Light Ages and Dark Ages

Read recently a dystopic sci-fi short story set near the end of this century in which a floating city of refugees is overturned by one of the then frequent super typhoons in the Philippine archipelago. The “hero” then must flee from super biotech Chinese police. Nothing about the story line offered reason to look forward to the world that will be brought about by climate change, environmental damage, rising sea-levels and technology-enabled authoritarianism. Indeed, the end of the century will most probably be one of desperation, displacement, disease, poverty and death for billions. Made me wonder what is the meaning and purpose of any of the lives we live now if it leads to this. The answer seems to me to be that there is no meaning but there may be purpose.

Most who live in the wealthy countries of North America, Western Europe and the Pacific Rim enjoy lives of security, well-being, comfort and accomplishment. In the past 200 years, advances in industry, agriculture, transportation, and technology have improved the lives of many others and reduced poverty globally. While not everyone shares in this progress, collectively, the human race has never had it better. But the good times and bad times come in waves – light ages followed by dark ages – and the next one may indeed be a super typhoon.

Throughout history, periods during which many lived relatively well are followed by times of collapse. During the golden age of Rome, its citizens enjoyed relative stability and comfort. When Rome fell, Europe entered the centuries of the dark ages. Other civilizations rose and fell in their own spaces and times. This was probably true in prehistory as well. Homo sapiens almost went extinct at least twice before: around 195,000 years ago and again some 70,000 years ago. Both times it took hundreds to thousands of years to recover. We now live in a global civilization that has entered the age we created from scratch, the Anthropocene. When our global light age ends, the dark age will therefore also be globalized.

What does this mean for those of us alive now? Well, we can enjoy what we have. Beyond that, nothing. Ages swing from good to bad and back again. It seems likely they will continue to do so. None of this has any meaning, it just is. At most, it has perhaps been the engine of human evolution as overcoming the past dark age allows us to rise a little bit further in the next light one. But we can not claim credit for our relative well-being. We were just born lucky. And we also cannot be blamed for the past centuries of burning fossil fuel and despoiling nature. We were merely alive when the bill came due. But we can still have purpose. At some point in the next century, humanity will reach a new equilibrium with the changed earth. So we can try to live more sustainably now and do everything we can to ready the world and the next generations for what is to come so that the next age is a light one.

COVID-19: The Great Equalizer

By now, the human species has been altering the natural order for some 11000 years. It started with the advent of agriculture and went through urbanization and industrialization which transformed the surface of the earth and began changing a host of natural systems including the climate, animal life, forests and oceans. We humans have known about this for a while. But most of us – especially those of us in the advanced economies and not living too close to the rising waters – could see the impact of our disruption of natural systems as something that would affect other people – future generations, the poor, those living in low-lying island nations – and not so much us in the here and now. COVID-19 has altered that by bringing to all of us the results of our changes to the earth. It has equalized the impact of the destruction of natural environments (which stresses what lives in them thereby making them more prone to diseases that can jump to us), the way we use animals (including how close we live with them and the antibiotics we use to fatten them) and the close quarters (in large numbers) in which we live. Add to this the way we use hydrocarbons to travel and transport, the interconnectedness of our ways of life and economies and the varying shortcomings of our political systems. We should not have been surprised by the current bio-crisis. It’s not that any one of these caused the virus but that the total impact of what we have wrought was largely hidden until now though very much operative.

So COVID-19 shows us that the bill won’t wait to be delivered and that everyone must pay. The rich may be able to retreat to their enclaves and private transport. But their world will change as ours does. The species as a whole will survive. But this is the wake up call. The future disrupted world is upon us now. Returning to “normal” – whenever and whatever that turns out to be – may well be just a breather before the next episode. We need to take the next step in our evolution – remake our economies and politics, restoring nature even if gradually and treating each other more equally – and start now or the humanity that makes it to the 22^nd Century may be unrecognizable.

America is waiting for a message of some sort or another

Americans of all political persuasions apparently are disappointed with our dysfunctional government. We want most of what government does for us – even in health care – but it seems that the system is broken. It feels like our leaders, parties and the way our government works just may not be up to the challenges we face in this 21st Century. Yes, Washington seems sunk in partisan bickering and knee-jerk attacks on whoever tries to do anything. But the very mechanism – designed in the 18th Century and last updated 100 years ago – seems woefully incapable of helping us make and implement the decisions we need to survive and prosper in the bewilderingly complex world we now find ourselves in. The Senate has become an arena for power politics fueled by all the influence that money can buy. The federal government – and most of the states – are spending more money than we have. Fortunately, the Chinese have little choice but to hold our dollars for us. But the debt we have run up measures a collective addiction greater than the most pernicious drugs. The Presidency is enmeshed in a bureaucracy of vested interests – within the government and within the ruling party. We seem to have entered the age of permanent war in which only the professionals fight and die. The whole system has become the tail on the dog of the military-industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower warned us about.

We need to update how we do business, bring the constitution into this millennium. Whether by constitutional convention or through amendments, we need to seize back the initiative. The Founding Fathers were great men for their time, we need great men and women now for our time. Change in America is usually incremental. Our political system's great strength is our reliance on stable and solid rules of the game. But we need change; we all recognize this. Some may fear it. Certainly some may worry about opening the Pandora's Box as widely as a constitutional convention might. But we really cannot go on this way much longer and still maintain our leadership in the world and offer our children and grandchildren a return to the American dream that we boomers have let slip from our grasp. We need the sort of grand national conversation that a convention would bring on. Being democrats, sharing a belief of government of the people, by the people and for the people, we should have nothing to fear but fear itself.

Perhaps our national dialogue can be channeled through serious consideration by the Congress and then through state ratification of amendments we might agree on? Or maybe the Tea Party has accurately measured the times and we need something from outside the existing structures. Article Five of the US Constitution provides the various alternatives.

What might we need to change? Perhaps a parliamentary system might be best. Parliamentary government is more agile, allowing majorities to rule yet quickly recallable. But we Americans do like our change in small steps. So a couple of more modest suggestions:

To improve the efficiency and representativeness of our national legislature.

- Increase the term of office for Representatives from two to four years so they can spend more time focusing on legislating rather than running. Stagger the terms so that every two years, half the House is up for election.

- Increase the representative and deliberative nature of the Senate. Change the distribution of the Senate seats so that no state can have more Senators than it has Representatives. Distribute the extra seats to states according to population with no state having more than three. This would mean that states would have 1-3 senators roughly distributed every ten years according to the latest census. All senate terms would be concurrent and for five years timed to be open the year following the census.

To improve the efficiency and representativeness of the administration of government.

- Increase the presidential term to six years while retaining the limit of two terms.

- Mandate constitutionally that the federal government operate on a two-year budget.

To build into government and law some regular process of review that includes popular consideration.

- Mandate that all Acts of Congress be reauthorized every 25 years either by a 3/5's vote in each house or failing such action, by national referendum.

- This would apply as well to all departments and agencies of the federal government not explicitly named in the Constitution.

Change is the order of life. We Americans have lived in a political system resistant to change. That is mostly good. But the time has come to dig up the roots, prune the tree and replant in soil we can grow on. Let's talk....