Quite the opposite. It’s apparently bad news to be so much as ‘woke’.
On May 21, 2021, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill to allow public schools to offer yoga, ending an approximate 30 year ban. This ban had been very successful in preventing the growth of Hinduism in Birmingham. One could wonder whether this was a canary of enlightenment arriving in the deep south, but, as you are aware, there is much worse stuff going on. There’s the kind of stuff that, growing up, I assumed could not be done (anymore). Jim Crow laws targeting black voters. The duping of tens of millions of Americans not to get vaccinated as an act of politics, while watching deaths remain elevated only around them. The acts of human and economic sabotage in the face of climate change. These folks are listening to strong voices, permeating somewhere around half of America. Without repercussion, rather with reward.
One constant thread in my mind since November 5, 2016 has been the triumph of evil. Evil wins. Is it innate in humans as a collective? Or is evil’s appeal to fear the baseline human response, and the easiest to leverage. Until I witnessed the Trump presidency, I had not seen its full power and persistence. Trump showed me that, like the dark side, evil is equal parts of fear and narcissism. And now it’s clear to me that it’s all just low-hanging fruit, and often times can overpower empathy and hope. Rather than a gate, these emotions ebb and flow in society, gaining strength and waning.
And there are always those who will profit without remorse. For every miracle vaccine, there will be leaders that scream to refuse it, grabbing power with a message, any message. Those type of peddlers are constantly renewed in society. At best, they may undergo dormant periods, but they rise like a wall of 17-year cicadas to press any new advantage, any new fissure of fear. And today they can sell ads.
In the United States of 2021, tribe trumps education, up can be down, scientists are trolls and a parade of two-bit charlatans whose only qualification is the pursuit of power succeed in getting everyday Americans to ignore their hands in front of their faces. As the failed Instagram insurrection increasingly turns into a gaslit republican campaign message controlled by the most narcissistic person in history – one with a better than even chance of winning, to me there is one inescapable truth – it was always thus.
History is marked by the stories of leaders. From the time of the creation of annals, the annals are littered with mostly narcissistic zealots subjugating the populous, in nearly all cases supporting the goal to attain power as an end in and of itself. Those types of rulers are not only still around today, they are thriving. It can only be human nature that these types of rulers will never. stop. coming. And how easily is the mob swayed? They are swayed even if you tell them you are swaying them and make a caricature of their political beliefs. The ones we call great either won wars, built projects, or both.
And so, as a corollary, the great awakening of the population is also not coming. If any thoughts of my youth could be considered foolish, maybe top of the list was the idea that humanity was to experience a breakthrough of peaceful warriors. Even when President Obama was elected, there was this sentiment that the country had seen the light, that we were shedding the old racists by attrition and now were going to tackle real problems. Obviously, that never came. The next generation of racists just carried the torch, literally.
Obama said that the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice. This phrase epitomizes his worldview. I like to think it’s just as correct that human nature is intrinsically kind. And it is true that the arc of kindness and grace in humanity is just as a persistent trend. Humans have been slowly lifting their standard of living, and treating each other better in general, since the beginning of time. It may look more like an EKG reading than a stock chart, however. We leave a lot of folks behind, absolutely, but the trend line is still there in the average standard of living across the globe.
I say this because I have a theory, and it may be a well known economic theory for all I know, that the economic growth of humanity is due to our invention of government. Where government creates a stable environment for wealth transfer, even in times of war, there is prosperity. Only the government can invest enough money to move an economy of a country, and the success of markets are rooted in the efficacy of the government that oversees them. When the government falls, the economy falls with it.
Tying this back to tyrants and history, I also think that it was always thus. Governments through time have created wealth by spending on infrastructure – whether temples to fallen rulers, Mayan ball fields, Nile River boats, ports, or railroads, aqueducts, or mines. If the government didn’t cause them to be built, they were not built and history has not heard of them. Sure there would be trade, but prosperity cares not if the government is a Samurai Daimyo, a Roman legion, or the American legion building the roads. So long as the roads get built, they shall be the leaders.
Which brings me to Joe Biden, his stimulus presidency and the prospect of one more major bill investing in all kinds of American projects under the name of infrastructure. The utility of this bill to the overall betterment of society is undeniable. It should be done; it should get votes; and should introduce a new age of prosperity. It’s obstacle is only the quest for power and money, and its shared home of the republican party.
The achievement of global wisdom, where all people recognize the Earth as our mother and achieve peace and end poverty and disease – it ain’t happening. The forces of fear and hate will not die off, they will teach it to their children, and their numbers will always be there, following new leaders who revel in it. And so the next generations will not rise to a position of new understanding, they will engage in meme-wars with the generations prior. But while the gilded age of humanity will never arrive, each generation will live better so long as the bottom does not drop out (an open question I grant you). The lesson of history is not in nuance. The democrats should pass their infrastructure bill, because history is written by the builders. The arc of humanity is toward peace; though Alabama is committing crimes of humanity I thought were long gone, they did un-ban yoga. So that’s nice.