It’s not the apocalypse, of course, it’s just history, but if you thought the shape of history was meant to be an upward curve of progress, then this feels like the apocalypse.
Look, I don’t care who you voted for last November. Seriously.
Don’t. Care.
You had your reasons, and I respect you enough to let it go at that. If you’re here at the Frontier Partisans campfire, we share interests and values that go way deeper than politics, and that’s good enough for me.
Besides, it doesn’t matter. It truly doesn’t matter.
We’re living in Wild Times, compadres. I’ve got news: Ain’t NOTHING going to “Make America Great Again.” Neither the Trump agenda, nor resisting the Trump agenda is going to arrest the accelerating gravitational pull of entropy. What America is, is not sustainable — we’re too big, to complex, too heterogeneous, too balkanized. We consume too much.
And it’s not just that the U.S. has a multitude of internal problems we can’t sort out. External pressures are growing and the geo-political and geo-strategic center of gravity is shifting.
In his recent column “The New Silk Roads,” Craig Rullman writes that:
From China to Ukraine, from Russia to Iran, from Uzbekistan to Kygyrzstan, a new center of power, anchored by the availability and abundance of natural resources, the home-grown ability and willingness to exploit them — and with a military parity with the global powers not seen since the collapse of the Ottomans — is poised to reassert itself.
I would argue that power is already reasserting itself, and has been since the Iranian revolution and the fall of the Shah.I don’t know what this dramatic shift, which I believe is real — and which we can read in the tea-leaves of the world’s headlines every day — portends. I doubt it is good, at least for those of us who have grown accustomed to the ease and convenience of modern Western living.
Which is, if we are being honest, all of us.
If all of this sounds grim and apocalyptic — it ain’t. Not really. Like ol’ Dougald said, it’s just history. I feel badly for those who have been sold the belief that the arc of history bends ever upward; they are the least prepared, psychologically, to deal with the disruptions to the status quo that we are undergoing now and which will only gain in velocity and oscillation in the coming months and years.
Now, let me be honest here: I don’t like the idea of waking up in the morning with the world turned upside down any more than anybody else. I, too, am invested in the status quo. I have work to do, bills to pay. I have the same concerns about health care and paying for college that any middle class family confronts.
Thing is, the world is turning upside down on us right now, whether we like it or not, whether we’re ready for it or not. Pretending it can be righted by electing the right people or promulgating the right policy is delusional. Oh, sure, better leadership and better policy would help us better navigate the crisis; a skilled pilot can make a hard landing survivable where a bad one can turn it into a fatal crash. But since we don’t really know how to choose a pilot…
*
I keep coming back to community. I just don’t see the benefit — either personal or societal — in succumbing to hair-twining anxiety or indulging in social media meme wars or serving up f-bomb-laden discourses on the march of fascism at the local breakfast joint. I need to do — and do things that have a tangible impact, not things that just make me feel like I’ve done something. And that pushes me to the local and immediate.
There’s plenty to do in building our own communities that has nothing at all to do with whom you voted for. That’s my “resistance” — to continue, to redouble, my work in building a stronger more resilient community through music and storytelling; to enhance the capabilities of my “outfit” to weather storms be they literal winter-from-hell stuff or the more prosaic storms of day-to-day living. We will continue to prepare — not for “survival” but to live and to live more fully and deeply.
We will strive to consume less and produce more — not in order to be seen as virtuous, but in order to live with greater vibrancy, closer to the bone.
What do we resist? Fear. Hysteria. The sense of entitlement that tells us we should be exempt from the tides of history.
deuce says
Heinlein called ’em “The Crazy Years”.
People better find a tribe or form one. Plenty of people around who have a LONG start on that. To them, that was what it was ALWAYS about. Some of us just ignored the signs and rolled the grenade down the road. I know I did.
JimC says
Normalcy bias affects us all.
Gary tewalt says
Very good Jim, I think think I’m pretty close to your definition of the now and the future. Tks. T
JimC says
Good to hear from you T. I think you and i are on the same page more than people might think.
Ryan Moore says
In some ways things have gotten better; Non whites and women have more rights today then they did in the 50s. While the old days had some good parts in many ways there are a lot I’d be happy to jettison
Gary tewalt says
Nice
Breaker Morant says
You mention those that are psychologically unprepared to face the unknown future if/when something happens. I think that type, using urban hipsters as the stereotypical example, has 3 strikes against them.
1)Psychologically, as you described.
2) Physically. They don’t have guns, tools, generators, stored food etc-that many of us in the country have as a matter of course.
3) Geographically. They are largely located in big cities that will be the worst place to be if/when things go south.
JimC says
To stay on the positive side, the urban preparedness movement does seem to be gaining some traction. People actually getting to know their neighbors and such.
Black Tyrone says
Thanks Jim,
I hope I am wrong but I note misconceptions about The Tri-state area. Education is a wonderful thing. Best
JimC says
Care to elaborate? Not sure what you mean here.
Black Tyrone says
Jim, sometimes silence is actually a response and does not offend. Thanks, from a New York City and district kind of guy. Played my Highland Pipes in many a 911 memorial, yes we have community and yes we can take care of ourselves.
