In response to my post entitled "Tipping Point" that accompanied the link to the film The Century of the Self," someone asked me if I really felt that the coming election was more important than the election of 1860. This is my reply, which may be of general interest.

Thanks for your question, Roberto. As you imply, the election of 1860 is often considered the most important election in US history and particularly so in retrospect. As everyone knows, Lincoln was nominated by the Republicans, Douglas by the Democrats, and several other parties also contested. The Republican platform was not opposed to slavery as such but only opposed extending slavery to the territories. The Democratic platform supported the idea that each area of the country should decide for itself about slavery. The underlying issue here was not slavery per se, but the competing economic implications of slavery.

I think it fair to say that all the presidential candidates were honorable and competent men. The different outcomes if others had been elected have been the subject of much speculation. The ordinary understanding is that Lincoln saved the country from splitting and freed the slaves. A fair reading of events since the Civil War, reveals the splitting of the country has only taken more nefarious forms, as has the so-called “freeing” of the slaves. Racial equality is still very much a dream in this country all these years later.

Yes, I do feel this coming election is the most important in our country’s history. Part of the reason for feeling this is that the coming times will be the most challenging to humans in their entire history. I’m referring not only to the racial issues, the divided country issues, the inequality issues, and all the rest of the political, social, and economic issues but to the developing crises of climate change, societal collapse, and human extinction. Facing these congeries of issues will require the best efforts that humans can bring to these issues. People of high competence will be needed to face and deal with complexities beyond imagining.

The problem is that the alternate-reality virus is spreading unchecked and may well lead to the re-election of the most incompetent person ever to hold the office. Given the demands of the coming times, this election may lead to a catastrophic degree of human suffering (already underway) even before the events that are looming come about. Leaders will need to call on the best that humans are capable of to realize the best ways to live when life itself is threatened and becomes lost.

In six months, we will elect the next president of the United States. I believe this election is a “tipping point,” and is arguably the most important election in our country’s history. The BBC documentary, The Century of the Self, is a useful education in some of the background dynamics that have shaped our history to the present time. It is nearly 4 hours long but is well worth watching intently and contemplating the implications. From time to time I will post material that will be useful in preparing for the coming time point.

Here is the link:

The ancient Rule of Three enables an understanding of things more than when attention has a singular focus.

For example, right now, most everyone is focused on the pandemic caused by the Corona Virus. What else is going on synchronously? One thing is the financial fallout from the pandemic, which is causing economic harm on a large scale at all levels (countries, corporations, small businesses, individuals). Countries and central banks are scrambling to bring economic relief before the world-wide economy spirals into recession, or deeper into depression. As bracing as these realities are, my sense is they may pale in light of what I will call the “alternate reality” virus (ARV).

As background, I encourage you to read a sample of my work on this, in blog posts entitled, ”They Say, “Return to Normal?,” “Collapse,” “Mind Parasites.” and “The Meaning of Not Human.” You can access these pieces here:

http://ralockhart.com/WP/?s=virus

My work on the "Trump" pieces has followed from an overflow of inchoate intimations concerning the present state of the world and its future. At all levels, I see the regressive pull of the past, from wanting to return to some prior glory to trying to understand the present situation through the vehicles of past understanding. We cannot go back and we cannot understand the future while looking backward. We can only open ourselves to witnessing the full horror that is happening in and to the world, in and to human beings, in and to the rest of life on earth. There is an enormous fear of and loathing for the strange, for otherness, for difference, for incongruity, for disparity, for doubt—all those qualities that Keats pointed to as characterizing "negative capability." If we don't welcome these things, as Baucis and Philemon welcomed the "strangers who were gods," then we will experience the fate of the villagers who locked the doors, who sent the strangers away, who did not welcome the divine visitors? Their fate was to die in a great flood, leaving only the generous-hearted Baucis and Philemon alive. And, yes, I am aware of the irony of referring "back" to Baucis and Philemon. It's like the "hope" left in Pandora's box. My deeper intuition, however, is that hope is gone as well. "Something else" is in store. Of this, I am convinced.

