I worked on my painting of Guerra Branch Library today. It’s a cool contemporary building, so I’m having a lot of fun painting it. While I worked I listened to The Ezra Klein Show podcast as he spoke with The Financial Times columnist Rana Foroohar. Man, it just seems like we are in the midst of a global transformation. I keep thinking of the 1700’s with both the French and the American Revolutions. Did Loyalist Americans believe that separating from England and the King equaled doom? Considering that, considering what they went through during the the conflict, is the only thing that’s getting me through this. Not that I wish we’d remained tethered to Britain, but I feel as if I’m them, fearing the possible fall of democracy. And right now, that fall it seems inevitable.
Tories and Loyalists were loyal to Great Britain and turns out, their fears were unfounded. Are mine? Democracy proved, at least for 250 years, to be a great idea. But now it seems as if we’re on a precipice and we’re all wondering what will happen when we go over the edge.
I’m not going to pretend to know anything about economics, but perhaps I understand enough to follow two well educated people discuss it. We have created a global economy based on investments and assets rather than on labor. When we were living in years of surplus we did nothing with it. It’s only in the past year that we passed legislation that will invest in American infrastructure. We could have been doing this for years, investing all that capital in ourselves. It seems like everyone just wanted to hoard. Even schools like Harvard are now institutions that invest capital more than they educate citizens.
It raises so many questions about who we are and where we’re going. What will life be like in 20, 30, even 50 years? Will we have jobs? Will we have a basic monthly income from the government? If labor doesn’t matter, if cheap, foreign labor replaced American labor, and now artificial intelligence is replacing cheap, foreign labor, what’s next? What will we do to support ourselves? What will we come up with when we ask, What’s the meaning of life?
Watching the January 6th Commission Hearings is eye opening. It’s comforting to think that people were loyal to their oath of public service, that people chose to stay loyal to the constitution rather than buckle under the enormous pressure Donald Trump and his allies put on them. But what happens when people stop being loyal to American Democracy? What happens when the majority of Americans stop believing in our institutions?
And what changed? Was it the money? Was it the ability to amass enormous wealth that changed American democracy? What saved it, for now, was integrity. What saved democracy were principles, people committed to principles. People with character and values that go beyond power, domination, and control over others. Addicts are driven by fear, self-centeredness, and a need for ego-gratification. They are restless, irritable, and discontent, and their pursuit of life equals a drive to overcompensate for their emotional and spiritual emptiness. They are destructive.
Recovery, on the other hand, is the willingness to let go, to trust in a power greater than oneself. Recovery is remembering what it means to love - to remember being loved and being loving. These can seem like empty words to people who are cut off from their hearts, their bodies and emotions, people who no longer have insight into their thoughts, beliefs, and motivations. Addiction is living so far outside oneself that you feel lost and alone in a hostile world. And addicts make that world more hostile. And suddenly, we’re all living in that world.
So what now? Where can we find love again? Where can we find safety, security, and comfort? In recovery we rebuild it. We start, one day at a time, and we ask for guidance. We turn our will and our life over to the care of God, as we understand God. We consider our higher power’s will rather than our self-centered fears. We consider different ways of perceiving our circumstances. We consider that we are loved beyond measure by a benevolent Universe that wanted us here. And that still wants us here.
Yes, it’s a narrative. But it beats the narrative that led us into self-destruction and despair. It’s a rebuilding, a process, a path that we choose. Recovery is an intention rather than a reaction. It’s a decision that things matter, things like principles and values. If we sit back and wait for the government, for those with the most money and the most influence, to instill some sort of meaning in our lives, we will be waiting for a long time. We will be waiting for the addicted to love us.