Put a match directly under a frog and the frog will seek escape. Slow boil a frog in a pot and the frog will passively boil to death. All frogs fail this “frog test.” Can all people, or many people, or even just some people handle our desperate social circumstances better than frogs handle theirs?
I viscerally hate being apocalyptic, but the simple truth is we are all taking this test. We are all boiling above escalating fascism, nuclear incineration, ecological disintegration, and perhaps AI domination. These four fires heat the social pot we swim in. So we simultaneously face four frog tests. And it is final exam time. And our preparedness, our performance, and thus our prospects look piss poor. Why is that? Why might we fail the frog test?
I think most people who consider this question might suggest that to keep our approach manageable we should consider one potential apocalypse at a time. It is good advice if we want to understand each apocalyptic threat. But for understanding peoples’ responses, highlighting the details of four barbaric variants on one recurring “people in a pot” situation might miss important human factors. It’s better to skip a detailed look at the four dangers and start from the observation that while frogs are frogs and are all alike so that they all fail, people are people and each one often hugely differs from the other one. Again, however, to try to address how all our many personal differences impact a full answer would likely miss the forest for the trees. So, I here consider only one main human difference. Regarding the four phenomena that threaten to boil our bodies into annihilation, only a few of the people in the social pot rule. The rest are ruled.
Those who rule don’t just accept suicidal policies. They pull levers and turn dials to pursue them. Those who are ruled are the rest of us. We resist or die.
The rulers typically live way above the social pot’s bottom. Their riches and handlers cool their slowly over-heating asses. But ultimately, they are in the pot too. Collectively they have access to means to curb the boiling, and even, if they joined with the ruled in the endeavor, to end the boiling. Why don’t they turn the burn dial to off for those already suffering most, for those nearest the flames? Or callous to the poor, why don’t they turn the burn dial at least low enough so they themselves don’t burn? And if not for us all, or not for themselves, then why don’t they do it for their kids and their kid’s kids?
Imagine all the rulers having dinner in their big houses. Imagine a thug breaks in and enters their dining room and declares that he is going to kill the kids, then the adults. Do Mr. Ruler, Mrs. Ruler, and teenage and baby Ruler just sit there passively? Do they calmly await their proclaimed fate? Do they even invite the thug to have some dinner with them before their executions and provide the thug kitchen knives? I suppose maybe in a few houses they do. Maybe those few hope for a last-minute reprieve or intervention. But I bet not many aid their own murder. Nope. The adults try to save their kids. Indeed, all try to save all, with few exceptions.
So why don’t our rulers see/hear/feel our fascist, nuclear, ecological, and AI threats and defend against them? Remember, at this point, we are only talking about billionaire rulers and their multi-millionaire sidekicks. We are not yet talking about you and yours.
I suspect a frequent reason the rulers ignore the dangers is that during their passage to power, their faculties have become so attenuated that they literally can’t see or hear the threats. Another reason is likely that they consider themselves immune. Third, perhaps they see the threats, but they reason, “If I acknowledge and try to address the threats, I will be demoted from ruler to ruled and whoever replaces me will be worse than me, so I need to hang on to my credibility and power on behalf of justice and good.” And perhaps some are just plain pathological and don’t give a damn about anything other than their own wealth and power. They want what they can take and all else be damned, right down to the final curtain. Judge them? Not much point. They are who they are. You might even be able to enjoy some of them as clever conversationalists at a dinner partner. Others you might want to quick freeze or slow fry to oblivion. But the replacement dynamic, about which they are quite right, makes such approaches dubious for the social pot’s future.
So what about the ruled? What about everyone who might read this short rumination on survival modes for facing the frog test? Our temperature is steadily rising. What works to prevent our reacting as vigorously as needed? Media-fueled confusion? Fear of repression? Magical thinking that this too will pass? The belief that there is no better world to win? Doubt we can win? Or all of the above?
It seems evident that all the above play a role, but as the temperature climbs and it becomes ever clearer that we are on the verge of suffering the fate of slowly cremated frogs, doesn’t the importance of confusion, repression, and wishful thinking decline? Don’t the importance of doubt that there is a way to permanently turn off the burners, and doubt about our capacity to implement it grow in importance?
So, if true, what does all this say to a person in the social pot who sees the dangers and who wants to enlist and join with others to ward them off and then eliminate their causes?
- Correct confusions? Yes.
- Reduce and overcome repression? Yes.
- Deny magical, wishful thinking? Yes.
- Explain how vastly better results are possible? Yes.
- Demonstrate how individual choices can implement a winning collective strategy? Yes.
We are in a frog pot. It is sitting over serious flames. We must act. But it won’t be enough to prioritize tasks 1, 2, and 3, but ignore tasks 4 and 5. That approach would deliver an incomplete recruitment message. It would make our situation evident, but it would not cause enough of us to act to remedy it. We would become smart but cynical frogs who boil unto doom.
We need to understand our plight. We need to be brave. We need to set aside wishful, magical thinking. But don’t we also need to develop and share vision and strategy that is able to inspire, sustain, and guide successful activism?
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1 Comment
“But don’t we also need to develop and share vision and strategy that is able to inspire, sustain, and guide successful activism?”
Ok, if yes, then how is this actually thing to be achieved? How does an apparently disparate Left Landscape, working they way it does now and has for so long, and that has elicited a plethora of similar essays from Michael Albert over the years, change it’s direction and develop clear coherent shared vision and strategy? I’m assuming Albert feels right now, and for some time, this hadn’t been and isn’t the case but needs to be. So how does it manifest? How does a left landscape communicate with itself so fully, so comprehensively, so coherently and, a hard one, so cooperatively, with itself it is able to actually come up with clear strategy connected to clear shared and agreed upon vision?
Is it a website? Do ‘we’ all meet somewhere, like the local library and connect via zoom? The Columbia University Concrete Utopia project gonna connect with all other universities in the world?
What, how?
I’m friggin’ serious. I want to know?