FUTURE-FEAR - PART II - Coping with the Present

Presently, we live in a time when there is so much information being thrown at us on a daily basis, that it is almost impossible to process everything that is currently happening.  References to the past as being relevant to what is current abound and prompt us to use such references to project future outcomes.  As such, it is hard to stay present in the present; in what is currently going on in our lives and in the world around us.  In this post, I will examine the challenges that exist in coping with present.

BEING CURRENT

As defined in my previous post, the present is made up of moments that quickly decay into the past.  As such, it is difficult to talk of the present in a strict linear fashion.  In terms of time, what we consider the present is a generalized collection of moments that are measured in days, weeks, months, and years.  We also conceptualize the present in terms of ongoing activities or functions. For example, we talk about the current administration, current economic indicators, current weather patterns, and current events.

Given this generalized understanding of the present, the past becomes defined as that which is no longer current or ongoing.  The present, however, cannot be strictly understood as isolated from the past or the future.  Most see and treat the present as a bridge between past and future and herein lies a difficulty in coping with the present.  We cannot make sense of the present without referencing the past and projecting that reference into the future. What poses a problem in our doing so is that  our recall of the past, our memory of it, is imprecise and in many cases incomplete.

Ironically, the recent past is more problematic in this regard than the distant past.  Recall of the distant past is a product of collective distillation.  By that I mean, over time, the distant past takes on meanings that are generally accepted and readily applicable to current situations which are similar in nature. On the other hand, the recent past is raw, has not been subjected to the distillation of time, and has not acquired the depth of meaning that events of the distant past have acquired. 

In many cases there exists general disagreement as to the interpretation of the recent events being recalled.  This is particularly evident in the times we currently live in; where facts are mutable and recall tainted with creative interpretation, if not wishful thinking.  One has only to listen to the  political pundits on various news networks interpret and speculate as to what current events mean to understand this reality. 

Frequently, it takes a century or more of fermented thought before distilling and settling on a general interpretation of events begins because meanings are derived from the outcomes; the future events caused by or related to the initial event which are not readily understood until a significant amount of time has passed to enable one to objectively see the connections and the disconnects.  Distillation removes many of the factors that are deemed irrelevant to an event's meanings and that is why the past can never be completely or fully replicated.

CURRENT DISTORTION

Coping with current events frequently results in coping with personal and societal angst, particularly where there is confusion about what has taken place.  When facts are skewed to fit a particular agenda motivated by politics, for example, societal angst increases and there is a sense of collective disorientation regarding what is reliable information. History is full of such moments which cannot be fully understood until the passing of time; until the passing of a generation or two lessens the subjective reaction evident at the time of an event's occurrence. One only has to recall the recent Balkan wars to see how sublimated ethnic conflict quickly exploded after more than seventy years of that area being under one nation rule first as kingdom and then as a communist state.

Subjective awareness is always a concern in coping with the present. Individuals going through a particularly stressful current event are prone to find solace in seeking a collective opinion that matches their subjective views; to engage in groupthink.  In doing so, we often fail to recognize that such opinions are themselves subjective; that a number of people sharing similar opinions or viewpoints does not make such opinions or interpretations about something objective or accurate. While this appears readily observable in a group that doesn't share one's subjective viewpoint, it is less noticeable in seeing it in one's self and the group that one personally identifies with.  Subjectively, we are all prone to think of ourselves as being objective in our ideological views.

This is observable in the current political scene occurring within the United States and it is why so much of what is occurring is due to political polarity that is both fostered and perpetuated by intransigent thinking by individuals who are deluded with the idea that they are objective while being in the grips of a societal angst that is largely subjective.  Populism is frequently the offspring of such occurrences, and in the last presidential election, populism was evident in both political parties.

Populism appears to arise when there is a sense of disorientation about the present, when there is movement towards something different, a societal shift or a change that appears to be a break in continuity with the past.  Depending on one's ideological perspective, one can view such changes as something to fear, as in losing something in the present, or as something to welcome, as in moving away from something perceived as currently hindering progress.

UNPRECEDENTED

The term we hear reflecting this sense of disorientation in the news media of today  is "unprecedented" which often leads to skeptical reaction by news commentators.   What becomes evident in this sense of disorientation is the inability to find meaning in what is occurring at the time. The temptation, however, is to assign meaning based on past reference. Nothing illustrates the imprecision of the past than when it is strictly applied to what is currently happening.  As mentioned in my previous post, occurrences may have a similar flavor but are concocted differently.