Mental viruses such the ARV are contagious almost beyond comprehension, particularly with the mechanisms of the internet enabling the spread in unpredictable and unstoppable ways. There is no sure way to diagnose ARV, there is no way to stop it, and there is no treatment. Some regular features of ARV are the denial of reality, the denial of facts, denial of truth, certainty and conviction of the truth of conspiracies, a mounting degree of emotional intensity leading to absolute intolerance of anything and everything outside the bubble created by the ARV.

The ARV disables rational thought and excites emotional reactions beyond normal boundaries and advocates physical actions to force the alternate realities on everyone, including violence and willful law-breaking.

The president of the United States, Donald Trump, embodies all of these features of the ARV and is a prime example of the disorder and destruction that follows from the combination of power and infection with ARV.

The ARV is a normal feature of human behavior, limited generally to a small percentage of the population. But ARV, like all viruses, mutates and has the potential of becoming more infectious leading to large numbers of carriers as well as those exhibiting full-blown symptoms of the ARV. One can be a carrier as well as suffering the consequences of infection without any realization of this. Generally, self-reflection is one of the first casualties of infection. Without self-reflection, consciousness becomes increasingly degraded and becomes a casualty of the infection. Impenetrable unconsciousness then becomes the dominant feature. When this is so, any form of rational argument or persuasion becomes ineffective.

Social attraction of those infected by ARV increases, so that further loss of individuality becomes another casualty. Groups ensure even further infection of ARV until mass-mindedness becomes complete. When mass-mindedness becomes coupled with power in the form of organization, money, politics, etc., the degree of collective damage that results can be extreme. This can become a factor in societal and cultural collapse.  

In Part Two, I will take up the issue of what can be done—if anything— to lessen the power of those infected with ARV and to limit the damage that is inevitable if ARV is unchecked.

Filmmakers respond to environmentalist criticism of the film "The Planet of the Humans"

They say the lockdown will end soon
the war against the virus will be won
the economy will rocket to the moon
and we'll be back to all the normal fun

They say we need to quickly forget
all we have endured suffered and lost
to be out again and buy with no regret
spend and spend with no regard for cost

They say there is nothing to learn
from an unseen little bug not even alive
while it waits in the dark for another turn
and when it comes again, we will not thrive

We. Will. Not. Thrive.

The Planet of the Humans

As a counterweight to "Planet of the Humans," here is a review of the film by Cathy Cowan Becker entitled, "Michael Moore's environment film is a slap in the face on Earth Day." Here is the link: 

https://www.facebook.com/notes/cathy-cowan-becker/michael-moores-environment-film-a-slap-in-the-face-on-earth-day/10158171518900330/

...the earth will be fine.

Please watch and contemplate The Planet of the Humans.

Here is the link:

I have never been a fan of hope. I mean the kind hope that leads to a paralysis of action while investing psychic energy in some hoped for future that will be better. It is said that without hope, there is only despair and dissolution. I do not think this is necessary. Recall that hope was the last thing in Pandora’s box. Was it a good thing, or was it also one of the evils that was loosed upon the world when Pandora opened her box? Scholars are uncertain on this point in analyzing the myth. But Norse mythology is crystal clear. Hope is the slobber dripping from the mouth of Fenrir, the monstrous wolf. And for the Norse, what is required is the courage to act without hope in the face of threat. Hope here belongs to the evil created by Loki. When I saw the weed bursting through a crack in the cement stairs, I thought, there is action. This is not hope but pluck. That is the word that came to me. Pluck. The word derives from the I-E root, sker-, meaning to “scratch through.” This scratching became what we now call writing. I sense here the idea of story whenever the paralysis of hope is abandoned for the sake of action. Pluck, indeed! Remember Leonard Cohen’s words: “There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.” Find the crack, gather your pluck and breakthrough.

