Thinking globally, acting locally in 2021

Over the last year or so, I have found my mind returning to an essay the novelist Jonathan Franzen wrote in The New Yorker, "What If We Stopped Pretending?" which posits that the climate apocalypse is inevitable and the real question is how to live in the meantime with that knowledge.

The essay produced angry reactions because a lot of people think the apocalypse is not, in fact, inevitable -- though I think Franzen's underlying reason for thinking so, that our leaders just won't get around to taking the action needed, seems pretty solid to me. But I was fascinated with what he suggested we do with the knowledge.

"If your hope for the future depends on a wildly optimistic scenario, what will you do ten years from now, when the scenario becomes unworkable even in theory? Give up on the planet entirely? To borrow from the advice of financial planners, I might suggest a more balanced portfolio of hopes, some of them longer-term, most of them shorter. It’s fine to struggle against the constraints of human nature, hoping to mitigate the worst of what’s to come, but it’s just as important to fight smaller, more local battles that you have some realistic hope of winning. Keep doing the right thing for the planet, yes, but also keep trying to save what you love specifically—a community, an institution, a wild place, a species that’s in trouble—and take heart in your small successes. Any good thing you do now is arguably a hedge against the hotter future, but the really meaningful thing is that it’s good today. As long as you have something to love, you have something to hope for."

I found -- and continue to find -- this line of thought compelling. A shorter way of saying this might be: "Think Globally, Act Locally." It's a slogan that was popular, if I remember correctly, with environmentally minded people back in the 1990s. And as 2021 starts,it feels like a good idea for me to recommit to.

A lot of the writing I do publicly is about national issues. And national, international issues, were of supreme importance in 2020 -- the pandemic, the vote over whether Donald Trump would stay president. But the hope I found didn't come at the national level, but in my community. Ladybird Diner shut down early, before the official lockdowns, out of concern for the health of customers -- and then began providing a free carryout lunch to my town's needy people, no questions asked, a mission it continues to carry out these nine months later. Raven Bookstore sold copies of a book of essays by Ladybird's owner -- we have a copy in our home -- with proceeds going to that effort. When we had sufficient funds, our family probably gave more to local charities in 2020 than we ever had before.

We couldn't make Donald Trump be a good president during the pandemic. We could help feed our neighbors.

I don't know if 2021 is the end of the disaster that was 2020, or if 2020 is the beginning of an era of disaster. I am apocalyptically minded, so I suspect the latter. I suspect that to be resilient, I need to rebalance my commitments somewhat. Oh, I'll keep arguing and writing about national politics. But as it becomes safer to move about, I hope to re-engage and newly engage my community, to take joy and comfort in here, the place that I am, instead of concentrating my energies in the social media cloud. I suspect more good may come from encountering my neighbors -- even ones that I heartily disagree with, even ones I heartily dislike -- in real life, than shouting at faceless trolls (or being a faceless troll).

So I am rededicating myself to Lawrence. Some of that might mean going to church again, and figuring out how to reconcile my un-churchiness with my love of the church community. Some of that might mean spending Saturday mornings at the Farmer's Market again. I'm not sure, frankly, everything it might mean. I just know I want to be open to it.

It might not save the world. It might not even save my community. But this, I suspect, is where I can best make my own small contribution to trying. As long as you have something to love, you have something to hope for.

"Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and its Urgent Lessons for Our Own," by Eddie Glaude Jr.

Just under the wire, I have finished my last book of 2020: "Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and its Urgent Lessons for Our Own," by Eddie Glaude Jr. One of the central themes is one I have long felt -- that the triumphalist narrative of American history is a lie, that we fail to truly grapple with the sins of the real history in favor of a myth that comforts us even as it works to cement the results of those sins in place.

This is a passage I have highlighted in my own copy of Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time," and Glaude excerpts it in this book:

"To accept one's past--one's history--is not the same as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought. How can the American Negro's past be used? The unprecedented price demanded--and at this embattled hour of the world's history--is the transcendence of the realities of color, of nations, and of altars.

Glaude echoes that notion in his reflections on Baldwin.

"We have to rid ourselves, once and for all, of this belief that white people matter more than others," he writes, "or we're doomed to repeat the cycles of our ugly history over and over again." He calls for "a world and a society that reflect the value that all human life, no matter the color of your skin, your zip code, your gender, or who you love, is sacred."

But, he also says, as an aside: "My understanding of history suggests that we will probably fail trying."

That, unfortunately, is also my understanding of history. We humans are fallen creatures, prone to drawing lines that pit us -- however we define "us" in any given moment -- against "them." It seems inherent to us as a species.

And yet: We need people like Baldwin, like Glaude, to continue to insist that we reach for that impossible world, the "New Jerusalem" as Baldwin calls it, and a new American founding as Glaude calls it. It is only by striving to rise above that that we ever do any rising -- even if we fall short of the heights we're aiming for.

Update: Coincidentally, after posting this, I ended up listening to this podcast on my walk ... featuring Glaude speaking about the book. It's a good overview, if you don't want to read the entire (short) work. It opens with a Baldwin quote I'd forgotten: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” That says what I was getting at, but better of course.

In 2021, I need to rebuild my personal community

When my family returned to Lawrence, Kan. in 2016, there was a group of people waiting at the house we were moving into to help us move in. It was a tremendous affirmation of our decision to come "home," reflecting the relationships we'd made here during my first stint living in the town from 2000 to 2008.

I feel like I've squandered that moment.

I'm reading Timothy Carney's "Alienated America" at the moment, and early on he describes the realization that the people who had helped his family were all connected by institutions.

Even before the pandemic, I was a freelance writer who works from home and who attends church once or twice a year. It didn't feel great! I could go days without leaving the house, even, unless I made a real effort. Oh, I have a few friends I see now and again, and sitting outside the coffee shop with a socially distanced group of men has saved my sanity over the last few months, but the truth is it has been awhile since I was enmeshed in the networks he describes here. I feel their absence.

To be sure, I'm not sure how to reclaim those networks for myself. But I've come to realize I need to try, somehow.

Twitter will be the death of me

Damon Linker: "We open the app, we scroll, we hate, we lash out, we shut down — and then we do it all again tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Because part of us loves to experience the addictive thrill of righteous indignation. And that, in the end, is what the app is really for."

Tuesday on the Kansas River

 

Pandemic stress dreams

I dreamed last night I went without a mask into a crowded restaurant where nobody else was wearing a mask, and realizing I probably had just signed my own death warrant.

I didn't sleep well last night.

The sources of Donald Trump's shame

The Week: "In his first one-on-one interview since the general election, President Trump told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo over the phone that he is "ashamed" he once endorsed Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R)."

Let's see:

He's not ashamed of committing adultery on numerous occasions.

He's not ashamed of failing the country during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He's not ashamed that his Iran policy has failed so spectacularly.

He's not ashamed of running his businesses into the ground, or of acquiring massive debt.

He is ashamed of once endorsing a guy who failed to assist his cheating.

Whatever.