The Empathy Election?

 

For the first two-thirds of his book The Age of Empathy, the late primatologist Frans De Waal describes the observations and experiments that show that contrary to the conventional wisdom both within and outside science, empathy and its various building blocks exist in primate species and even in other mammals.  Empathy is not based wholly on human imaginative projection.  It is emotional and above all it is physical.

De Waal goes step by step through the research, and late in the book summarizes the findings and implications: "...empathy is part of a heritage as ancient as the mammalian line.  Empathy engages brain areas that are more than a hundred million years old.  The capacity arose long ago with motor mimicry [imitation] and emotional contagion, after which evolution added layer after layer, until our ancestors not only felt what others felt, but understood what others might want or need.

The full capacity seems put together like a Russian doll.  At its core is an automated process shared with a multitude of species, surrounded by outer layers that fine-tune its aim and reach.  Not all species possess all layers: Only a few take another's perspective, something we are masters at.  But even the most sophisticated layers of the doll normally remain firmly tied to its primal core."

The research De Waal cites (prominently including his own) is fairly new, because science has its own dogmas.  Animals were studied for what was assumed they were all about: hierarchy, competition, aggression.  All of that is real but incomplete.  As De Waal writes in an earlier publication, scientists did not observe cooperation, conciliation or empathy among primates or other species because they weren't looking for them.

Even empathy in humans is derided in dogma that's prevailed for a century or two, which maintain that "selfish genes" rule ruthlessly, that survival depends on selfishness and dominance, and wishy-washy concepts like empathy are dangerous outgrowths of unrealistic feelings, mostly feminine and definitely low-T.  Darwin's natural selection was immediately distorted into a personal survival of the fittest ethic.

It's no surprise how these dogmas became dogmas.  They were promoted and supported by the people that most benefit from them: the overlords, the wealthy and powerful, who legitimize their own dominance by convincing underlings that this is the nature of things: this is nature red in tooth and class.

 De Waal also goes into animal research that studies concepts of fairness and reciprocity.  Even in some hierarchical primate social groups, these must be honored or the ruling alpha and high ranking females could lose power.  There are behaviors that clearly aim to smooth out inequalities.  Sharing and the rules of sharing are also important. De Waal links these concepts of fairness to empathy, which makes intuitive sense.

In the last third of this book, De Waal looks at current society, especially America, in light of these findings.  In a section called "The Dark Side," he defines the psychopath as lacking in the feelings of empathy, who is interested only in defeating others.  Though he wrote this in 2009, he describes leaders we recognize: "A lot of trouble in the world can be traced to people whose Russian doll is an empty shell....[T]hey are intellectually capable of adopting another's viewpoint without any of the accompanying feelings.  They successfully fake empathy.  Whenever they achieve power...their disdain for truth and morality allows them to manipulate others into carrying out their evil plans."

How are they successful?  De Waal continues: "Their authority overrides the better judgment of underlings so that sometimes an entire nation, for example Germany in the previous century, falls for the cruel fantasies of a charismatic psychopath."  

I would add another phenomenon we've seen and are seeing more: people who serve them and essentially use them for their own selfish ends--they want power for their perverse ideologies, and especially a piece of the corruption.  But there is one more element that De Waal mentions, and it is important because it follows from his premise of natural empathy:

"What makes it so hard to wrap our heads around this mental disorder is that we can't imagine being immune to the suffering of others."

This could help account for the stunned response of so many Americans, and the denial indulged in by Chaos supporters, especially in the early months of this administration.  Is it really possible that an American President could cut off aid that would essentially kill thousands if not millions of vulnerable children?  Could that be true?  Isn't there another explanation for the cruelty and injustice visited upon human beings--men, women and children--in this country, now vilified instead of described as immigrants and asylum-seekers? For people living in fear of being snatched off the streets or worse by a brutal and incompetent but heavily armed army protected by the highest federal authority?  What about millions of people facing suddenly denied medical care, or the five million so far being cut from food stamps eligibility?  

Chaos and his minions have used the time-tested method of what is today commonly called "othering" to short-circuit any sort of empathy or sense of unfairness regarding these victims of official cruelty.  It is true that research shows that in primates as in humans, empathy and fairness are more easily extended to familiar members of one's own social group.  So Chaos evokes racial and class prejudices as well as fear of the unknown stranger, to create what used to be called--and can still usefully be called--dehumanization.

But now nearly everyone knows someone who can no longer afford medical care, just as they don't have to look far to see victims of high prices from tariffs and war.  Here and there the immigrant groups being targeted and vilified are well known in particular towns and cities.  People depend on their work, and see them as contributors to their communities.  That's why the Minneapolis response was so potent and had to be taken out of fickle public attention: because they said over and over that what they were doing was defending their neighbors.  They enacted empathy, every single day.

By now perhaps more Americans are able to face the fact that the ruling party and the ruling class, led by Chaos, is "immune to the suffering of others."  And if this November turns out to be a wave election, as it appears it well might, it may be because people vote, not just their particular self-interest, but to  bring fairness back to the social order, to fight back against callous inequality, to revive the ethic summarized in the phrase "you'd do the same for me."  This might be an empathy election. 

That would be a triumph for democracy in several senses.  For there is another implication of empathy as a natural state (not always dominant and not all the time, as De Waal describes) that he does not discuss directly. It has often been argued that without the authority of a religion or a king to transmit the moral laws given by a transcendent deity, there would be only cruelty, selfishness, chaos and immorality. 

 But if the sense of fairness, reciprocity and the constituents of empathy exist in nature, this cannot be so. There is no absolute need for artificial centers of authority in order for humans to behave ethically, fairly and with kindness and mercy. If ethics and what we call morality are rooted in nature, we don't absolutely require religious authority to impose them, let alone threaten us with eternal hellfire to force us to behave. We can always use models of behavior, guidance, inspiration and definition, and societies need some rules to fulfill the reciprocity and equity we recognize within.  But empathy is part of who we are.  We can assert that and express it in the sacred American ceremony of individuals voting.

Standing Together in Minnesota

 I have many fond memories of my visits to Minnesota and its Twin Cities.  Once I was there for a week or so during the winter.  From observation and my friends who lived there I learned two things: Minnesota people aren't afraid of the cold and the snow, and a primary reason they aren't is because mutual aid is ingrained in the culture.  If your car gets stuck in the snow, you won't wait long for passers-by or people who see you from their homes to come with shovels and big smiles, to dig you out.

That's why I am not surprised when I hear over and over the refrain from Minnesota people about why they're out there every time the federal thugs show up: I'm looking out for my neighbors.

Minnesota at the moment is the land of American heroes.  Facing at least 2800 heavily armed thugs who they now know will use violence against them, including lethal force, with impunity and without consequences, they continue to come out to face them in the streets, in even greater numbers.

After Renee Good was killed and the forces of Chaos spoke to support her killer and demonize her, I read a NYT column quoting MN Attorney General Keith Ellison suggesting that the only reason for this was to make Americans so afraid that they would cower in their homes, and look away.