This is my review of Ronald Schenk's American Soul: A Cultural Narrative. [New Orleans, LA: Spring Journal Books, 2912]. This review was published in Psychological Perspectives. [57:454-459, 2014]

Here is a taste:

Until our culture sees deeply enough into this complexity, we will continue on a path of turning ourselves into what we seek to destroy. In seeking to destroy terrorism, we seek to destroy the soul. This is the fundamental insight of Schenk’s brilliant work and the full realization of this is the necessary starting point for seeking “something else.” If we seek to destroy the soul, as Ahab tries to destroy the whale, we too will go down like all great empires before us. Our ship of state, our great and glorious Pequod, is surely listing. Ahab’s doubloon suckers us all into the great enterprise and for the most part we are unknowing and seemingly unconcerned about our fate as we are entertained into a miasma of collective stupor.

Who will live to tell the tale?

The full review is available at:

ralockhart.com/WP/SchenkReview.pdf

At Paco's urging, I am posting my commentary on Risk from Dreams, Bones & the Future: Queries & Speculations. Warning: it's a long read but pertinent to the times.

The pre-eminent work considering the history and dynamics of risk is Peter Bernstein’s 1996 book, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk. Bernstein argues that “the revolutionary idea that defines the boundary between modern time and the past is the mastery of risk: the notion that the future is more than the whim of the gods and that men and women are not passive before nature.” The story is about the mathematicians whose work “put the future at the service of the present.” He writes, “by showing the world how to understand risk, measure it, and weigh its consequences, they converted risk-taking into one of the prime catalysts that drives modern Western society.” It was the prime factor that “converted the future from an enemy into an opportunity” and led the “human passion for games and wagering into economic growth, improved quality of life and technological progress.” Bernstein revels in the way that rational risk management has “propelled science and enterprise into the world of speed, power, instant communication and sophisticated finance.” Summing up, he argues that the giants who have led the way from “the perception of risk from chance of loss into opportunity for gain, from FATE and ORIGINAL DESIGN to sophisticated probability-based forecasts of the future, and from helplessness to choice.”

It would be hard to find a more optimistic assessment of the fruits of risk management and its prospects for the future.

With such unbounded optimism, it is strange that the cover of the book shows Rembrandt’s Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee.[1] The image Rembrandt painted is based on the story in the Gospel of Mark where Christ intervenes and prevents the floundering vessel from crashing into the rocks. Are we to take from this that risk management is something like one of Christ’s miracles? Or, is risk management in some way to be considered from a religious perspective? Bernstein is silent on this and Christ was removed from the painting’s title in the description of the cover. Religion and faith are not considered in the text. This is because in Bernstein’s view as far as risk in relation to the future is concerned, mathematics has prevailed against superstition, against fortune telling and prophecy, and as the title suggests, against the gods themselves. The emphasis throughout is on the rational use of risk analysis. What could go wrong? Why then this religious image to be the cover of the book? [PM1] As I will argue further on, risk is always about the unknown future and the unknown future always animates the psyche in deep ways that are ignored when wearing the blinders of rationality that risk management has become.

In the 1990s, many institutions hired CROs (Chief Risk Officers), paid them handsomely, and raised their status. The idea was to reduce the risk of insolvency. Recent research shows that risky behavior on the part of financial institutions increased instead,[2] and led to the largest financial crash since the Great Depression. The reasons for this “failure” are hidden behind layers of secrecy. What the evidence points to however is that the presumed objective rationality of risk control and management will always be outweighed by emotional factors of self-interest, greed and fear at the highest levels.

I find it fascinating that Bernstein fails to mention emotion, fear or greed. Nor does he mention addiction or power or psychology. In other words, in the book that is as close to a Bible of Risk as one can get, there is no mention of the factors that drive human behavior when facing risk in the real world. This is something like pointing to the facts of arithmetic as to why it’s always rational to have a balanced checkbook. True, but hardly the determiner that it is always pictured to be.

