The Molar Phase

                In their seminal work of postmodern pragmatics, A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari discuss the way that cultures change.  One of their contentions is that change happens in unpredictable and ‘nomadic’ episodes that occur when social stratifications break down and make alternative realities and possibilities available.  The stratifications, or plateaus, can be things like institutions and traditions, but they also include the cultural sense of inevitability that things are normal or meant to allows be this way.  When that inevitability crumbles, they refer to those cultural events as becoming molar or in flow.  I think one way to look at American democracy is to say that we’ve entered a molar phase.  That is, many of the reliable and time-honored assumptions about our institutions and values are in flux.  They have been upended by political operatives who no longer believe in or follow those assumptions.

                We are now in a moment where none of the protocols or rules of democratic practice can be depended on to produce the intended result.  We have a president who refuses to follow or even acknowledge the written or implied those rules.  He is supported by a party who looks the other way and routinely defends the indefensible.  Some of his supporters, who should be jailed for sedition, are even trying to encourage the fringe militia movements to take up arms to fight impeachment.  Clearly, things are not normal.  When something becomes molar, the least likely outcome is that it will return to the state it was in before the disruption.  The plateau has been crumbling and weakening for awhile before it breaks loose and lets go.  Now that it has, we need to think not in terms of an unlikely return but in anticipation of new possibilities.  Now that we’re in a molar phase, a major reorganization and disruption is all but inevitable.

                Most of us, facing this kind of upheaval, tend to look for what used to be the norm and try to shore up the foundations of the failing institutions and practices.  I think that is exactly the wrong way to approach this.  We should embrace this moment and the opportunities it presents.  This is not a minor blip on the timeline of democracy, it is a five-sigma disruption that only comes along every 200 years or so.  No matter which way this disruption leads, it will be fundamentally different from where we were.  It may be that the forces that undercut the old normal will win out.  If they do, the direction they plan to move is pretty clear.  They intend to reduce the power of the electorate and continue consolidating wealth and power in the hands of fewer and fewer people.  They will drain every ounce of fossil energy from the earth and choke on their own stupidity.  Their course is set.  They have one playbook, and we’ve seen what it is.

                Those of us hoping for another direction have a lot of possibilities but no clear vision has emerged.  There have been ideas, the Green New Deal is an example, that have gained some traction but are far from achieving a consensus.  The more important issue is what a coalition of people who oppose the destruction can agree on.  The other side is organized.  They will continue on this well defined and mindless trajectory until it kills us all.  To live in this molar phase and combat that outcome means that the things we normally argue about have to take a back seat to a more pressing concern.  What will unite us?  What can we imagine the future becoming?  A molar or nomadic moment demands imagination, and imagination demands courage.

                We are either going to settle for the worst and most dystopian elements of what we are now or forge a new vision.  It is past time to discard the corruption and environmental degradation of the fossil fuel industry.  But that means our ideas about wealth and energy have to be reshaped along with a shift to new energy sources.  Living in this molar phase is both scary and invigorating.  I think the first steps are less about the specifics of policy and more about the realization of where we are.  We are nomads in search of a new oasis.