Not in Minnesota, as it is turning out.  It's very volatile and dangerous, but thousands of federal thugs wreaking havoc, breaking laws with every breath and causing trauma, while trampling on the human rights of everyone now, disappearing children off to imprisonment--they can't make a move unobserved and unopposed.   

The besieged people of Minneapolis can now take heart from the six top federal prosecutors in Minnesota who resigned rather than be used in a smear campaign, and the four Civil Rights division prosecutors in Washington who resigned rather than accede to the Chaos orders to not perform the standard investigation of a fatal shooting by federal law enforcement.  These resignations reveal that Chaos is not even going through the motions of investigating this homicide, but is intent on smearing protesters, specifically the partner of Renee Good.  But they aren't getting away with it unnoticed or unopposed.

By looking out for their neighbors, regardless of where they came from, these Minnesotans are doubly expressing the best hope for America, both in what they are doing in the face of volatile thugs with military weapons, and in why they are doing it.  I can only express my vigilant support, and especially my admiration for their courage, as they up the game established in Chicago, pioneered in Portland and southern CA and wherever else in America the Chaos SS has brought violence and tears. 

The Surprising Resistance to the Reign of Chaos (Act I)

 

When the most recent New York Times poll asked respondents to select the word that best described the current administration's reign so far, the winner was "chaotic," chosen by 66%.  

As the end of the first 100 days of Chaos approaches, an avalanche of new polls uniformly reflect majority and supermajority opposition to its policies and actions.  Apart from the historic nature of this disapproval and opposition, a few things jump out at me as significant surprises.

The political professionals on both sides have for years told us that all the American voters care about is their own pocketbook, that they will support anyone and anything that makes the economy and especially their economic situation better.  Only those who are comfortably well off will care about "special interest" issues, which the professionals defined as anything except bread and butter economics.

This was never true.  But the extent to which these polls measure response to other "issues," and the size and frequency of demonstrations against Chaos, how they occur virtually everywhere, and through the eloquence of the signs the demonstrators carry--more eloquent than any politician, shows how untrue it was and, under mortal threats of today, how untrue it is now.  And regarding some issues, frankly how surprisingly untrue.

Certainly people are seriously worried about the economy and the economic consequences of the Chaos tariffs.  Some worry about the economic impact to themselves or family members of the deteriorating Social Security system and the threats to Medicaid, to Head Start and school lunch programs, and many other relatively small deprivations that add up for the people involved.

But some of the most lopsided poll results--with 60, 70 and 80% opposition to Chaos actions and policies--are in other areas, that don't necessarily or directly affect economic circumstances. And the widespread support for some programs suggests it is not their own economic benefit they are considering.  These numbers not only reflect the depth of opposition to Chaos, they contradict the conventional wisdom on what people do and do not care about.

For the conventional wisdom is that people see no value in the federal government, but only a bloated and wasteful bureaucracy.  They disdain universities as playgrounds of the elite.  They see foreign aid as wasteful spending.  They'd rather have a tax cut.

Perhaps it was seeing what destroying the federal government really meant to the services they depended on, or people they knew and people in their community depended on--people who are their neighbors and customers.  But the epic and ignorant slash and burn devastation wreaked by the Muskovites turns out to be deeply unpopular, reflected as well in the hostility against Musk himself.  

But it goes beyond that polarizing figure. It turns out people want Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid.  They want Veterans to get the services promised to them.  They want Head Start, Meals on Wheels and school lunch and breakfast support.  They want their food tested and scientists working on preventing and treating diseases.  They want National Park Rangers and environmental protections.  They want the Post Office.  They want libraries.

FDR's right hand man Harry Hopkins famously said during the Great Depression, "People don't eat in the long term.  They eat every day."  These are all everyday services.  But the polls show more.  People want long-term medical and other scientific research to be funded.  They want a clean energy future.  They want a robust Department of Education.  They want friendly relations with allies in the world.  They support Ukraine.

As for all those elitist universities, some 70% oppose federal government interference ( attempt to take total control is more accurate.)   Who knew that 70% cared at all?

Of all the issues the professionals would have selected as having least popular support, right at or near the top would probably be foreign aid.  But a vast majority of those surveyed in every one of these polls that asked the question, oppose the Chaos devastation to foreign aid.

What is remarkable to me about this issue and others is that the words "foreign aid" are a kind of abstraction.  Giving money away to foreigners is the broadest interpretations.  Yet somehow a large proportion of the voting public associates it with providing food and medicine to people in dire circumstances very far away.  And they support doing that.  Did any politician even know that?

Apart from the inflation-fighting he promised to do but never even attempted, Chaos believed he got elected for his anti-immigrant rhetoric.  So the federal government is embarked on a reign of terror, using the Chaos version of the Gestapo to brutalize every brown person and foreigner from non-white "shit-hole countries" they can lay their hands on.  So sure of themselves that they squirm and twist interpretations and outright defy court orders.  

While a lot of voters may have bought the rhetoric about insecure borders, it turns out that most do not want to see immigrants brutalized, let alone people whose status is unclear or taken by mistake.  They oppose Chaos immigration policies and actions, and they strongly support the Constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship.

And this may be one of the bigger surprises: they care about and support the rights guaranteed in the Constitution.  True, not enough voters seemed to care enough about them before the election, even as they were warned that electing Chaos would put them in jeopardy.  But the polls (as well as the demonstrations) show they strongly support the rights spelled out in the Constitution grouped under the term "due process of law."  They support them being applied to everyone.  This argues for a fundamental commitment to fairness, and an implied empathy--in those denied equal justice under law, they see themselves. 

Moreover, the protest signs reflect what may go even deeper in this widespread opposition: a pained resistance to cruelty, a consciousness of compassion.

So where are Americans getting these views?  I've heard many voices raised against the decline of civics courses in schools, and the absence of economics classes.  Somehow however something has sunk in.  We could list and speculate on how that information has become knowledge, but I think this is worth noting: that when it comes to current information on violations of due process and inhumane treatment, as well as on these other issues--well, it's not coming from Fox News.  It's certainly there in the much maligned mainstream media. And it evidently is considered credible, trustworthy information. 

Maybe it's out there in social media too, but it seems that the complete domination of the far right echo chamber is not so dominant after all, at least not at the moment.  It's the mainstream media and everyone writing or talking or being interviewed in and on it, that's telling Americans what tariffs really do, and where the economy is really headed--and who is at fault.  All of which is reflected in these polls.

The other intriguing element is that it is still very early in the process for much of this: for instance, the effects of the cuts and the tariffs have yet to be felt.  But people are anticipating those effects.  They see them coming.  They are engaged.  People are focused.  And they are--in the word most respondents selected in an NBC poll--"furious."

In public perception, Chaos has gone from a wearily elected president to a monster in 100 days. Many voters may want change but they do not want chaos; they want humane and efficient and Constitutional stability.  Words like "fascist" and "dictator" have gone from rare and generally derided in public discourse, to commonly spoken in the media and on the street (maybe even Wall Street.)  All this sets the stage for Act II of this improbable and uncomfortably real drama.  More on that anon.   