Looking forward to Lost City of Z next month. Best
JimC says
The Northeast urban areas always had a strong sense of “the neighborhood,” right? Seems like, despite all of the pressures, that spirit remains, at least in some areas, and may be reviving. The suburbs, particularly in the West, have turned into a wasteland in that regard over the past thirty years or so. The LA burbs where I grew up had a strong sense of neighborhood and community. Same area now — nothing like it. People often literally don’t know their neighbors — not even their names. Weird.
Probably has a lot to do with transience. When I was growing up there, people sunk roots and lived in those little suburban houses for decades. All their kids went to school there, etc. Now, there’s a lot of house-flipping and everybody wants to build equity, cash out and get a bigger house in another neighborhood. A lot don’t have kids, and if they do, they send them off to private schools an hour away. People commute for hours to god knows where.
The takeaway for me is that the “natural” elements that push people toward community are not present anymore in a lot of ways in a lot of places — sheer time in the neighborhood; kids in school together, working in the same area, etc. So you have to make a more conscious effort to connect with others. And as I observed before, that intentionality does seem to be growing, at least in some segments.
Black Tyrone says
Jim, you are young and bright. Do not undermine Americans where ever we call home. Have faith all partisans. In an increasingly secular world it is fashionable to forget our maker and our values. We have more in common than we are different. It is fashionable to be cynical but always remember we are only a link in humanity and WE WILL TRIUMPH . This maybe the Black Robe {SJ} in me, but as the MacLeod’s of Cornwall Pipe band {NY} had on our base Drum, “HOLD FAST”. We will prevail all partisans. Best Enough with preaching! Bring on a Good Western!
Breaker Morant says
True that. I also don’t want oversell the state of “Community” in the countryside. I live in a rural area and there are many neighbors (relatively speaking) within a few miles that I have never seen. We still call it “The Johnson Place.” But the “Johnsons” moved away in 1952 and who lives there now?
deuce says
It’s that way here, to a certain extent, but over the last 2yrs I’ve seen my close neighbors interacting more. There’s a growing sense of community as well as a sense that things are gonna to get ugly. One bonus is that nobody needs to buy a gun. We’re all strapped.
I’m the local “pacifist”. I’ve only got two at the moment.
J.F. Bell says
I’d like to float a theory on the idea of community and how life works. This picks up on the ‘Greatest Generation’ comments in the last discussion, though the principle isn’t tied to any particular time or place.
So far as can be discerned, then modern inhabitant of a Western nation lives in a time today which materially unlike anything in history. Mainly this is a matter of expectation – you flip the switch and the room lights up, the water coming out of the faucet likely won’t kill you, you open the refrigerator and find food, and clean waste disposal is just a flush and a weekly pick-up away, and that any medical emergency can be handled swiftly by trained professionals.
As progress goes it’s a hell of a deal. This is the kind of system set up by people who know what it is to go without those things – who realize that in order to bathe today you need to walk a quarter mile to get your water, that if you intend to eat supper tonight you’d best take your rifle and get something for the pot, that your wife might well die in childbirth and your children might take sick and die without much warning.
The trouble comes when you get a couple of generations into the former and start losing any cultural memory of the latter.
As was suggested elsewhere, the Greatest Generation didn’t consider themselves exceptional because they did pretty much what their parents and grandparents had done, albeit with more advanced tools. Back into time immemorial, war meant all the fighting age males picked up their war clubs or axes or rifles and went to address the insult. Women waited behind barred doors with knives or hatchets or double-barreled shotgun as a last line of defense. Depending on how things went on the other side of the mountains or across the river your civilization ceased to exist or the men came home and life picked up more or less where it left off.
But the members of those settlements knew that how they lived was not necessarily the natural order or things. That a roof overhead, a fire in the hearth, and food in the stew pot were the end result of a concerted effort to survive. In essence, every day was a fight not to succeed, but simply NOT DIE. After a fashion they learned to make advances alongside the art of not dying, and our present society is a result.
A huge portion of America’s current troubles come from the aforementioned Balkanization. Regardless your politics it’s no great trick to build your own private echo chamber. Frankly, half the country thinks the other half has lost its collective mind because both halves live in a carefully-cultivated and (to them) perfectly functional and rational world.
Contrast this to our forebears who grasped that no, you couldn’t reason with wildfire, famine, disease, rampaging Indians, summer droughts, early blizzards, and tornados; it was going to happen and either they stood it or they didn’t. You didn’t get to pick your way through life. Life showed up. What you got was what you got.
With that knowledge they built the modern world. With the modern world we’ve built discontent. Sooner or later we’re going to have to figure out to build a nation from the ground up.
It’ll be a real ass-kicker of a learning curve.
JimC says
That is just excellent on every level. Accurate and well-articulated. Love this:
I think you’ve identified the mechanism for the cycle: A dynamic, outbursting civilization oriented toward solving the problems of its existence. Success breeds generations that take the success for granted. Growth, peak, decadence and decline.
J.F. Bell says
Strauss & Howe have some interesting theories on this (civilization being a cyclical affair). They went with four parts – High, Awakening, Unraveling, and Crisis.
