The shock being experienced in Washington D.C. since January 20 is exposing gaping holes in the fantasies we told ourselves were rock-solid truths—lasting for whole (gasp) generations!. It is also important to admit that this is democracy working as intended: a popular majority said yes, and—let’s face it—might well do so again if a vote were held tomorrow.
Several of my recent posts have stressed the virtual reality aspects of modernity and our tendency to take refuge in flimsy mental models disconnected from biophysical and ecological reality. An earlier post cautioned against falling into the trap of aiming for fantasy political perfection. Here, we’ll look at the holes that are opening up.
As the Trump Administration rattles cages and turns things upside-down, I keep seeing headlines that effectively ask: “Is that even legal?”
Isn’t the mere fact that legal status is uncertain a glaring indicator that our legal system is little more than a bolus of small rocks held together by a few strands of spider web? No? Does that image fail to work for you: too random and specific? Whatever. You get the point.
Trumping Reality
On the question of legality, the Trump Administration attitude is: “If you have to ask, then we’ll just say: yes—it’s legal when we do it. While you’re spinning wheels in legal mud, we’ll just go about irreversibly changing the country. Have fun!” The point is: no one really knows, because it’s all make-believe. That’s how empty-shirt our house-of-cards, Potemkin village of an artificial system is. Unlike a richly-woven ecology, it came out of meat-brains, hasn’t stood the test of time, and is held together by spit. That’s what my dear uncle would say about the Ferris wheels and other attractions that would roll into his small Georgia town overnight and set up in a parking lot (basically: “No, I’m not going to let you ride them.”). Our legal system reminds me of Ptolemaic epicycles: byzantine patches on patches; contrivances upon contrivances.
Judges are meant to rule on the legality of a matter, as if unambiguous. Notice that a judge never has enough intellectual integrity to say: indeterminate; can’t be decided; beyond the limits of the law or our mental facilities to decide. We agree to pretend that correct decisions are not only possible, but legitimate—when they’re often rather arbitrary.
The United States Supreme Court illustrates this very well, because a panel of nine judges weighs in on a matter, frequently splitting very predictably along ideological lines. What does that tell us? Interpretations of a manifestly imperfect artificial system will itself be manifestly imperfect and artificial. It is easy enough for clever people to weave a veil of fancy language to obscure the naked emperor. That’s a skill honed by college experience. Two can play the “originalist” game of literal interpretation of the Constitution to come up with diametrically-opposed opinions. It’s an emptiness that we pretend to be solid.
Fiat Reality
This is a good example of what I have meant when I’ve said repeatedly that brain-derived constructs—grossly decontextualized from the myriad relationships comprising an ecology—will be essentially guaranteed to fail in the long term. Brain-farts rapidly lose their potency, on ecologically-relevant time scales.
In the present case, when a democratically-elected leader of the executive branch claims something is legal by fiat, and the legislative branch does not bother to clarify with new explicit band-aids (ahem, laws), and the court system rules—after many contradictory decisions, appeals, reversals, and delays—that the action is indeed declared to be legal, it shows that the whole system is one of fiat.
In fact, how could a currency, a nation-state, or a legal system be based on anything but fiat? These things were never anything more than rickety, notional constructs made strong only by collective agreement, acquiescence, or even apathy. We’re starting to learn how superficial and insubstantial the whole thing is (while being existentially destructive). We stand in a hall of mirrors, admiring distorted reflections of distorted reflections—our sight-lines to the real external world eclipsed and re-routed by our superficially-imposed layers that we mistake for reality.
The Pledge
I may as well use this space to offer a translation of the Pledge of Allegiance in the U.S. For those unfamiliar, many states in the U.S. require school children to recite the pledge daily—generally standing with hand over heart (at one point the accompanying gesture closely resembled a Nazi salute). The words are:
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Now my translation:
I pledge fealty to a symbol of a fiction, and to the abstraction on which it floats, one notion under an imagined deity, indivisible because we say so, with detachment and unachievable ideals for select members of the human species only.
How we love a bit of theory! Delicious brain-work, without an iota of contact to ecological bedrock. Flyin’ high!