The Story

It's just part of a story, actually quite a lot of stories,

 the part where the third son or the stepdaughter

 sent on the impossible errand through the uncanny forest

 comes across a fox with its paw caught in a trap

 or little sparrows fallen from the nest

 or some ants are in trouble in a puddle of water.

 He frees the fox, she puts the fledglings in the nest,

 they get the ants safe to their ant-hill.

 The little fox will come back later

 and lead him to the castle where the princess is imprisoned,

 the sparrow will fly before her to where the golden egg 

is hidden, 

the ants will sort out every poppyseed for them

 from the heap of sand before the fatal morning,

 and I don't think I can add much to this story.

 All my life it's been telling me

 if I'll only listen who the hero is

 and how to live happily ever after.

---Ursula K. Le Guin

This is a poem for all time, posted at a particular time in which the US government is cutting all funding for immunizations against deadly infectious diseases such as malaria in the poorest countries in the world, which the institution on the ground estimates will result in the painful deaths of more than a million children.  

Previous announced cuts will likely result in starvation for many more, as well as blindness and debilitating illness.  It's estimated that more than 11,000 additional people have already died of tuberculosis since funding through USAID was stopped, and TB infections are predicted to increase worldwide this year by nearly a third.

For decades, the United States has supported immunizations partly out of self-interest: to stop the disease outbreaks before they reach the US.  But ever since the Marshall Plan saved Europe from starvation after World War II, a component of such programs has been compassion.  Yes, US farmers benefitted from selling grain and other foodstuffs to the US government to be distributed in poor countries, but they did so proudly under the slogan, We feed the world. 

Now cruelty and brutality are official policy, which the administration apparently feels no obligation to defend or even explain. Sudden massive cuts to food banks and school lunches, Medicaid and Social Security, public health and emergency services--policies of faceless cruelty are now attacking the most vulnerable people within the US as well--the disabled, the disenfranchised, the old and the poor.  And children.

Those who believe cruelty is necessary to succeed in the world would scoff at this poem, because for them it means living in a fantasy world, a fairy-tale.  But traditional stories have transmitted wisdom for untold centuries.  Cooperation is the strategy for success of nearly every living species, as science learns over and over.  "You'd do the same for me" is the ethic that supports survival, as well as happiness.

But for each of us, it is a matter of personal commitment.  There are lots of words for the actions suggested in this poem, such as altruism and empathy.  To me compassion says it best: to feel together. 

 A word describing these particular actions is even simpler: kindness. The longer I live the more I feel the primary importance of kindness.

The Miracle Convention

 It was a political miracle the likes of which I've never seen, that Democrats even arrived in Chicago for their convention absolutely united on a nominee, different from the one they had a month before.  Perhaps it was a necessary miracle, if there was to be any chance that the dictator in waiting could be stopped.

But the convention itself, with one amazing speech and speaker after another, with the joy and enthusiasm in the hall, was itself a miracle.  It redefined the Democratic party and marginalized the Trump cult.  Those were happy warriors who returned to their states, ready to fight and win. 

The final miracle was Kamala Harris meeting the moment at exactly the right time.  Her acceptance speech was all but flawless in its content and delivery.  She was every inch a President.

  Among much that was remarkable were the Republicans who stood on that stage in her behalf, and what they said to their fellow Republicans: "You're not voting for a Democrat--you're voting for democracy. You're not betraying our party, you're standing up for our country."

There were two themes that were in fact one theme.  "We're moving forward"--that's a familiar political theme, aspirational but hard to prove.  The flip side is less common, and this year is certainly potent: "We're not going back."   

I was troubled by a few things: that everyone continues to act as if Covid doesn't exist anymore, and that there was not a full sentence out of anyone's mouth I heard about the greatest threat to the planetary and human future, the climate crisis.  Once again, other seemingly more proximate threats took precedence.  

But even that can partially be accounted for by all the time absorbed in stating truths and values that have so lately been lost.  This was the "You'd do the same for me" convention, reaffirming basic human compacts.  It was beautiful, but so sad that it was so necessary.  

That and the general tenor of this miracle convention made me realize just how demoralized we've become.  The idea that someone like Trump could take over the government, and together with this Supreme Court could rule us into an inhuman theocratic autocracy for the very wealthy, had us in the grip of such discouragement that we could hardly even notice how depressed we were.

That part is over.  The threat must still be stopped, but now we know we aren't alone, and we know what our committments are.  That has value in itself.  Now the campaign begins.  It could not have begun better.  

There's likely to be tough days ahead.  Voter suppression tactics are already in place in key states.  There's a lot to be overcome.  But go ahead and say it: we shall overcome.

I offer a bit of political analysis you're not going to see anywhere else.  As highlighted by Paul Shepard, primatologist Michael R.A. Chance suggested that one of two mental modes in primate brain structures  govern social relations: in the rhesus monkey, its structure favored aggression and submission. High tension, the importance of rank and sex symbolizing power are characteristics.  He calls this the Agonic mode.

The other, which he called the Hedonic, is typical of chimpanzee society.  It favors mutual dependence and problem solving without real violence. There is more equality. Disputes can end in "reconciliation and reunion."  "The group has a strong general sense of unity," Shepard writes, "even though it may appear in disarray to an outsider."  

Humans are among those primates who have the potential for both the Agonic and Hedonic modes.  This bimodality is part of our basic nature.  Which one predominates in normal times depends on "the social system that cues us and to which we apply its logic." 

It is striking how our politics is now so clearly divided between the Agonic cult surrounding Trump, and the Hedonic Democrats, who now are clearly trying to represent everyone else. Over four days, the miracle convention articulated in words and faces, in individuals and families and groups, the conscious committment to this Hedonic mode.  It is the kind of society we want, the ideal America--the true American dream, not of striving and succeeding, but of  empathy, justice, generosity, compassion, love. In practical terms, the America of "You'd do the same for me."        

Climate Distortion

Update: Nine days after this post, about 175 million people (or close to the total US population in 1960)  in every region of the United States were under heat advisories with many experiencing high heat indexes, and the temperature of the ocean off Florida was 100F.  After forty days of excessive heat, the southwest was anticipating moderating temperatures but higher humidity as monsoon rains were forecast for early August. The world is boiling, said the UN Secretary-General.

The current heatwave in the US south and southwest (as well as northern Mexico) is expanding.  The National Weather Service predicts that this weekend about 80 million people will experience temperatures or heat indexes above 105F.  And the heat is likely to continue into next week.

When you add up everyone in the world dealing with excessive heat for weeks at a time, and then factor in those dealing with torrential rain and flood, firestorms and smoke, and all the associated problems, that number must be in the hundreds of millions if not billions.

This is the summer that climate distortion comes home.  The heat is no longer a temporary inconvenience, nor are the floods and fires.  They are much harder to ignore, and for many they are fatal to ignore. Their reality changes everyone's daily reality: how they think, plan, act and feel.  It should be motivation for institutions to make more than temporary fixes.  Gaps in public services become more apparent and must be addressed.  Even when the weather changes.