Paradoxically, it appears that the use of risk management is impervious to the consequences of not actually following risk management rules. This is why Bernstein’s optimism about the future as the unfolding of unending bounty is wrong. It does not account for how humans behave in the real world. How else to explain not only the human contribution to climate change, but to the denial of climate change as well. It does not appear that the glories of risk management are going to save humans from their own suicidal processes of poisoning the planet, extinguishing vast arrays of living plants and animals, and staring their own extinction in the face. Ubiquitous and fatal risks have not been managed. They have been ignored.

The dark reality of the “progress” made possible by risk management is that the risk to human survival has never been greater.

The word risk, in its earliest spelling as risque, came into English in 1661 in this sentence: Risque, peril, jeopardy, danger, hazard, chance. The word comes from the French in the form of risqué, and from the Italian in the form of risicare. The sense of “impropriety” is clear in the French origin, while the sense of “to dare” is from the Italian. Bernstein sites only the Italian sense of “dare” as a stance that overcomes the “fates.” He ignores the origin that carries the sense of perhaps doing something “wrong.” Looking further back, we find the Latin word resecare, which was used to refer to the danger of ships being “cut” by unseen rocks beneath the surface. This is the scene that is pictured on the cover of Bernstein’s book. This word more clearly conveys the Indo-European root, sek I, which means “cut.” It is also the origin of our words sect, intersect, insect, and sex.

Suppose we ask the question of how risk management is to be applied to sects? To intersections? To insects? To sex? Here you can see that mathematical management via elaborated theories of probability, are not going to leap to mind. This is where the qualitative nature of risk is essential. Qualitative risk management is a well-known practice that is considered necessary prior to quantitative risk management. One develops a “registry of risks,” which is an attempt to anticipate everything of consequence that “could go wrong.” Even if such a registry of risks is developed, what happens in a typical scenario is that most such risks are discounted and risks remain that “qualify” for quantitative approaches are left to consider. This is what happens in all financial institutions when they discount all most all qualitative risks and focus in vary narrow ways on risks amenable to certain favored financial models. This is why such ventures will always lead to collapse.

Now we are in a situation where known risks are not just discounted but are denied altogether. You can just feel the ship floundering and edging closer and closer to the rocks that will cut the vessel and lead to its demise. This is why Melville’s Moby Dick is such a masterpiece of prophecy relevant to our current condition.

The theory of probability began its long ascent to the top of Mt. Rational in 1654, and provides the confidence that managing all risks is now possible. The word risk was introduced into English seven years later, in 1661. When I read prescriptions for risk management, I can’t help but be aware of that sentence: Risque, peril, jeopardy, danger, hazard, chance. This seems a more accurate picture of what we face and what we have failed to manage. Instead of focusing on how to manage the risks we face, it is far more urgent to ask ourselves why do we ignore our perils, why do we knowingly increase the jeopardy we are placing ourselves in, why do we ignore the dangers that we are seeing developing at exponential rates, why are we increasing the hazards to our very existence, why are we allowing ourselves almost no chance of a future. These are the qualitative areas we should be exploring front and center in our personal lives, our cultural lives and our global lives. There are no more important questions.

As I said earlier, risk and its presumed management are always about the unknown future. The unknown future will always excite the psyche at its deepest levels. One of the ways of attending to the deep psyche’s process, is to take up a deep recognition of the values of dreams. I have argued elsewhere that dreams are always about the future. It follows then, that when dreams are ignored, we are ignoring one of our richest resources in relating to the future—whatever the nature of that future will be. Like so many realities that get ignored that will bring us greater harm, we must realize, at some point, that ignoring our dreams may be the costliest mistake of all.

[1] This painting and twelve other paintings, 13 in all, were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, on March 18, 1990. It is the largest art theft in US history and remains unsolved. Bernstein does not mention this event. 

[2] Kim Pernell, Jiwook Jung, Frank Dobbin. The Hazards of Expert Control: Chief Risk Offices and Risky Derivatives. American Sociological Review, 2017; 82(3). 511.