Why The Long-Term Can Be Favorable

Madame:

Thank you for the look into juror duty.  It’s ironic, but this political science professor has never served on juror duty or even made it as far as you did.   It’s a pity (you may feel differently, lol) you didn’t go all the way through to be able to give us the all-the-way-through picture.

Today, my political scientist and historian selves are seeing a swirling confluence of factors that give hope and possibility at the same time as they warn of problem-avalanching. 

The older, crankier, narrow-minded, visionless, white-privileged, set-in-their-ways gaggle is slowly dying off.  They are, to be sure, a great force to be reckoned with as they go, and they are doing severe damage to democracy and economics as well.  At the moment, that is repairable, albeit at great cost. 

That means the long-term demographics are favorable.  The generations that succeed them have a fair chance, if they can follow their noses, of overturning the plutocratic setup.  Admittedly, it will be, without the catastrophes of Depression and World War, more difficult to accomplish.  Even more so because of the global nature of the plutocrats.  But by no means impossible.   And that’s even with the inevitable transformation of many of the presently younger generations becoming more set in their ways and resistant to change as they get older.

It would be fulfilling a historical pattern as old as the I Ching (Tao Te Ching): “After a time of decay comes the turning point.”

Just as the Gilded Age brought the Progressive Reaction, and the crises that later followed cemented for a generation (albeit quite imperfectly!) the primacy and growth of a middle class, so does the plutocracy/oligarchy dominance of today hold the seeds for a similar response.  Along with the nascent tendencies and desires to resist warring (or at least make it shorter and less continually destructive), as well as foster connections even as we become more tribal, that’s a trend that shows much promise.

Because for economics at least, after a while, the harsh, stark realities become so difficult to ignore, and so many people have so little to lose, that the groundswell propels the democratic levers to function for the people despite all the corruption and obstructionism (assuming, of course, no fascist/authoritarian radical change).

So, assuming we can both halt the acceleration of, and navigate the results from, our environmental criminally destructive foolishness, there is good hope for long-term transformation.  And we will need a vision to run TO, not just a present mess to run away FROM.

The “deep history” and “long history” trends inside just technology and globalization are so favorable that one could postulate that we are in the long view doing great things world-wise.  It is just our WAYS of doing those things are often highly flawed and often off-course.  Correcting those is like turning a great train engine down a better track.  As the obstructionists exit the stage in ever greater numbers, that becomes more and more possible to do.  And THAT’S hopeful.

And here you all thought I was just a cranky doomsayer. :)

And, for those of you who celebrate it, Happy Easter!