Ultimate Court
In any case, if a government arbitrates that something is legal, what higher authority is recognized by said government to tell it otherwise? Of course, I know of an ultimate authority that will eventually pass judgment. No amount of “but I thought…” will matter. Our misguided notions are irrelevant: inconsequential shoe-squeaks in the larger dance.
The enormous and impressive display of plate-spinning that modernity puts on is manifestly unsustainable and will not be permitted to continue indefinitely. The plates will not keep spinning. Now, I would prefer an approach that calmly and deliberately sets each plate gently down over the coming decades (or centuries) with words of gratitude (a hospice gesture). The Trump approach may be closer to charging the stage, body-checking the plate-spinners, and smirking as plates crash and shatter all around. I can’t say I’m a fan of the approach, but neither can I pretend that the show was capable of going much longer—given how unsustainably-elaborate the spinning arrangements had become.
So, I ask the newts and the nesting chickadees what they think about the current government shenanigans. They possess a wisdom beyond my own, and I take a page from their indifference. However destructive and threatening to all Life, modernity is a brief flash, perhaps best ignored by those who intend to stay for the long haul. Ride it out.
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Thank you, Tom. This is awesome, accurate, and the reality we have been living in for a long time with our heads in the sand. As a retired fed and history/anthropology major, it's so important for me to read your blog and learn from your science-based and eons-long term perspectives. I'd like to vote for the newts and the nesting chickadees, but I don't know how to get them on the ballot. My husband and I are raising our two granddaughters and it's very hard to drop them off at school in the mornings knowing the BS that is being crammed down their throats, but grandma is tired and she needs time to read and pontificate and sit outside.
When they are old enough, read Ishmael to them, and they will at least become aware that the system crams a lot of BS down their throats. They'll have a context for why it happens, and learn to recognize it (then lose their friends…).
I like your version of the pledge. However, the possibility to publish this without risk of getting punished can not be taken for granted. Freedom of speech, freedom of press, political rights etc are just matters of not being forbidden since it doesn’t take much to change the laws in the US and elsewhere. In the US there was a right to abortion for 50 years until the supreme court overruled it.
Not related to this post, but in line with previous astronomical scale examples: https://xkcd.com/1276/ It's sizes of space objects projected on earth's surface. I haven't verified the correctness though. I like your book very, very much. Especially the margin notes.
It's a slow comment forum, and I'm a fan of Munroe's (quality) work, so why not! As to margin notes, people feel strongly about them in both directions. Students weren't big fans (speculating: interrupted their algorithmic process with unwanted context that would almost certainly not be on the test).
My partner (who has shared the burden with my journal of hearing my many thoughts about modernity and desire to see it crumble) once expressed surprise that I wasn't a Trump supporter, since they supposedly also want to "see it all burn down" and "drain the swamp" and so on. I was bewildered, as I thought the differences were obvious. My take was that Trump and his ilk feign rebelliousness but are the biggest plate-spinners and carnival barkers of all, loading everyone onto the rickety spittle-filled old rides, whose true agenda is MORE civilization, MORE human supremacy, MORE hierarchy, MORE techno-idiot fantasies, to "drill baby drill" until there's nothing left, and they're going to keep smashing things like toddlers until they get what they want. And sure, I've had to do my share of reckoning with the fact that the other side was maybe just pretending to be any better or very slightly delaying modernity's death march, but the fact that all it took to get people to kiss the ring was the promise of a marginally cheaper carton of eggs looming mirage-like in the future was still depressing (though, it was also part of the internet quest that eventually led me to this blog, so there's that!) Like I knew in my heart most modern humans don't give a hoot about nonhuman life, but I'm not sure it makes me feel better that it's all out in the open now. Maybe it should? Like maybe all this shaking up will lead to unexpected exposure – I think of the line from the sci-fi novel Hyperion, about how "events no longer obey their masters". Could it eventually get people asking questions about the reality of these fictions they've subscribed to, as you do here? I'd like to believe that, but then again, the drastic, bombastic approach of the current administration seems designed to scare people into clinging harder to modernity, not to fall out of love with it. I wish I could be more newt-ish about the whole thing. The link to that earlier post was quite timely.