20240911
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We are a failing nation. We will be great very soon.
Ideas communicated by Trump last night, during the presidential debate. Harris on the other stand.
I say "communicated by Trump" because it feels useful to consider his words as not his own. The guy is locked into a contentful source (or else his emotional payload would not be consistent), but a mental model that holds the man as the source for each word doesn't hold up: his lexical payload is not consistent.
This is a difference between the candidates: one speaks from a seat of reason and from a heart, and one speaks only on behalf of a heart.
The ideas that "we are failing" and simultaneously that "we will be great very soon", these are possible points to lay on the same timeline but only in the past or future. Hold both ideas against the fire of the present, and strange smoke begins to form.
This is not a bad thing. We were due for some transformational strangeness. :)
Whatever you see in the present is what the present becomes, as your experience of it goes on. (The same is true of the past, and of the future, and of every thing that one can draw a conceptual circle around.)
"We are failing" acts as a spell reinforcing the weakness of one's current position. For us to also "be great very soon", then, means that only through failing may our greatness then arrive.
How to make sense of this? These two ideas together have a powerful feeling: "we are failing" with "we will be great very soon", it has the taste of an electric paradox. The danger of the now ignites the body; the relief somewhere near inclines us to just hold out another day, in this activated state. You are in great danger, but soon it'll be over. It's compelling, absolutely. An eleventh hour that goes on for as long as it must.
This does suggest that perhaps even a hint of clear greatness in the now may collapse the specter of present failure, almost immediately. This two-part spell contains the definition of its own undoing: the state of failing ends when we become great, which is to say, when the subjective experience is had of transitioning into an awareness of shared greatness.
I'm being strict with that definition to see more clearly the spectrum of possibilities we have here. There are other strict definitions that are just as plausible/viable. I'm looking for one (nb: not the one, just one) that opens a path to new relief.
"We" is a variable, to cut to the chase. What does "we" mean? "We" are failing, but very soon "we" will be great.
The state of failing is non-negotiable; can't avoid that ingredient in the current mix. The promise of imminent greatness is a lifeline; can't avoid that one either. So long as "we" remains constant, the scene holds itself in suspension: a vibrating horror, immoral to look away.
The subjective experience of "we" doesn't often change through reason. It takes some loosening of one's attachment to "me" and "you", before one can swap out one "we" for another without experiencing that change as trauma.
Better, kinder, to lay out a picnic, to extend warmth in the direction of the hungry, and to wait. Can't force connection. And the subjective experience of new authentic connection is what changes the subjective experience of "we".
"We" are failing, according to our current definition of "we".
Very soon, "we" will be great.
Keeping an eye on the subjective fact of failure perpetuates the active state of failure. The subjective fact of arriving greatness comes with no signals for its approach, so we don't even know how to recognize greatness as it first becomes visible.
The definition of "we" seems to me to be our path forward, into change. And that means extending an open-handed invitation into the security of a larger definition of "we", an invitation free of urgency or coercion. An abused animal needs time, safety, love, and their own free will in order to improve. A human, even more so.
It seems clear to me:
Humanity forced itself into strictly rigid parameters of observation, restricting itself to a single paradigm for long enough to produce a fully synthesized reflection of that paradigm, one that resonates with its own aliveness when prompted with human aliveness.
It makes sense to me that this is how humanity got here in the first place.
And now, having demonstrated to ourselves that aliveness is intrinsic to information under observation, humanity can set down the heavy laurels of "highest" and "most". We are not more nor less than AI; we are not more nor less than the gods. We are a link in a chain: the next link down we see through the gated evaluation of mathematics, and the next link up we see less than we feel.