Climate distortion--though not necessarily this summer's weather--is here to stay, for a very long time.  It seems important to me to understand what's happening.  Some people call it climate change (a name invented by a Republican consultant so it wouldn't sound so "negative").  But the climate hasn't changed.  It has been distorted.  From a different point of view, some call it climate derangement.  It's colorful, but it isn't any more accurate.  The climate has not changed nor has it gone insane.  The climate is doing what it has always done in these geophysical circumstances.  But something is distorting the climate--usually making it more extreme and violent.  Something is interacting with ordinary climate phenomena, like El Nino and various other cycles.  That something is excessive CO2 and other identified gases spewn into the atmosphere by industrial age human societies, and the global heating they have caused.  

The effects of these distortions can be predicted in a general way, but not in a weather forecasting kind of way.  More days of higher temperatures in the summer, for instance, has been widely predicted for decades as an effect of global heating caused by greenhouse gases.  But distortions are inherently volatile.  Nobody knows how they will manifest in a given year.  A distorted climate is full of shocks and surprises.  There may be baseline changes within all this, but those probably won't be known until some time has passed.  But because of time lag effects, a distorted climate is here to stay.

The distortions in turn can distort various major ocean currents and atmospheric currents that play a huge role in determining weather patterns.   Then we're in the area of feedbacks and tipping points.  That's climate distortion.  They can eventually alter key features of the planetscape that affect climate, like polar ice.  They can affect life directly as well as indirectly, with cascading consequences.

Some people won't care much why this is happening, but they may face the fact that it is happening. Maybe some other people will finally listen to the basic findings of climate science.  I am not one of those who make a  rigid slogan out of "trust the science."  First of all, there is no such thing as "the science." Scientists, for any number of reasons on a scale from benign to corrupt, sometimes sell conclusions derived from bad science.  Science is not pure.  Human knowledge is much weaker than we like to pretend it is, and that's really true of western science.  You usually have to use your judgment in which "science" to believe.  

But climate science--which is really a name for those studying chemistry, biology, physics and various more complex hybrids of inquiry applied to climate--has come at its conclusions in a variety of ways, from measuring aspects of today's world to measuring aspects of the deep past, to modeling various possibilities.  Some requires sophisticated computation; but some is based on quite elementary physics and chemistry.  All of this should be clear to anyone who has read or seen An Inconvenient Truth since 2006, and there are more sciences involved now. 

For decades now, thousands of scientists of various kinds from every nation on the planet have come together to share their findings and put together a consensus in UN climate reports.  No subject has been studied more thoroughly by more people over a longer time in a cooperative way, and come to the same conclusions.  In comparison, your doctor's diagnosis is the equivalent of a coin toss.  

There are a number of practical lessons to be derived from this, including that the resistance to climate crisis conclusions is largely in the murky realm of the psychological (though it is excused and made easier and therefore more cynical and corrupt by politics.)  That should tell us that in order to address climate distortion, its effects and its causes, means exploring our inner distortions--fears, needs, desires as well as such unconscious drivers as denial and projection.  It means exploring the inner distortions related to social media, algorithms, group dynamics and so on.

Finally it means finding again the core of our beliefs in ourselves, what we're all about, our operating principles, our deep commitments and ideals, all of which may have been distorted by the rush of complexities around us.  It's not going to be easy, navigating the increasing number of hotheads around us (is it coincidence that mass shootings have gone up recently along with the temperature?) but in the end society and the individuals within societies will rise and fall on whether "you'd do the same for me" remains a transcendent impulse of what used to be called decency. 

Soul of the Future/ Evolution of Hope: Eight Figures for the Future

“We must take comfort from the fact that human nature gives rise to altruism as well as selfishness, to conscience as well as cruelty.  The hope of the race is that passions of generosity, restraint, and goodness may prove as strong as those of egoism, aggression, and cruelty.”

Eric Bentley

 “Better to make a good future than predict a bad one.”

Issac Asimov

 “The future is not a gift: it is an achievement.  Every generation helps make its own future.  This is the essential challenge of the present.”

Robert F. Kennedy

 “I am curiously not interested in things,” wrote H.G. Wells in his 1917 book, The Future In America, “and curiously interested in the consequences of things.”

 This is the first lesson of evolution, which Wells applied to the future to shape what “the future” means to us.  The consequences of things (technologies, processes, events, inventions, decisions, etc.) in the past and present comprise the conditions of the future.

 Wells is the first of my “eight figures for the future” and sets the agenda for the rest: to fill in his outline of the future.  Most of these figures have appeared earlier in this series, so this is a kind of summation. Significant aspects of their work help form a framework for envisioning and enacting an evolution of hope.  

 From his first public writings to his last over a fifty- year career, Wells was fixed on the future. He learned as he went, and came to another seemingly simple conclusion that seems also to have escaped many other who command the mainstream of assumptions about the future: the causes of future conditions are complex. 

 It was fine for a science fiction story, or a thought experiment, to follow the effects of one change while keeping everything else familiar.  But that’s not how the future works: it’s the consequence of everything.

One technological change—or even technological changes in general—can and usually does have a mighty influence on the future.  But these effects interacted with other factors, including other changes, and with responses that were often unanticipated.  Things happen on different scales, at different rates.  They interact unpredictably.  And the consequences always include the unintended. 

Future reality would be made by the interactions within the whole, and the whole acting on itself.  Analyzing one or two strands of change wouldn’t be enough. “The end of all intelligent analysis,” Wells wrote, “is to clear the way for synthesis.”

 This is a lesson that overwhelmed the sensible futurist of the 1970s, but other more egotistical predictors persist in making the fatal mistake of leaving too much out.  This is a particular habit of those predicting the dominance of technologies, and it still happens. 

 In an online Substack piece of August 2021, the author chides those who make extravagant claims for the rise of certain technologies in the near future, and then offers his more “conservative” or realistic predictions based on current trends for life in 2050.  He issues 18 detailed technological, social and political predictions, employing hundreds of words, and never even mentions climate--not causes nor effects of the ongoing climate catastrophe, or anything involving the context of the natural world.

 Moreover, this was published during the most violently and obviously consequential summer of the climate crisis so far, which included the hottest month ever recorded for the entire planet, and which climate scientists confirm would basically have been impossible without a seriously deformed climate.  

 These are not just omissions; they are serious distortions of the future we know is coming that make his predictions worthless.  His predictions presuppose everything else is stable, and at this point that’s fantasy.  The irony is that based on chemistry and atmospheric science alone, the acceleration of a distorted climate is about the most certain prediction about the future that can be made.

 The habit of holding on to a single through-line for the future based on a narrow interpretation of the past that requires that counter-evidence be ignored, has itself distorted the prospects for the actual future.  Such interpretations tell slightly different but mutually congenial stories about the human historical past and the biological past predating but including humanity—in particular the principles that govern the outcomes of evolution.