Perhaps not hard science and not without detractors, but it’s an interesting read nonetheless.
JimC says
I will have to check that out.
john roberts says
Hint: It’s Steve Bannon’s favorite book. Much to the authors’ horror, I might add.
JimC says
Oh my…
Keith West says
That’s a very Howardian way of looking at things. Reminds me of the poem “A Song of the Naked Lands”.
JimC says
The ghost of REH looms larger and larger every day.
deuce says
That’s one big reason REH’s worldview has been dismissed by so many amongst the literati: his assessment of history and human nature — him being anything BUT a “Blank Slatist” — was and is in direct opposition to the Narrative.
Black Tyrone says
As we say here, “you got that right!” My father as a Navy Corpsman in the Pacific never asked for anything in return. He was an American and that is what one did. There is more to the story but one does not brag and remain a gentleman. Best
Matthew says
Stand Up and Fight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7woW7DmnR0E
People talk about the Dark Ages of Europe after the Roman Empire fell. You know these were the years that the first Universities were created.
JimC says
A lot of good work is being done that revises the “World Lit Only By Fire” picture of the Dark/Middle Ages.
As for the video — warpaint, dunebuggies and heavy metal accordion? Sublime.
Matthew says
It goes without saying that my comment on the Dark Ages meant that the so called fall of civilization wasn’t a lot more complicated than people think. The whole concept of the “Dark Ages” came from scholars of the Renaissance who were kind of full of themselves.
JimC says
Yep. Every society seems to think that all of history was directed at producing … them.
Matthew says
I’ve also thought that narcissism was modern America’s besetting sin, while racism was it’s past.
But then racism could be consider a form of narcissism.
J.F. Bell says
Admittedly the footfalls of Rome’s legions aren’t heard much lately, the last vestige of Napoleon’s gamble is the metric system, and at last check the sun was setting on the British empire once a day.
In their time they all fit the bill, which would suggest it’s that way across the board as empires go – a sense of your nation’s superiority, a sizeable graveyard for a foundation, and all the treasures of the far-flung reaches trickling home, often to the detriment of the native heathens. From the two-bits to the big leagues it’s part and parcel of running a respectable portion of the world.
Well…that and being at war all the time.
john roberts says
“Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history.”
Abraham Lincoln, address to Congress, Dec. 1, 1862
Keith West says
Jim,
You make some excellent points. To steal a line from Dave Ramsey and paraphrase it, what happens at my house has a much larger impact on my life than what happens at the state house. Mainly because I can control the former.
JimC says
The state house affects us — but we have little effect there. Pick your battles and focus on what affects your tribe. That’s where I’m coming from.
Paul McNamee says
A lot of points to digest.
What do we resist? Fear. Hysteria.
A few years ago, I hit my limit with FEAR & LOATHING platform of politicians and advertisers. Fear the terrorists! Fear the godless liberals! Fear the militant Republicans! Fear God! Fear the road accident!
They all translate roughly to; vote for me, pray to me, buy my steel framed car and car insurance.
I’m not fearless but fear is a personal thing not a sold choice of product or politics. And, I will have empathetic fear on behalf of those I love; family and friends.
But I am over ‘people’ telling me to be afraid based on their input. **** that —-.
Hysteria (and manufactured outrage) is so damned easy on social media. I’m going to be reducing my footprint in those areas (Facebook & Twitter.) Every damn molehill is a mountain. There are some justifiable reactions but the kneejerking is burying any legitimate discussions.
Ain’t nobody got time for that —-. I’ve got stories to write, children to raise, books to read and friends to toast around fire – virtual or real.
JimC says
Glad this struck a chord with you Paul. You’re right — we’re constantly being sold something (political or material) based on fear and the promise of safety. The fear is overblown and the safety is illusory and we trade freedom for it. Both ends of the political spectrum work this racket, and as you say, also gin up outrage. People throw out terms like fascism till they lose all meaning. Mom’s are conditioned to fear for their children at the hands of some dread disease or flawed product — never mind that the statistical probabilities of danger are so low as to be virtually non-existent.
I think I have mentioned that a friend of mine was concerned about me taking a trip to London because, well, you know, IRA bombs. What???
a nation of bold pioneers has become a quivering, risk-averse clot of fear-mongering outrage queens.
No thanks.
Thom Eley says
One of the finest pieces of writing that I’ve read this year. I agree entirely! Keep up the good work.
JimC says
Thanks Thom.
Hillbilly Nick says
Outstanding! There is so much bull out there that it is nice to read so unadulterated truth. Think local and take care of your own like folks have been doing for thousands of years. We’ve been sliding down too a while now. Doesn’t matter much to me. Like ol’ Hank Jr. said “A Country Boy Can Survive.”
Pat_H says
Community, consume less, produce more. . . ., recalling the author of phrase “three acres and a cow” perhaps?
Greg Walker says
From the man, the father, and the author who inspired me decades ago to write –
“Up to a point a person’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and changes in the world about them. Then there comes a time when it lies within their grasp to shape the clay of their life into the sort of thing they wish it to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune or the quirks of fate. Everyone has the power to say, “This I am today. That I shall be tomorrow.”
Louis L’Amour