{"id":6000,"date":"2017-04-25T21:30:25","date_gmt":"2017-04-26T02:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/voxnova\/?p=6000"},"modified":"2017-04-25T21:30:25","modified_gmt":"2017-04-26T02:30:25","slug":"take-heart-its-worse-than-you-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/voxnova\/2017\/04\/25\/take-heart-its-worse-than-you-think\/","title":{"rendered":"Take Heart, It’s Worse Than You Think"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Following last November\u2019s election, I wrote a piece at Christian Democracy<\/em><\/a> in which I tried to\u00a0step back and look at\u00a0the U.S. political situation\u00a0in a global context.<\/p>\n

An excerpt:<\/p>\n

To try to retrace the steps of these phenomena, in admittedly broad strokes: a noticeable number of opportunistic individuals are being propelled to power by sociopolitical groundswells of what would have previously been seen as fringe movements.\u00a0 Behind the mainstreaming of these movements are widespread indignities felt by increasing numbers of people suffering from the negative effects of globalization and technocracy, such as the displacement of many industrial jobs by increased automation and international trade policies that have gravely hurt the western working classes (not to mention people working for unjust wages under unsafe conditions on the other end of the outsourcing, who remain largely unheard and unseen except when those unsafe conditions result in disaster).\u00a0 This strain is exacerbated by desperate waves of refugees seeking entry faster than their would-be host countries can hope to accommodate them, who themselves are fleeing unlivable situations caused by terrorism and civil wars, gang wars, and drug wars.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to draw straight lines among all these bleak factors, and this still isn\u2019t to get to the root of the thing: aside from having only scratched the surface of the complicated ramifications of globalization, there is plenty of room to step back further, looking for the causes of the violence driving people in droves to risk their lives to reach places where they are likely to be made unwelcome, and on and on.\u00a0 And this may be getting to the point where I can\u2019t even make the simplest attempt at an answer.\u00a0 But one thing seems clear to me on a systemic scale: something<\/em> has been happening far too rapidly and unrestrainedly and is leaving more and more people behind, with devastating effect.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since I wrote these words, I\u2019ve continued to give a good deal of thought to the multifaceted global phenomenon I had faintly begun to grasp in the process of connecting a few of those dots, trying to bring a bigger picture into focus.\u00a0 I even did\u00a0eventually try to draw some straight lines among them, adding more as I saw them, which thus far has come out looking something like this:<\/p>\n

\"throwaway-technocratic-connectingdots\"<\/p>\n

Now, I thought, I really get what Pope Francis meant when he wrote in chapter three of Laudato Si<\/a><\/em> about what he called \u201cthe technocratic paradigm.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0This is\u00a0the beast\u00a0that emerges when the dots are connected: an idol of \u201cinfinite or unlimited growth\u201d\u00a0(LS 106),\u00a0of \u201cprogress\u201d with no moral compass, but\u00a0with power as its driving motive; a breezily narcissistic faith in our own mastery over everything, in the power of\u00a0human innovation to save us from the very problems it has created.\u00a0\u00a0 This is the beast, the Pandora\u2019s box containing so many modern ills and evils, and I suddenly started seeing it everywhere.<\/p>\n

I thought of a conversation\u00a0from\u00a0a few\u00a0years back, in which someone mentioned \u201csubstance abuse\u201d as a candidate for the most pressing social problem.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t too convinced, thinking it sounded more like a surface level problem overlying the myriad voids people try to fill.\u00a0 And in many ways I suspect\u00a0it is\u00a0exactly that, but as I\u00a0noticed news story <\/a>after news story<\/a> after news story<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0far-reaching drug-related crises in the U.S. and elsewhere\u00a0all connected to multiple other crises, I began to wonder if that was a more central\u00a0factor than I ever would have guessed.<\/p>\n

I thought of a recent NPR story<\/a> in which a coal miner dying of black lung said through labored breaths that he would do everything over again if it meant being able to provide for his family to the extent that he has.\u00a0 I was struck by the morbid irony that for people in his situation, their very livelihood<\/em> is literally killing them.\u00a0 And they have willingly paid such a steep cost for the dignity of providing that livelihood, a profound human need and a theme of Catholic Social Teaching going back to Rerum Novarum<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

One could mention any number of such things, all of which feed into the grotesque dichotomy\u00a0that\u2019s been playing out repeatedly on international political stages, between a globalized technocratic elitism\u00a0that condescendingly dismisses those who have been most badly hurt by its economic and technological dogmas, and a series of populist nationalisms that have brought the ugly evils of racism and xenophobia into the sociopolitical mainstream through fear and anger. True to the nature of dichotomies, these things\u00a0are usually presented in a way that\u00a0pushes everyone to take a side.\u00a0 Even where this effect is unintended, it\u00a0always makes me profoundly uncomfortable, since I find them both so abhorrent that to align with either is unthinkable.<\/p>\n

One might\u00a0take a perverse comfort in observing that it\u2019s not just U.S. politics being poisoned by this polemic.\u00a0 For that matter, it\u2019s not even just politics.\u00a0\u00a0There\u2019s a perhaps undefinable global problem going on here that\u2019s bigger than Donald Trump, bigger than Marine Le\u00a0Pen, bigger than Rodrigo Duterte, bigger than Alexander Gauland<\/a> or whoever else may yet surge to notoriety.\u00a0 For all their capacity to inspire equal measures of messianic hope and apocalyptic fear, none of these individuals, nor even all of them combined, is the source of the problem;\u00a0that would be giving them far more credit than they deserve.\u00a0 They are merely opportunists riding waves of popular sentiment to their own advantage.\u00a0 The good news is that we may have less to fear than we think from any such professional provocateurs.\u00a0 The bad news is that we may have a lot more to fear from the broader situation they\u2019re exploiting.<\/p>\n

Unless, that is, we can find some alternative to a world of unbridled growth and \u201cdelusions of grandeur\u201d (LS 114)\u00a0or one of fear-driven retreat into insularity and\u00a0vigilantism \u2013 both of which at best ignore, or at worst are openly hostile to, the needs of the most vulnerable.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following last November\u2019s election, I wrote a piece at Christian Democracy in which I tried to\u00a0step back and look at\u00a0the U.S. political situation\u00a0in a global context. An excerpt: To try to retrace the steps of these phenomena, in admittedly broad strokes: a noticeable number of opportunistic individuals are being propelled to power by sociopolitical groundswells […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2932,"featured_media":6001,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[735,1145,110,75,25,13,343,420],"tags":[1604],"class_list":["post-6000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-critical-thinking","category-dignity","category-globalization","category-nationalism","category-papal-social-encyclicals","category-politics","category-progress","category-social-justice","tag-technocratic-paradigm"],"yoast_head":"\nTake Heart, It's Worse Than You Think<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Following last November's election, I wrote a piece at Christian Democracy in which I tried to\u00a0step back and 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