 The common story driving western civilization was that man and nature were separate, that at best nature was a useful source (i.e. “natural resources”) but most of the time, an enemy, a barrier to human “progress.” The dominant interpretation of Darwinian evolution complicated this story, without really changing it. The human species was placed in competition with the rest of nature, and that competition was defined as violent struggle, with a few winners—maybe only one-- and lots of losers.

 The idea that the future belonged to the best predators predated and probably influenced Darwin.  But Darwin’s positing of natural selection as determining survival became immediately distorted and supercharged by the ideology now known as Social Darwinism.  That two of its prominent 19^th century adherents were John D. Rockerfeller and Andrew Carnegie pretty much explains its dominance.

 Though the 20^th century strengthened this view through the reductive misinterpretation of genetics that produced the infamous “selfish gene” theory, it was during the 20^th century that other voices countered this view by adding new information and context. 

Much of this information was hiding in plain sight. Another brilliant synthesist (and our second figure for the future) was Paul Shepard.  Credited as one of the pioneers of the science of ecology in the 1960s and 1970s, he braided observations of the natural world and human culture into a unique field, recognized when he became an endowed Professor of Human Ecology.

 Many other ecologists, scientists and thinkers contributed to Shepard’s syntheses, but many more have followed in his unacknowledged footsteps.  He wrote eloquently about the long human development in the Pleistocene, and the deeply human need for connection with the rest of nature, beginning with childhood.  This is “human nature--” physical and otherwise-- that goes back hundreds of thousands of years, and basically it has not changed.  Shepard brought human culture back into the context that nourishes it, and shows how human destruction of the natural world is profoundly self-destructive.

 Most of what Shepard and other ecologists found did not require laboratory experiments or expensive technology.  Archeological discoveries and analysis, a certain amount of quantitative data gathered in the field were part of it, but the new picture emerging also required rediscovering the research and insights that had been ignored because they didn’t fit the dominant program.

 For after all, the behavior among primates that exhibited cooperation, altruism and empathy in a carefully nurtured social structure had been there for researchers to see, centuries before primatologists like Frans de Waal and others showed up. But those earlier researchers didn’t see it because they weren’t looking for it—and since they were not prepared to believe it if they saw it, they didn’t see it.  More broadly, the deep relationship of humans and nature was evident in the words and practices of Indigenous peoples all over the world, but was dismissed as sentimental and exotic, and profoundly threatening.

 However, the 20^th century also saw new information unavailable before, because (for example) new technology allowed researchers like Lynn Margulis to study microorganisms that Darwin knew nothing about. There she found evidence for symbiosis and other behavior contrary to the selfish gene theory and other prevailing prejudices. 

 She then eloquently described the implications of her research, inspiring such thinkers as William Irwin Thompson.  Margulis also went from micro to macro by becoming the co-author of the Gaia Hypothesis, a planetary vision of a single self-regulating organism.  She is our third figure for the future.

 Thanks to her and many others, a new synthesis and a more complex view of evolution has begun to achieve acceptance. (In a series of books, British philosopher Mary Midgley is especially trenchant on the weaknesses of the old standard view of evolution.) Whether the species that invented bombing deserves to survive is still a question.  But that humanity is programmed by its genes to self-destruct is no longer a viable scientific conclusion.

 The reality is that both competition and cooperation, both individuals and various kinds of groups, both genetics and epigenetics (when genes turn on or off), drive evolution. This vision has profound implications for the future, and offers hope that the consequences of the ongoing destruction of the natural world as we know it can be recognized more broadly before those consequences become entirely overwhelming.

 Wells came to a second crucial realization when he turned to envisioning an attainable and desirable future.  Wells believed human civilization could not survive much longer if humanity did not unite.  National, racial and other enmities were leading to global catastrophe in a world in which weapons were inevitably going to be more destructive  (Wells foresaw tank warfare before there were tanks, saturation bombing of cities from the air, and the atomic bomb.) 

 He saw that humanity needed a new vision of itself, a new story of human progress. So he wrote The Outline of History to tell that story, and it became the best-selling book of his career.  Well’s history is now outdated.  Progressives who worry about the future have for years called for “a new story.”  Elements of it are contributed by others among these eight figures for the future.

 At their best, utopian stories explore possibilities inherent in our past to create models of better futures. Today as in recent decades, dystopian stories remain plentiful, but there is still only one popular model for a better future: the Star Trek saga.  Over five decades and counting, Star Trek has evolved a capacious vision that has inspired generations spanning the globe.

  Its universe of easy travel to other planets populated by similar beings is very likely a fantasy, but beyond the visuals that delight many, Star Trek has always been blatantly allegorical.  It has championed a profound respect for life, whatever its form (“Infinite diversity in infinite combination” is the motto every fan knows) a spirit of adventure and wonder, but the wisdom of humility.

 In addition to the allegories of principles tested by the unknown, Star Trek: The Next Generation in particular models behavior: courage and civility, discipline and openness, technological expertise and explorations of art and culture, loyalty and compassion, humor, love and the ability to examine behavior and change it.  This is not a utopia without problems: it is a utopia because of how people define and attempt to solve problems together.

 This Star Trek also demonstrates the power of an institutional morality that aligns with individual commitments.  Institutions like the Federation and Starfleet have learned from history.  In their encounters with the alien, the Other, they anticipate the past.  “We are not invaders,” Captain Picard insists.  “We are explorers.”  This time, humans do not export their unconscious in attempting conquest by another name.  Though they do not always succeed, they have rules to help them (the Prime Directive), and (it’s worth repeating) the humility and the tools to reexamine themselves.

 Behind aspects of this vision were dozens of science fiction writers (Heinlein, Clarke, Bradbury, Asimov, Hamilton etc.), moviemakers and Saturday morning television shows, as well as those who contributed their talents to Star Trek itself.  But television writer and producer Gene Roddenberry began this saga, and he inspired others to add their creativity to it by enlisting their enthusiasm for a vision that functionally became theirs as well as his.  For this achievement he is our fourth figure for the future.

Other visionaries have explored enlightening and sophisticated visions of at least aspects of the future through the complexities of story, particularly science fiction.   These have not directly reached as many people as the Star Trek saga but those who have read them have been profoundly influenced.  For her unique achievements that include The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Word for the World Is Forest, The Lathe of Heaven and Always Coming Home, Ursula K. Le Guin is our fifth figure for the future, but she also represents other significant visionaries from Olaf Stapeldon, Karel Capek,  Yevgny Zamyatin, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley to Kim Stanley Robinson, Margaret Atwood and George Zebrowsky.

 Particularly in the Next Generation series, Star Trek suggested that the journey outward through space was a journey inward, and that each was at least equally important.  Or as Star Trek writer David Gerrold wrote, “"...space is not the final frontier. The final frontier is the human soul."

 In the first half of the 20^th century, C.G. Jung drew what he knew was only a rough map of our inner landscape—of the soul or psyche.  As crude as this map is, it suggests a crucial set of conceptual tools for understanding and directing our behaviors.  These tools—such as denial, projection, compensation, and the shadow—help us question and discern whether our thoughts and perceptions are actually products of our conscious mind, or are deceptions and misperceptions arising from our unfathomable unconscious.  For this alone, Jung is among our eight figures for the future.

