Constraint and Crisis

I have written in the past of the role of constraints on how historical events and periods unfold. There are many sorts of constraints, for instance technological ones (e.g., while the Victorians like Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace could conceive of computers, their era lacked the mechanical or electrical skills and infrastructure to build a practical machine), cultural beliefs (for instance the ways Anglo-Saxon assumptions of Japanese racial inferiority led them to ignore accurate intelligence on aircraft such as the Zero and on the capabilities of their military and naval aviation coming from the war in China), or structural (as when the highly flexible structure of the French Revolutionary armies, based on theories going back several decades, were able to defeat one professional European army after another, which, arguably, took 15 to 20 years to restructure from their older models of linear tactics and class-based, draconian discipline). Perhaps much of our present situation is due to the breakdown of one set of constraints, and to the failure to internalize and act within another, emerging set. 

Suppose, for a moment, that the present political crisis in America, as well as in much of  Europe, is due to the collapse of an old paradigm of control, one based in an alliance of white, patriarchal groups in business, religion, education, government, the military/security establishment, and the press. In America, this old paradigm was able to convince the population to believe in the sanctity of capitalism and the nation (though not necessarily the state), to ignore and demonize any competing economic system, to believe in a special, sacred mission for the country, and to oppress or repress anyone who fell outside certain ethnic, gender, economic, or political norms. It probably reached its pinnacle between the Spanish-American War and Black Friday, though it continued to be fairly robust for many decades. It adapted when it had to, as it did by allowing women to vote (but finding many ways to prevent black ones from doing the same), or to technological advances (such as the contraceptive pill, which may have eventually helped defeat it), and to economic conditions (as when it managed to tolerate the New Deal). 

From the 1960s onward, though, it has remained under sustained assault. Today it retains much of its power, but it seems constantly poised on the edge of destruction, unable to cope with changed racial and gender relations, ignoring the senescence of the economic theories and practices that it generated to protect itself after the turbulent Sixties and Seventies, and overwhelmed by both technological change and the evolution of belief systems outside the mainstream over the course of the past hundred years. As it falls into ruin, divisions in society that were previously hidden have emerged, and its very decline has helped generate new ideologies of considerable virulence. At the same time, its failure, and the lack of anything to replace it, has created a moral and ethical crisis permitting the growth of corruption and lawlessness from some of its deeper and more secretive means of control. 

We find ourselves in an ecology of crisis not only because the old control structures have been broken and not been replaced, but also because of a failure to recognize, or at least internalize, the constraints of an age of declining natural resources, degraded and toxified environments, population levels novel in human history, and climate change, in short a set of existential threats. Even the most enlightened tend to behave in ways that aggravate the situation, while many, caught up in the broken rubble of our cultural control systems, ignore it entirely. Whether one acknowledges it or not, this is the source of a new set of constraints on our culture, society, and economy at the very time when he failure of another set of constraints makes unified and necessary action nearly impossible. 

It would be easy to give up. It would be equally easy to say that we need to return to a race-based patriarchy, which is what many seem to want, but that would be catastrophic, not only for individuals, but also as a return to the conditions that facilitated and accelerated the present environmental and climate crisis. If we have time, a new set of institutions and beliefs will create a new set of constraints, in conjunction with the constraints of environment and climate, that will either deepen all of our crises or allow us to cope an begin to respond in creative and positive ways without imposing great hardships on any group in society. Of course we may also respond in creative ways that alleviate the existential nature of the threats to humanity and life, but that are highly repressive and destructive of our humanity. Or we may fail entirely. 

What is necessary is the widespread understanding of the constraints we have lived under, whose failure has released the destructive, as well as the creative forces in our society, and the new constraints under which we must necessarily live. Just because we live in the Anthropocene does not mean humans are in control. We have to learn to live now within the limits of a nature shaped, hitherto unknowingly, by human needs and actions.