Symptoms and Causes, a brief reminder

September 12, 2019

I think this is true--there are deeper structures than particular individuals and personalities shaping our current situation.

“The sources of angst vary from country to country, but at root is inequality — of wealth, resources and opportunity. Both within individual countries and among them, there is suspicion that some have more than others for reasons neither natural nor fair. This reality has given rise to politicians willing to use bitter divisions for political gain. These are serious, structural problems that won’t soon be resolved. They will be exacerbated when climate change and access to new technologies further widen wealth and opportunity divides. And now global economic growth is slowing, compounding these tensions.”

Again, the question of inequality and what philosophers following Hegel have called "recognition"--the desire of each of us to be seen, to be honored and acknowledged for our reality and our efforts and frankly our value and meaningfulness--this is what's driving our world today.  Sometimes we manifest this confict in confusing ways.  That may be behind some of the politics of the present moment, around the world.

That said, individuals do have an irreducible power to influence history.  On one hand, that means that individual leaders do matter; Donald Trump, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Stalin, FDR, Margaret Thatcher, Nelson Mandela: a world without any of them seems to me likely to be interestingly different than the world we inhabit today.  

But on the other hand, this is also true also about the smaller figures in their ages, like you and I.  As Czeslaw Milosz once put it in a poem, the course of the avalanche depends on the stones over which it rolls.  And, as Augustine put it--you knew this was coming--we are the times.