Narratives of Possibility

                There was a time when we shared a cultural narrative of possibility about what we could become, individually and collectively.  Those narratives promised opportunity and equality to anyone who was willing to buy in and roll up their sleeves.  They were always a big part fairy tale, because both opportunity and equality have never been available to everyone.  But now even the thought of opportunity and equality gets lost in the dystopian narratives of our future.  Go to a ‘sci-fi’ movie and watch the trailers that precede it.  You will be treated to endless iterations of the same scenario – the good days are gone, technology is evil and the planet is dying.  Even though most of these movies have a hero that fights for the good, any hope of revival is a long way on the other side of some bad stuff.  We have to find a way to tell or retell our story in a way that makes the future possible.

                One of the worst things about the Trump presidency is that it sucks all of the oxygen out of the culture.  When you have a poorly behaved toddler in charge of the political machine, all it creates is an endless cycle of crisis.  Even if we fix the immediate political problems, we are dead in the water without a meaningful sense of where we go next.  We should be thinking about how things are about to change.  They are going to change whether we like it or not.  The crisis with the climate, the coming change in energy production, the economic changes that will come from those changes should all be at the front of our cultural play list.  Instead, we’re caught in a 24 hour news cycle of Trump’s new tirade.  We have the power to change the way we live if we can focus on those issues instead of spending way too much time with trump.  Are we going to use AI to finally free us from menial labor, or are we going to create a new class of killer robots who hunt us down if we ever stop working?

                Our cultural narrative is being held hostage by the shift in demographics that threatens to take power away from those who have, almost exclusively, held it.  Part of this generational, with Boomers holding on to their jobs and their money because they see no place for themselves in the future.  Part of it is racial, as the demographics of country inevitably create a country without a majority of any one race.  White folks can see they are losing their privilege, even those rural whites who support Trump and had little of it to begin with, and can’t deal with that future.  Part of it is gender based, as women ever so slowly move into positions of power, and men are left to figure out how all the things they have heard about being a ‘man’ are supposed to align with that.  All of it is economic, as an incredibly small number of people control the wealth the culture generates. Where do go to tell a new story?  What soapbox, what street corner, what reading group or media platform will host this event?

                There are narratives being told.  Facebook, and every other large platform, tells one every day.  They make it feel like our story, but it’s really their version of what they want us to ‘like.’  There are narratives of loss and fear that are driving us closer to violence and decline being pushed by Russian, Chinese and North Korean bots.  There are still narratives for elites that promote the idea that if your tastes are erudite sophisticated enough you can avoid the scrum.  Cultural narratives that are robust enough to create a new imagined order aren’t going to be that precious.  There are mass media versions of the story in the Marvel Universe and beyond that are long on action and special effects but are tired stories about individual heroes saving the world at their core.  I don’t think any of these are going to take us to a new narrative.

                The bad news is that things are falling apart.  The good news is that things are falling apart.  This is the moment where we can imagine what was unimaginable before.  Before, there was too much of the past in the way, but now a lot of that has been reduced to rubble.  What we were telling ourselves will not help us move to a new world.  Turn off the news.  Concentrate on where we are and what you can contribute to it.  It may be that the odds are long, but that is no reason not to imagine.  The critique of the failures of Modernity and the Enlightenment are complete.  Their failures cannot point the way to a new era.