Pollsters
and pundits are beating their heads against the wall trying to figure out how
they got it so wrong in their predictions for American elections. Nobody thought that the presidential race was
going to be so close. Everybody thought
it was going to be a blowout for Biden.
And as for the Congressional races, rather than picking up seats in the
House of Representatives, the Democrats actually lost seats. Finally, rather than picking up perhaps five
or six seats in the Senate, as the experts had predicted would happen, the
Democrats have picked up just one. Yes,
there is the possibility of more seats from the runoff elections in
Georgia. But, by now, the Democrats
should have been able to develop a comfortable lead in senate seats. It didn’t materialize.
So what are we to make of
this? What is the cause of the fairly
decent showing by Trump and the Republicans in the elections? On one level, we can say that, even though he
lost, some seventy million voters remained loyal to Trump. And what generated his support? Here we get into the idea that I have
proposed that Trump is a wild free-floating figure who shocks people out of the
incredible numbness they feel living in modern technological society and the
experiential vacuum that it creates. And
as for the Republicans in Congress, they make people feel abrasively alive by a
policy and philosophy that is very punishing to the average workers. These, on
one level, rather than being focused defined discrete causes are very subtle
seemingly infinite vacuumized causes. The
vacuum leads to wild and abrasive reactions from Trump and the Republicans
which lead to strong support from the Republican masses. These are just not the kinds of causes you
can point your finger at and say “This is it!”
But the modern world is
almost exclusively concerned with finding defined discrete causes for
everything that they can. And this is,
of course, the result of the fact that people today rely on science,
technology, math and logic as the only principal sources of truth. And data, formulas, and logical statements
are the main meaningful units of truth today.
As I
have stated previously, there are at least two other meaningful categories of
causes to consider. There are blurry
flowing blendable continual causes that are very difficult to pin down in terms
of when and why they start. When exactly
and why do two people fall in love? When
and why does a riot start? Why do some
performers become very popular and others not so much? The responses would be very ambiguous.
Finally,
there are the infinite vacuumized causes generated by the vacuum of space that
underlies everything in the universe and, in particular, the experiential
vacuum that people experience a lot in modern technological society. This is the most subtle category of cause of
all, which is why I spend so much time focusing on it in this column.
The
reason so many people spend time today on puzzles – whether crossword puzzles,
Sudoku, or jigsaw puzzles or watch television shows like “Jeopardy” or “Wheel
of Fortune” is that they all reduce life to the first kind of causality. Life becomes a defined discrete problem to be
solved. And this is the way we gain
control over it. A straight line series
of steps or points on a pathway to a solution.
The
flowing blendable continual paths of causality are too blurry to be controlled
in the same way. No wonder most people
in modern technological society try to diminish their importance. The best way to deal with these paths of
causality is to flow with them, to commune with them, to experience them and
feel more vibrantly alive because of them.
Trying to control this kind of causal pathway is impossible. They are not susceptible to logic or science.
Finally,
there are the infinite vacuumized causal pathways which have led to all the
strong psychopathology we see in modern humans.
Just as in a physical vacuum where there is a random distribution of
atoms, so a vacuumized numb mind leads to randomized pathological behavior,
which is intended to shock a person back to life and out of the vacuum. On the one hand, the vacuum can lead a person
into a life of stillness, numbness, even psychological paralysis. On the other hand, it can lead to abrasive,
aggressive destructive action. Many of
these destructive actions can be found among Trump supporters who are
definitely trying to shock the American society by refusing to admit defeat.
Yes,
I know some people will point out positive vacuum causal pathways like a vacuum
that is conducive to being involved in certain activities like meditation,
yoga, pot and some other drugs. But none
of these activities is conducive to an active engagement with life. Instead, they lead to a passive fatalistic
mediated approach to a life that frequently also becomes increasingly engaged
in screen reality. Not the kind of
approach conducive to making and preserving strong organic imprints and
building a personal surrogate immortality in preparation for death. In truth, with the pervasiveness of modern
screen reality, living a rich vibrant life is difficult indeed.
© 2020 Laurence Mesirow
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