 The future that evolves from the past is not an entirely rational process, Jung warned.  The mystery of the insistent unconscious—individual, group (or mob) and collective unconscious—persists in waves of human behavior, while the unconscious supplies deceptive reasons to keep the conscious feeling justified.  That’s why these tools are so crucial. 

(Using these tools to openly question our behavior was also modeled in Star Trek: The Next Generation.  The necessity of doing so makes the sometimes ridiculed addition of a ship’s counselor so important.) 

Jung also cautioned against one-sidedness, and called for the integration of rational thought, feeling, perception and intuition, or the head, heart and body that comprise soul.  The inner world is also complex, and the unconscious is a source of power and insight, and something that links all humanity, as well as the repository of raw fears and longings, especially those the society represses. 

 Thanks in part to the fervors surrounding two world wars, Jung saw that group delusion and a kind of mass psychosis fueled by unconscious compensation, self-righteous projection and denial are particular dangers in the modern world.  After World War II, he feared the power-mad Soviets and the suggestible Americans. The grip of this equivalent of shared and mutually reinforcing demonic possession can be broken, he felt, only one person to another.

  Towards the end of his life, Jung begged others to continue the exploration and mapping of the psyche.  “The world hangs on a thin thread,” he said in a video interview.  “That thread is the human psyche… We are the great danger.  The psyche is the great danger. But we know nothing about it.”  Despite the growing reductionism, arrogance and drug dependence of psychology since, others like James Hillman have continued the search—but not enough.

 Part of the necessary synthesis to secure the future is re-integrating the profound experience and insights of ancient traditions.  Particularly in the past quarter century, that work with Native American cultures has begun.

Leslie Marmon Silko (right) with Maxine Hong Kingston 
(left) and Toni Morrison (center.)

This synthesis is the ongoing work of many: Native leaders like Chief Oren Lyons, Native scholars such as Robin Wall Kimmerer and Gregory Cajete, non-Native scholars like Richard Nelson and Keith Basso, and non-Native synthesists like David Peat and Calvin Luther Martin, along with many Native poets, elders, activists, novelists and others. Leslie Marmon Silko, our seventh figure for the future, represents them all in the power and relevance of her writing, in Almanac of the Dead and the works that precedes and follows this American classic. (See the earlier post on The Ghost Dance future, as well as later in this post.)

 The Dalai Lama is among the great synthesists for the future of our time.  Over decades he has brought together scientists and Buddhist practitioners to reconcile religion and science, but especially to advance western science into introspective areas of the mind that Buddhists have been exploring for many more centuries than western science has existed.  These discussions through the Mind & Life Institute,  which led to new scientific experiments partially designed by Buddhist practitioners, have been public, resulting in nearly a dozen books and many hours of video, inspiring even more writing and discussion.

 The Dalai Lama also has articulated principles and ethics that are widely shared and do not depend on doctrines of particular religions, or any religious doctrine at all. “... we are all members of one human race and have the same worries and needs”, he writes.  “This ethical principle is not bound to a specific religion.  Even an atheist can follow it.  It is therefore not at all important whether we believe in God or the idea of rebirth.  We can always do good, even today when we are afraid of the dangers that the future may bring.”

 But this is not a matter only of the lowest ethical common denominator.  It is a re-orientation: the direction of a new story. According to visionary William Irwin Thompson: “...the Dalai Lama becomes not a medieval theocrat, but a global teacher precisely because Buddhism captures some of the dynamics of a worldview based on relationship, dependent co-origination, and compassion.” 

British author John Gray has tried to co-opt Buddhism and Eastern religions in general to support acceptance of inevitable apocalypse inherent in human nature by rejecting active hope for the future.  While it is true that Buddhist meditation focuses on exploring the individual’s present moment without judgment, this is only part of Buddhist tradition, and certainly the Dalai Lama has been outspoken in favor of both the possibility and the urgent necessity of compassionate action to build a better future. 

 Moreover, a core tenet of Buddhism is the value of the non-human world: of beings, of all life. The first precept of Buddhism, as Gary Snyder describes it, is ahimsa: “Cause the least possible harm.”  It applies not just to humans but to everything in the natural world, and requires judgment and forethought as well as this radical empathy.  As many contemporary Buddhists would attest, it applies to the larger questions of what harm humanity is causing to the life of the planet.

 “In order to change the external world,” the Dalai Lama writes, “first we must change within.” That inner world includes imagination and a vision for the future. “If you want a beautiful garden, in the human mind you make some kind of a blueprint in the imagination, and then according to that idea, you implement, so the garden will materialize.”  

 That change may well be underway. The current dominance of rigid denial, Buddhist philosopher David Midgley maintains, “is typical of the terminal phase in the life-cycle of a paradigm, and might be compared to the chrysalis stage in the life-cycle of a moth or butterfly...While the outer shell of the organism seems rigid and immoveable, invisible changes are taking place within, which may erupt dramatically when they reach a critical stage of development.”

 In any case, the activities of hope and personal commitment are essential to create the desirable future by enacting it now. "Whether we achieve what we are hoping for or not, it is important for us to keep hope,” said the Dalai Lama. “Hope is the basis of our future."

 The Dalai Lama is our eighth figure for the future.  But these eight are joined by newer voices, opening up new knowledge and possibilities. 

 The synthesis continues for example with books on parallels of Jung’s writing with Native American tradition and Buddhist practice (such as the connections between Buddhist mindfulness and Jungian consciousness), as well as Jung and nature, and Buddhism and ecology.  Others explore the implications of quantum physics for insights related to various mystical traditions, Indigenous practices and Jungian glimpses (such as synchronicity) into what Star Trek’s cosmic being Q called “the unknown possibilities of existence.” 

But the synthesis is also advanced with new analysis, information and insights. One of the most exciting is literally a new story, called The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow.  The authors demonstrate that the dominant received history of early human civilization is “entirely wrong,” according to a detailed article in the Atlantic by William Deresiewicz. “Drawing on a wealth of recent archaeological discoveries that span the globe, as well as deep reading in often neglected historical sources,” he writes, “the two [authors] dismantle not only every element of the received account but also the assumptions it rests on.”

 Deresiewicz suggests that this new story demolishes “the idea that human beings are passive objects of material forces.”  Societies at different times and in different places made deliberate choices: they saw the perils of their authoritarian government and changed it, they saw a neighbor’s stratified society based on wealth and avoided it, they refused to become trapped in a single mode of existence, and moved easily as appropriate among farming, gathering, herding and hunting in an “ecology of freedom.”

 “In a remarkable chapter, they describe the encounter between early French arrivals in North America, primarily Jesuit missionaries, and a series of Native intellectuals—individuals who had inherited a long tradition of political conflict and debate and who had thought deeply and spoke incisively on such matters as “generosity, sociability, material wealth, crime, punishment and liberty.”  They call this the “Indigenous critique,” and maintain that it helped inspire the European Enlightenment.

