Begin Again: a New Year on the Horizon

“ All we can do is our best, and sometimes, the best that we can do, is to start over."”

- Peggy Carter (1)

The planet has completed, almost, an entire revolution since last marked by January 1, 2021. Time is often arbitrary and exists in human determined segments for solely for human purposes. The rest of the cosmos is unlikely to care much, and the farther along I go, the less I care, too. About time, that is. About other things, there is still very much to care about and care for.

It’s still important to care about the environment and care for it, regardless of how near we are to ultimate climate catastrophe. It’s still important to care about bringing a little more (preferably, a lot more) peace into the world among us human animals. This includes caring about human rights and the numerous sub-headings under that rubric. It means caring about people we disagree with, no matter how seemingly difficult it is to do so. 

Notice that I put the environment ahead of humanity. It’s pretty simple; if the environment is endangered, so are we. And it and we already are. Even if all the governments on earth move with some alacrity, it may be decades before anything like a full reset takes place to pre-industrial levels of damage. Is it worth it, I sometimes wonder in my darker hours. Life will move on without us. If we obliterate ourselves, the other living species will take a hit (surprise: they already have) but post-human obliteration, other organisms will recover. Life will go on. 

I admit to having dark moments because it is increasingly frustrating to read and hear how thick much of my fellow humans sound. How we act toward one another remains alternately hopeful and horrifying. So many societies are willing to throw in with leaders whose only goals are to amass power. I’m not even sure if many of these so-called “leaders” believe in the ideologies they espouse. Even so, it’s disturbing to see how easily people will support those who pander to the lowest common denominator of others’ desires for safety, health, and happiness to the exclusion of those whom they declare to be Other and therefore, Lesser. 

I am not overly hopeful. However, I seem to be naturally predisposed to optimism. This may sound contradictory, but it’s not. Hope implies a more immediate change for the better; I don’t think that’s likely in my lifetime, but it doesn’t mean it can’t happen or won’t happen. Optimism is a felt sense that as surely as times (like my mood) get dark, there is a counterbalance. 

In Daoism, this wouldn’t be called “optimism”; it’s just the way things are. Nothing is ever 100% yin, 100% yang; when change tips toward one extreme, the extreme is addressed by movement away from that extremity. In BarrettSpeak, it’s optimism because it goes against the grain of what is before our eyes. 

There is not a place in the world at this very moment that you can point to where you won’t find pain and misery and awful behavior. At the same time, changes occur at varying levels that can’t necessarily be quantified or forecast. This is the original definition of “synergy” (a world now almost thoroughly divorced from that original meaning); the resultant whole cannot be determined by the workings of its aggregate parts. The larger a system, the less predictable it is and I don’t care what the algorithms say, you can’t forecast everything in a system like the existence we all share in. 

If you don’t account for caring, and compassion, and dare I say it, wisdom, then your predictive equation is bound to be incomplete and faulty. 

Isn’t this pie in the sky bullshit? Kind of. I’ll cop to that, but I won’t discount it. I have a dim view of events in the human realm right now. People can’t agree that vaccination is a good idea, life saving, in fact. It’s not astonishing to me that is the case; it’s just human and many humans act out of ignorance and a false sense of self and preservation of that self. I mentioned human rights above but I know people who feel that “human rights” is some kind of variable or set of variables. One person in particular tried to challenge me on the occupation of Tibet by assuming that Chinese humans have more rights than Tibetans. This is unfortunate but not uncommon. And it is rooted in our history, probably our pre-history. 

Do we not learn? I think we do. We don’t see it or pay attention to it often enough, but if nothing else, the world has not suffered a major conflagration in almost 80 years. That doesn’t mean that there haven’t been conflicts but arguably, we are less likely to destroy ourselves through large scale armed warfare. 

That said, regional conflict and its resulting misery is now exacerbated by climate change. You don’t have to go deep in a Google search to see what’s happened across Africa and the Middle East. Likewise, the continued destruction of the environment by strong-arm leaders is obvious, too. However, I wonder if they can stay in power once they realize they’re killing the very resources that are keeping them alive, let alone the rest of humanity. I’m not hopeful that altruism is a predominant or ruling principle among such people.

Nevertheless, I am optimistic that at some point - again, likely not in my lifetime - there will be a  swing toward more inclusive and forward thinking. We don’t think enough. And when we do, it’s very often about what doesn’t matter. As a cultural critic of sorts, I often find myself reviewing and researching entertainment that at best, is art. At worst, though? It is ephemera and while I enjoy writing, I recognize I could be spending my time doing something else (which is why I do apply critical resources and thematic exploration to said ephemera….there is some justification there!)

It might be that we are nearing a point where genuine thoughtful engagement will begin to replace the pointless and destructive desire to amass More. More power, more wealth, more for me may eventually be supplanted by inquiry and movement toward mobilizing wealth to care for each other, to provide conditions where communities and individuals can thrive and where money is no longer the sole good for which people kill themselves and others. 

I don’t have any resources at hand to support this argument nor am I going to do the research to find them. As surely as I could populate this with charts, diagrams, notes, and a bibliography, someone else can very well find the opposite. Which is why this is all about intuition/inner teaching. 

I’ll get back to my regular programming on this blog later. I’m overdue for an update on Myanmar and I want to take a long hard look at Xi Jinping and his policies of terror and oppression in Tibet and Xinjiang, as well as the continued assault on any freedom in Hong Kong. 

I’ll also steel myself for looking at where we are with the coronavirus and where we are as a body politic in the U.S. 

But all that can wait for another little while. Right now, as this year draws to a close, rest and restoration seem more in order. Hang out with your friends and family, remember what really matters, and let’s see if 2022 can’t be a positive “inflection point” (buzzword!!! Ugh, what am I becoming?)

Note

1. From the film “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” (2014) written by Christopher Marcus and Stephen McFeeley.