David Mitchell, Ghostwritten:
We create models to explain nature, but the model winds up gatecrashing nature and driving away the original inhabitants. In my lecturing days most of my students believed that atoms really are solid little stellar nuclei orbited by electrons. When I tell them that nobody knows what an electron is, they look at me like I’ve told them that the sun is a watermelon. One of the better-read-up ones might put their hand up and say, “But Dr. Muntervary, isn’t an electron a charged probability wave?”
“Suppose now,” I am fond of saying, “I prefer to think of it as a dance.”
There’s comfort and trouble in having too-solid a model of reality. Some people’s politics are corroded by having too clear a sense that reality is like this, and any deviation from that model must be corrected, rather than observed and adapted to. On the other hand, we can be dimmed by resignation to things as they are; we may not know all the answers, but we know it can be better than this… but it doesn’t seem like it’ll really happen.
It’s important, I think, to recognize that the models describing political and material “realities” of the last half-century have been discarded or disproven. We don’t know what will happen right now; that’s terrifying, but it also leaves room for optimism. We think we know what electrons are, but nobody does. We think we can predict political outcomes, but we can’t.
I’m choosing to be slightly optimistic, today. I voted for Biden and every available leftist/leftish candidate, and I know a lot of other people will, too. Trump and Co only have a foothold because they’ve worked tirelessly to create and promote an alternate model of reality. An unfortunate number of people have bought in, and I don’t know what we’re going to do about it in the long run. But it’s not fated for the present state to continue. The future is not yet foreclosed.
I’ve cut off my access to twitter for the day. I voted, I’m reading a good book, and I’m going to work in a bit. Tomorrow I’m supposed to start a new job; I’ll tell you more about it if it works out. The foundations of my life shifted radically this year, and I know yours did too, in different ways. They’re going to shift again. I’m going to tell myself we’ll find a way through it!