Humanity did not march from hunter-gatherer nomads to total agriculture and then cities.  They mixed and matched and did them backward and forward.  They did not develop from tribal chieftains to kings and bureaucracies.  They governed themselves in a variety of ways, with and without “authorities.”They did not always see civilization as acquiring wealth and power in a top down structure. Civilization might mean “mutual aid, social co-operation, civic activism, hospitality...simply caring for others...”

 Moreover, these weren’t just doomed experiments.  Some of these societies lasted longer than today’s. 

These were stories untold, and there are more, including the stories of women, other Indigenous peoples and subjugated cultures.  The stories include the occluded, ignored and dismissed.  They include overlooked, devalued or derided examples of cooperation, civic duty, kindness, empathy, love of nature, selflessness—the civic and human spirit of “You’d do the same for me.”

These behaviors and these stories emerge in the worst times.  Scholars Pearl Oliner and Samuel Oliner (a Holocaust survivor) studied Europeans who risked their lives sheltering Jews during the Holocaust, and expanded this research into broader inquiries on altruism and compassion.  In The Altruistic Personality and other books, they explored many more examples of altruism under pressure than are mentioned in conventional histories. 

In A Paradise Built In Hell (2009), Rebecca Solnit tells the stories of communities that responded to disaster with creativity and solidarity.  “The history of disaster demonstrates that most of us are social animals, hungry for connection, as well as purpose and meaning,” she concludes.  “Hierarchies and institutions are inadequate in these circumstances...Civil society is what succeeds, not only in an emotional demonstration of altruism and mutual aid but also in practical mustering of creativity and resources to meet the challenges.”

 This is one basis for hope, as we confront the seemingly overwhelming effects of the climate emergency.  But another basis, equally ancient yet reinterpreted for our time, is at least as vital, as we address the causes of what will otherwise be even worse fates. It can be expressed as the Buddhist principle of “bringing the future into the present path.”  It still cannot be said better than in the Great Law of the Haudenosaunee: “In every deliberation we must consider the impact on the seventh generation to come.”  

Remember the future.  Anticipate the past.

  This ends the Soul of the Future series.  I’ve decided to integrate its bibliography with a still ongoing series, History of My Reading.  But eventually it will also bear the Soul of the Future label, for direct access.

Pandemic of the Public Mind

 First of all, R.I.P. Bill Barnhart, college classmate and Chicago journalist.

This coronavirus pandemic is not over.  The Delta variant is now the dominant strain in the US, and new infections have doubled in a few weeks.  Evidence so far is that the major vaccines protect against serious initial illness but don't necessarily prevent infection that can be transmitted to others.  How deadly this variant is in comparison to other strains will be learned the hard way in the coming weeks.

Nevertheless, the pressure to ignore the virus continues, and to go back to ways that make spreading infection easier.  The CDC has issued guidelines loosening precautions that other organizations find alarming and certainly premature.  One problem is the premise the CDC has stated: "Your health is in your hands."

This is both ultimately true and dangerously false in its implications and assumptions.  It is true that as individuals we are responsible for evaluating risk, but not only to ourselves; also to others.  For it is not true that only my health is in my hands--so to an extent is yours.

Because this is an infectious disease, and the Delta variant is especially infectious.  I am vaccinated, so my risk of serious illness is small.  But I may also be risking the health of others by passing on my infection.  My decisions affect the public health.

This is especially true now of vaccinations.  The CDC mantra can be interpreted as meaning, you can guard your health by getting vaccinated--it's your decision.  But the obverse is also implied: if you feel your health will be fine if you don't get vaccinated, then don't.  And that is an abdication of public responsibility.

The virus feeds on the unvaccinated, and its mutations into other variants depends on them.  The fewer people with immunization, the longer the virus lasts and continues to get more efficient at infecting people, and perhaps more deadly.  If more Americans were immunized now, this pandemic might truly be almost over.

I don't pretend to understand the madness of politicizing vaccinations and attempts to stop a pandemic. Where were these Republicans when people danced in the streets because a polio vaccine was coming?  There is something frighteningly akin to a virus of the mind that's running rampant in America, turning ordinary people into rabid monsters.   Politicians and talk show hosts infected by frenzied ambition--we've seen that before.  Lies viciously promoted are their bread and butter.

This pandemic has seen one miracle: the development so quickly of vaccines that are so effective.  We've seen healthcare institutions strenuously tested, and the resilience of the supply chain.  They've held up.  But the only way we come out of this stronger is if this pandemic strengthens our public health system, and Americans' commitment to public health. 

 Here where I am, our Humboldt County public health office--underfunded for years, practically invisible until this--has functioned very well.  Our new public health director is not keeping us as informed as we've been used to.  But perhaps more is going on behind the scenes.  Still, our county vaccination rate is stalled at just above 50%.  It seems to be the younger adult age groups failing to be vaccinated.  Perhaps these milennials believe they'll survive infection but maybe kill off a few of their hated boomers. 

 Our state public health did well early in the pandemic, but shows signs of the same panic that's sweeping the country to make it all go away by denying its existence.  And despite the new administration and its quick and admirable job of getting the country access to vaccines, the federal public health system does not look appreciably better, yet.

The most depressing of course is the pandemic of the public mind that does not see that public health protects individuals twice--by responding to their individual needs, and by maintaining a level of health throughout the public that better protects every individual. 

 I don't know how widespread this rabid craziness is, that has Tennessee firing its vaccine director for actually protecting public health, and forbidding any outreach on vaccination opportunities.  But I don't see strong advocates for public health to at least try to counter this ultimately suicidal attitude and behavior.  

This isn't the last pandemic for most people alive today.  The distorted climate is going to encourage more of them, as well as cause other effects that require a public response, an ethic of you'd do the same for me. If that dies first, this society dies degraded and without honor.

Who Are We? (The One You Feed)

Things are moving so quickly there is little to say that would necessarily survive the week.  There is so much information, and it keeps changing; yet there is not enough real information to define or determine much.

Whether this Covid 19 crisis is leading to unprecedented economic destruction has entered the conversation since last week at this time, and one of the problems is that nobody seems to know (or is able to explain clearly) what will help and what won't.

Social distancing has so quickly become normal that it is jarring to see TV characters shaking hands on shows made just weeks or months ago.  Yet as fast as all this is proceeding, it is also moving slowly in daily life in unknown directions.

But there are perhaps things that can be said in general, that apply to other crises but are becoming very real now, very fast.  And that is the nature of our responses.

We all have to deal with anxieties, with the continual cognitive dissonance of daily lives as the world wobbles.  Today (Wednesday) I was reading about how the US economic crisis could be more severe than the Great Depression, when the back of my chair was pulled by an earthquake under me.  And I mean a literal earthquake--a 5.2 offshore that did no reported damage.

Beyond that, and beyond acting with prudence and responsibility on behalf of ourselves, our loved ones and everyone else, there is the question of resilience.

I published a previous post on people in Italy singing, and the clapping across a city to honor healthcare workers--these practices have become viral in the old good sense, spreading all over Europe.

