Lughnasa Waxing Harvest Moon
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein
Einstein’s notion reminds me of the definition of insanity: trying the same thing over and over expecting different results. Of course, any one familiar with computers knows that sometimes this works just fine.
It also gives me some pause before I write my liberalism series. An article in this month’s Dissent asked, “Does liberalism have enough resources to re-energize itself?” I like this question because it focuses my thinking. This is why I’m interested in pursuing liberalism. Does it have enough historical and philosophical oomph to make a difference in this and tomorrow’s world?
10 years ago I would have said no. Absolutely no. As a card carrying member of the New Left, liberalism was as much the problem as conservatism, perhaps even more since it was liberals who got us into the war in Vietnam, who ran corporate america and the government, aka the System and, BTW, Ike Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex. Hard to recall a time when the liberals were in power at this point in recent American history, but I grew up under a liberal hegemony.
Now, I’m older and less convinced of drastic, sudden change as either possible or workable, too much risk for too little reward. At least right now.
If we’re not gonna have a revolution, then we have to consider the hand we’ve been dealt and it’s our peculiar brand of American liberal democracy. That means looking for all the possibilities in likely and unlikely places.
At night the trees dwarf the houses, their bulk massing up against the sky. During the day we can pretend they are just plants, but as dark falls their true nature emerges. We are the Lilliputians in their Brobdingnagian world.