Light also for warmth in the cold time. One Indigenous tradition--and probably others, if not all--see winter as a time for the Earth's sleep but also of its pregnancy, the light in the body that will emerge as the new life of spring.
In those older traditions in parts of the world where winter is forbidding, when little grows to be harvested, and hunting and fishing slow or stop, the solstice began a season of people being together around the fire and listening to stories--stories of a people, of its history, of the origins of animals and how things got to be as they are. Stories that provide the backbone of the living culture.
Though there are cultural values and aspirations embedded in, for instance, Christmas stories as well as religious texts read at this time, they exist more strongly in the institutions of our large scale complex culture, and in shared knowledge--including the standards for judging what is known.
A Dark Age in our culture is a time when such knowledge is forgotten and such institutions slip into chaos. Late last year I suggested that signs pointed to the likelihood that we are entering such a time, and this past year has only added evidence of that.
I've called the incumbent president by a couple of names, still accurate. Lately I've settled on "the anti-president," to reflect the complete extent to which he is relentlessly destroying the presidency, destroying the federal government and our sense of being one nation. He does the opposite of what a president should do; he is the opposite of what a president should be, and even more, he is the opposite force, like anti-matter to matter: the anti-president. This ongoing process of erasure is the preliminary to the self-reinforcing Dark Age.
The two most important elements are: replacing knowledge with ignorance, and flexible order with alarming chaos.
Knowledge it seems does not alone protect us. What's being done is known, or at least knowable. The anti-president's lies are doggedly counted and described every time he opens his mouth, but it doesn't seem to matter. He keeps lying, about everything (including easily ascertained facts, and what's in his own proposals, etc) and his White House backs him up. Each time he lies, the truth dies, including the functional concept of truth.
We can even identify other strategies that have been defined in popular fiction, like Orwell's Newspeak, which was at least as much the eradication of words as the addition of new mandatory ones. Early on we've seen the erasure of climate change information from government websites, including the forbidding of the very words "climate change." It has since disappeared from national security strategy. Now there's a report of other banned words: the CDC has instructed staff to avoid seven words, including diversity, vulnerable, evidence-based and science-based.
Due in part to the anti-president, and in part to the impact of a certain social movement, right now all of our institutions are close to chaos, with decreasing resilience, and especially with fewer voices that can summon any kind of national understanding, consciousness or dialogue. There is a leadership vacuum, including in opposing the anti-president and his supporting infrastructure.
But this year was just the preliminary, the softening up. The possibility of real crisis increases in the coming year, and likely for years after that. We may well face an authoritarian crisis by this time next year. Everything is lining up for one. Nobody knows how events will play out, but the elements are assembling, and we're vulnerable.
Yes, that's one of the forbidden words. In fact, you can pretty much track where things are going on the right by what they want to forbid, and what say about the left. They are very good at mirror accusations: being guilty of what they accuse others, or signaling their goals by accusations. Right now the buzzword on the right is "coup." It's often the justification for an authoritarian move--an anti-Republic to save the Republic.
Diversity is another forbidden word, for the institutions--including the rule of law and its principles-- that regulate and therefore keep alive a society with a diversity of identities and ideas, are under primary threat in any kind of authoritarian regime or culture. Apparently rational, authoritarianism is most often driven by basic if not base emotions, from avarice to rage, that determine what may seem to be rational justifiable judgments. It's pretty clear that such emotions are increasingly taking over. The question is whether we survive these storms.
Certain kinds of absolute allegiances that are forms of identity can be set in opposition to others, which also sets up the chaos that can lead to an authoritarian "solution." As we lose knowledge, allegiances, beliefs that we can hold in common, and as we lose faith in the fairness of institutions (particularly when they do become more unfair, more beholden to ideology or favoritism) we invite the chaos that is the pretext. Then under pressure and in panic we face the dangers of devolving further into smaller group allegiances.
We haven't lost it all yet. The national response from the top to this year's climate disasters has been grossly inadequate, but on the level of community--as in this southern California fire--there is still the unquestioned impulse to help.
Yet this all is unraveling at a time when life as we know it on our planet is in mortal peril from the climate crisis, and we're all but ignoring it, and certainly failing to do what we should be doing with the required urgency, attention and sense of purpose. Some people talk of the next step in human evolution. Chances are slipping by that we will ever get to a next step. So far the prevalent evidence is that humanity is flunking evolution altogether.
At this time of year, people still gather to renew bonds, share stories and hope to provide a sense of light to the young. As the new calendar year gets closer they may consider how they can represent the light and bring it to their times.
These holidays in contemporary America are normally fraught with the resurrection of old conflicts, dashed if unreal expectations, push buttoned reminders of past hurt, and traditions of our culture that are conflicting to a point well beyond irony. This year we have the added anxieties of deep turmoil in our country that is spiraling out of control, apparently headed to a Dark Age. We huddle one more time around the light, hoping we're with the people who will still be with us in that different darkness.
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