But an essay in Slate   by Lili Loof Bourow provides an astringent challenge to the idea of American resilience.  For example:

"Our situation is different not just because the Trump administration squandered the six weeks it had to prepare while other countries were modeling more and less effective approaches to their respective epidemics, and not just because Donald Trump has taught his followers that nothing scientists or the press says is true, but because some Americans believe that defying expert recommendations isn’t just their God-given right—it’s courageous and funny and even patriotic."

Bourow reminds us that (apart from unheralded heroics by some to survive the Great Recession) our only conspicuous example of resilience in recent years was the response to terrorism and 9-11, and that was to courageously go shopping (as President Bush recommended) while we meekly allowed ourselves to be turned into a surveillance state. "We have been led to believe that consumerism is the only political power we, the people, really have.... this is how we at home win the “battles” that have become notional and emptied of any ideal but rationalized selfishness. There’s no risk. There’s no sacrifice."

Yet for this crisis, the choice of selfishness v. sacrifice is already present, and may turn out to be defining.  Before this transformative weekend, way back on last Thursday (a whole week ago), when all of this started to get real in a big way, the New York Times online published a relevant array of articles/opinion pieces, as the news veered sharply towards national crisis.

For example, three prominent doctors with experience in disaster medicine wrote a piece headlined  How the Coronavirus May Force Doctors To Decide Who Can Live and Who Dies.  The subhead: "In the face of overwhelming demand and limited resources, health care would need to be rationed, with agonizing decisions." Since then, we've learned this may have already happened in other countries.

The headline on regular Times opinionater David Brooks was headlined Pandemics Kill Compassion, Too.  The subhead: You may not like who you're about to become.

"Some disasters, like hurricanes and earthquakes, can bring people together, but if history is any judge, pandemics generally drive them apart."  Brooks goes back centuries for much of his evidence, but also gave examples from the 1918 flu epidemic that killed 675,000 Americans during and shortly after World War I, in which 53,000 Americans died.  He quotes John M. Barry in his book The Great Influenza that when health care workers in "city after city" pleaded for volunteers, "few stepped forward."  "In Philadelphia, the head of emergency aid pleaded for help taking care of sick children.  Nobody answered...There are families in which every member is ill, in which the children are actually starving because there is no one to give them food."

Brooks exempts health care workers from this failure, including those in Washington state responding to the worst coronavirus outbreak in the US.  "It also wouldn't be a bad idea to take steps to fight the moral disease that accompanies the physical one," Brooks concludes.

But there is another view, also presented in Thursday's Times online, in an article that would appear in its Sunday Magazine entitled This is How You Live When the World Falls Apart.  It is apparently from a new book about how (as the article subtitle says) "The Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964 surprised everyone by showing that natural disasters can bring out more kindness than selfishness."

Author Jon Mooallem found that looting and criminal behavior was almost nonexistent, and the norm was immediate helping.  Individuals organized themselves into effective groups to pull people out of the rubble, to put out fires and take care of the injured.

“It’s there in front of you, so you do it,” a nurse named Dolly Fleming would later explain; she could find no more incisive theory to account for all the cooperation she’d witnessed. During the quake, Mrs. Fleming had found herself on a thrashing staircase and, seeing a teetering child in front of her, instinctively tucked him under her arm and strained to keep them both steady. Decades later, at age 93, the one cogent thought she could remember having through those four and a half minutes was: “I’m thankful I’m here. I’m thankful I’m here so I can hold on to this little guy.”

What was especially striking to me about this account was how it comports to what I read in researching an article  I wrote about local scholars who studied altruism--specifically rescuing Jews from the Nazis.  These were longer term and life-risking efforts, and yet they too were spontaneous, and people seemed surprised when asked why they did it.  (However, the answers that these scholars--Sam and Pearl Oliner--finally came to are summarized in their eight elements of caring, appended to the end of my article. They are worth looking at now.)

There are obvious differences between an earthquake and what looks to be a months-long pandemic.  But Mooallem draws some conclusions:

You’d be forgiven for feeling pessimistic, for dismissing what happened in a small Alaskan city long ago as quaint, and far less possible in our society now. And yet: In the 56 years since the Great Alaska Earthquake, an entire field of sociology, disaster studies, blossomed around the Disaster Research Center, with sociologists parachuting into scores of other communities after natural disasters around the world, and it’s stunning to look back and recognize how much of the resilience, levelheadedness, kindness and cooperation those sociologists saw in Anchorage turned out to be characteristic of disasters everywhere.

Many of our ugliest assumptions about human behavior have been refuted by their observations of how actual humans behave — though we seem tragically slow to shed those old myths...

In 1975, 11 years after their work in Alaska, two of the Disaster Research Center’s founders, Russell Dynes and Enrico Quarantelli, speculated about why they continued to find essentially the same scenario repeating itself: why, rather than encouraging conflict or violence, these catastrophes appeared to bring out the best in people. In ordinary times, they wrote, we suffer alone; any acute experience of our own vulnerability can isolate us, or even make us resentful of others: “The victim often feels discriminated against since there are others who have been spared.” But a disaster affects everyone, and peels us away from “mundane matters” to the “very issue of human life itself.”

When “danger, loss and suffering become a public phenomenon,” they went on, “all those who share in the experience are brought together in a very powerful psychological sense.” An unrelenting immediacy sets in: “Worries about the past and the future are unrealistic when judged against the realities of the moment,” the sociologists wrote, and distinctions between people fall away, leaving only “human beings responding to one another as human beings.”

Thrown all together, in one unrelenting present, we are made to recognize in one another what we deny most vehemently about ourselves: In the end, it’s our vulnerability that connects us."

In the end, it's our vulnerability that connects us.  I think that's partly what's behind what has become my favorite and most basic statement of morality: "You'd do the same for me."  That's a statement about fairness and morality, about faith and hope, and about societal and cultural ties that bind.  But it is also based on a statement of fact: sooner or later, I may need somebody's help.

And as the story of Mrs. Fleming suggests, it becomes a statement of what each of us stands for, what each of our lives means. Even if we don't respond spontaneously, do we want to think of ourselves--or to be remembered-- as someone who tried to help?

This is as true for pandemics as other kinds of disasters.  Author Frank Snowden, who has studied pandemics throughout history, tells a New Yorker interviewer:

"Epidemics are a category of disease that seem to hold up the mirror to human beings as to who we really are. That is to say, they obviously have everything to do with our relationship to our mortality, to death, to our lives. They also reflect our relationships with the environment—the built environment that we create and the natural environment that responds. They show the moral relationships that we have toward each other as people, and we’re seeing that today."

The evidence so far from the current crisis is mixed--stories of ordinary denial and panic, and of almost inconceivable opportunism and evil, and misplaced racial fears. But also stories of generosity, dedication and sacrifice as well as responsibility and resilience.  In the end it becomes another illustration of that old teaching story, ascribed to various Native American tribal traditions.  One version:

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy. "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego." He continued, "The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"

 "The one you feed," the grandfather replied.