Journey Through Dark Times
As one who had lived between mania and melancholy, I am sensitive to depression. My friends know that since 2016 I have been reflecting on the depression that has taken root in our nation and world. The depression many of us feel today is not primarily economical or psychological; it is political. It affects our life and our spirit, but it is rooted in our community with one another locally, nationally, and globally. Nor is this depression simply the result of the 2016 event that shocked some of us to think — even to the rumination that twists the mind. That event and its current unfolding is a sign, not a cause, of our public brokenness.
I consider myself more an activist than a thinker. Nevertheless, I judge that while these are distinct activities of the embodied mind, they are so interdependent that they must be integrated for the success and joy of us all in the human project. I intend in this reflection to show that our personal and collective depression is primarily due to their separation. That is, the loss of the activity of thinking which in turn affects our politics.
I continue to act as I am able in the public sphere, mainly locally, yet have used the benefits of aging to dialogue and think with many others who show evidence of thought over dogma, consistent inquiry rather than fixed positions, a search for meaning instead of righteousness. A happy side benefit of this political depression is the plethora of excellent essays and other expressions of thinking throughout the world, even by nonprofessional seekers of truth and meaning. In this new opportunity, I have dared to silently take stock of my past, our past, to challenge my thoughts, our thoughts, as to what is happening to and by us.
First, in my travels, I sought the thoughts of political economists, those reflecting on the relation of the prevailing global economy and the decline of democracy. Through them I achieved knowledge of material abundance and growing inequality, of their positive and negative effects, and of the political system that sustains them.
Second, I approached the historians attempting to trace the development of our political economic system, especially in the USA because of its predominance in the world, and of the culture which gives it meaning. I read and discussed with others the histories of the founders of the American Republic and of other key actors in the shaping of American ideas and practices. Slavery, civil war, Jim Crow, civil and human rights featured strongly in this reflection. But also, did America’s economic interests as molded by those who predominantly embodied and pressed these interests.
Third, I turned to the philosophers who in dialogue with scientists reflected on human nature and the commonalities that reside in the human species no matter where humans appear in the world. I reflected on the role of culture, including religion, and its relation to human development and behavior. I inquired as to the meaning and nature of violence, cruelty and evil and its relation to American culture and religion.
Fourth, spurred by Pankaj Mishra’s Age of Anger, I considered the history of ideas and especially the development of modernity, the enlightenment, the scientific revolution, the replacement of reason over religious faith, the absence of certainly and the illusion of the absolute. These ideas help us understand the postmodern turn to relativism and the romantic return to dogmatism as providing context for contemporary human behavior and mood.
Then I studied with Francis Fukuyama the origins and decline of the political order throughout human history. I discovered the elements and dimensions of political order from ancient to contemporary times which provided insights into the crisis in political order in the nations of the world and their struggle for a world order that would achieve the fulfilment of humankind as contemplated through many traditions.
Finally, with my return to my mentors, especially Hanna Arendt’s Life of the Mind and Merleau-Ponty’s The Visible and The Invisible, I explored another developing tradition in the study of consciousness in response to the modernity that led to the dualism in human understanding and behavior — the mind-body split and the two-world dogma — fallacies of thinking and behavior that have led us to this angry and resentful world. This tradition points us in a possible direction that might renew our hope and lead us out of our collective depression.
These six excursions s form the chapters by which I organize the account of my journey and its discoveries. In my concluding reflection on my journey, I present some thoughts on what is to be done to continue the journey towards its destination which indeed may be the journey itself.
This is a journey of thinking in relation to concrete events and actions to understand the present event of humankind attempting to survive and thrive in their world. Thinking, however, is a never-ending process that leads to new actions and events which in turn require examination and inquiry in the human race to knowledge and meaning.
My endeavor is to turn the current American political depression into an opportunity to think and act anew. Much of this has been already written, some of it in earlier reports of my research and conversations, a lot of it in notes and underlined passages of my mentors’ words. I already feel better having a little more of a handle and direction during this critical time in our nation and world.