
Much of what follows in this post is attributable to Daniel Schmactenberger’s work.
The small number of people includes those of us who are not worried about our next meal, having a roof over our heads in a relatively safe environment, and getting access to health care, and who have enough discretionary income to eat out, have food delivered, bet on sports, take a vacation, and have a variety of specialized footwear available—whether we choose to engage any of these activities. So, that’s pretty much anyone who would read (or write) this post.
This extraordinarily wealthy smaller number of people includes the famous, infamous, and unknown folks who by birth, hard work, talent, luck, or some combination of these choose, because they can, to consume disproportionate percentages of planetary resources—including chunks of the planet itself, what’s necessary to buy and maintain their own aircraft, ships, and fleets of motor vehicles. All this while, according to the World Health Organization, “approximately 29.6 percent of the global population, equivalent to 2.4 billion people, did not have constant access to food, as measured by the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity. Among them, around 900 million individuals [almost 3x the U. S. population] faced severe food insecurity.”
The three links point to brief samples of the work of Daniel Schmactenberger (metacrisis), Nate Hagens (superorganism), Vanessa Machado de Oliveira (modernity), and Scott Alexander (Moloch). Again, each of these folks brings a unique perspective to this issue. I continue to learn from them.
Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s work, and her 2021 book, Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism, provide deep, essential, and discomfiting observations and questions
Jack Gilbert, “A Brief for the Defense,” Collected Poems, (Knopf, 2014), 213. Originally in Refusing Heaven (Knopf, 2005).