The eminent British
historian Arnold Toynbee devoted the twelve massive volumes of his
epic work, A Study of History, to showing how his theory of history
applied to twenty-three civilizations. In essence, his theory was
that civilizations rise or fall in response to major challenges. If
they face no major challenges, they don't rise very far and if they
fail to respond to major challenges, they collapse and die.
I wouldn't presume
to challenge Professor Toynbee's theory but if he was right, it looks
like we're up the creek without a paddle. Rising to overcome a major
challenge is difficult but if those threats are not acknowledged, it
is all but impossible to overcome them.
There are two
existential challenges to our civilization right now, starting with
climate change and moving on to the accelerating gap between rich and
poor. The first threatens to make large portions of currently
inhabited parts of the world uninhabitable while the second will end
democracy as the form of society which has characterized our recent
civilization, returning us to some new variety of feudalism akin to
that of the medieval world. American President Trump has appointed
cabinet officials dedicated to cutting back all regulation aimed at
protecting the environment and dealing with climate change, as if
telling the musicians playing on the top deck of the Titanic to play
louder will make everything better. He is also currently engaged in
an effort to loot the Treasury on behalf of his fellow oligarchs.
The heist, which goes under the innocent sounding name of “tax
reform”, is being conducted under cover of an endless stream of
public insults of everyone from foreign and domestic leaders to gold
star mothers.
While these two
challenges may prove to be life-threatening for our civilization,
there are others which might provide a start in our efforts to save
ourselves. We badly need some good news and if you look really
hard, from time to time you can find it.
Sometimes problems
are identified that many of us never knew the existence of. Climate
skeptics are still saying that about climate change. In March of
2016 the Governor of North Carolina signed a bill into law blocking
cities from allowing transgender individuals from using public
bathrooms of the sex they identify with. Who knew that there was a
problem? Many of us were not even aware of the growing legion of
transgender people or, for that matter, what a transgender person is.
Not completely unaware perhaps. I recall a person named Christine
Jorgensen being prominently in the news in 1952 as an early recipient
of sex change operations. She had started life as George. In 2015,
Bruce Jenner, the 1976 Olympic decathlon winner, revealed that he had
always felt like he was supposed to be a woman and had recently
completed a transformation into a woman, now known as Caitlin. Is
this recent surge of confusion over sexual identity Nature's way, or
God's way, of responding to the impending population explosion? If
so, it doesn't seem to have worked, at least in the case of Jenner,
who fathered six children during his three marriages, some even after
he had started his transformative treatment.
Then again, we're
not interested in divine solutions. We're looking to find human
solutions. President Trump's recent toying with the possibility of
nuclear war may be a subtle attempt to seek an answer to the
problems of overpopulation and mass migration but we can do better
than that.
The gender confusion
issue is apparently more real than some of us thought. Much has been
written about it without shedding much light. The most interesting
writing on the subject that I've seen is Sons and Daughters, the
village where girls turn into boys, by Susan Topol in the August
2017 issue of Harper's Magazine. For those mystified by the whole subject, it's worth reading. There also seems to be a growing movement
involved in promoting the confusion. Some might see the phenomenon
as a problem that needs attention as such, but that's not our aim in
this piece. We're looking for good news and signs of hope.
In March of 2017,
just a year after the Governor had signed the NC toilet bill into
law, the law was repealed. What happened? Did the citizens of
North Carolina have a change of heart or did all the men there harbor
a wish to try out women's rest rooms? Not likely. Instead, groups
all around the country, seizing the opportunity to speak out against
discrimination against another beleaguered minority, rallied to
protest the outrage perpetrated by the NC legislature. Entertainers
canceled concerts, sport teams canceled All-Star contests,
conventions were relocated out of state and corporations canceled
plans to move their headquarters to North Carolina. In Charlotte
alone, the Chamber of Commerce estimated losses to the city of $285
million and 1,300 jobs. Money talks! We will deal with the
deification of the market at another time. For now, we'll just look
at the upside.
On October 1st
of this year, a disgruntled white male American brought twenty-three
weapons, some of them automatic or semi-automatic, into his hotel
suite in Las Vegas and opened fire on a crowd at a concert thirty-two
floors below, killing fifty-nine people. More than 500 others were
wounded or injured. Thirty-five days later another troubled
native-born white American walked into a church in Sutherland
Springs, Texas and fired on the congregation, killing twenty-six
people. Both of these incidents were horrifying and shocking but not
altogether surprising. The US has been averaging about one multiple
shooting (defined as at least four people shot) per day throughout
the year.
We don't know how
many gender confused children were traumatized by public toilet
incidents in Charlotte but a huge effort went into saving them from
further discomfort. Couldn't a proportional effort be made on behalf
of the eighty-five dead people in Las Vegas and Texas and the ones
sure to follow? Both places proclaim themselves to be radically
pro-gun. Open carry laws proliferate as do military style weapons.
All you entertainers who boycotted Charlotte, where are you now?
Athletes? I doubt that any of you would want to play in an open
carry stadium, and the stadium owners probably don't want to risk
damage to their property (including their players) but how about
getting to and from the stadium? The Oakland Raiders are scheduled
to move to Las Vegas in two or three years. Put your national anthem
protests aside and get your agents to stipulate in your next contract
that you won't play in an open carry city. Convention organizers,
how about crossing open carry places off your list of potential
venues. Thousands of people flock to Las Vegas for gambling,
divorces and other types of “fun”. Some of them go there for the
chance to shoot military style weapons at shooting ranges but if the
more normal people all got together and said thanks but we'll do our
debauchery in a safer environment, things might change almost as
quickly as they did in Charlotte. Ironically, some of us signed
petitions requesting that the GOP National Convention of 2016 in
Cleveland be an open-carry convention but the politicians, with their
own asses on the line, would have none of it. Why should they be
more secure than singers, athletes or the general public?
Our prayers can go
to the families of the dead, our letters to the newspapers, and our
petitions to our Congressmen. We'll feel better for our good
intentions and that will soften our resignation. Maybe Putin can do
something to help, as he's credited with guiding most outcomes in the
US, but don't hold your breath. Do you have college age children?
Don't let them attend any school in an open carry state, much less
exposing them to an open carry campus. Money talks. Make it clear
to all these places that they can have their guns, or some of your
money, but not both.
After the gun
epidemic is cured, maybe we can move on to the vital issues of
climate change and the new feudalism.
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