A current example of this would be the scandal surrounding the hacking of the Democratic National Committee's emails by Russia and the alleged collusion by the Trump Campaign in this matter.  The immediate past reference is, understandably, Watergate because they share the same flavor; subverting a presidential election, but that is where the reference ends or should because they are concocted differently.  In other words, the details are different.  Currently, the jury is still out with regard to what is now being called the "Russian Investigation."

Watergate (an unprecedented event at the time) acts as a gold standard when it comes to election tampering in the United States.  Events evoking its flavor are naturally measured against it as being like it or being worse than it or not measuring up to it. This is similar to the gold standard of a presidential administration's first one hundred days set by FDR's first one hundred days in enacting many social changes as president (unprecedented at the time ) in measuring within that timeframe the effectiveness of every administration since that time.  It is assumed that every presidential administration will have one hundred days to demonstrate its effectiveness which is then used to predict and project its effectiveness or lack thereof into the near future.

What can become lost in past reference and future speculation regarding current events is the experience of the present.  If the experience of the present invokes so clearly the flavor of a past event, the present experience can be subsumed by the recall of the past.  As such, understanding the current experience, as it is, becomes lost or hindered.  The risk inherent in such situations is the tendency to engage in self-fulfilling prophecy that will result in the same outcome as the referenced past.

The past, however, is not prophetic.  While a current and past event may share the same flavor and the current situation may appear to be headed in a similar direction, the situation is circumstantial rather than prophetic.  Past and present circumstances, however, are rarely, if ever, identical.  The past cannot be replicated and current events possess enough nuance that over time the outcomes, traceable to a current event, will become increasingly less like the past being reference.

CURRENT DENIAL

Another challenge in coping with the present is when there is nothing in our collective memory of the past to reference. Historically, this is a recent phenomenon that is the result of science, particularly, theoretical science's ability to understand the present in ways humans have not been able to before. When new knowledge is presented as theory (as unprecedented), the initial reaction is to treat it with a great deal of skepticism even if there is mounting evidential proof of it.

As mentioned in previous posts, most human beings are experiential learners.  That is one of the primary reasons why the past is so readily referenced.  An experience in which there is no past to reference tends to disorient us to the present and cause us to scramble to find some semblance in the past to reference.

A primary example of this is climate change and its connection to global warming.  This has quickly moved from being theoretical to experiential as every continent is experiencing its effects.   Yet, there are many, especially in the United States, who deny the science behind the experience.

Living in the State of South Dakota, where people are use to experiencing dramatic changes in weather quite frequently, occludes the realization that these dramatic changes are becoming more extreme and common place elsewhere and have a human fingerprint as to their causes.  During a recent, early spring  blizzard in which the temperature was winter-like I heard two gentlemen say to each other derisively, "So much for global warming" - a common statement amongst individuals in this part of the county which belies an unintentional awareness and fear that cannot be spoken of directly because that would be considered politically incorrect in a red state.

If we didn't have access to global news, I might have found myself agreeing with them.  I too have experienced throughout my life the periodic extreme of South Dakota weather, but while these gentlemen were talking about the extreme cold for the time of year they seemed totally unaware that two states south of us, in Oklahoma, people were experiencing wildfires that threatened whole communities.  The fact is scientists, with almost uncanny precision, warned us almost to the year when such anomalous weather would occur and that it is linked to human activity. The scientists' ability to do this was due to being able to assess the present for what it is from a strict scientific analysis of the elements involve; that was independent of the need to rely on historical knowledge of the past.  In fact, their discoveries in the present clarified the history of Earth's weather in the past.

In this case,  being able to recall periodic extreme weather experiences of the past has numbed many to the growing reality of human activities link to global warming's effect on weather by relativizing constant extremes with extremes that were, just a few years ago known as a once-in-five-hundred-years events. Such increasingly frequent events are becoming normalized and, in this case, the recollection of past experiences is leading some to a denial of the present thus inhibiting doing something now to ensure a future.

The past is always before us. The past has always been the yardstick used to measure the present, even though science is offering other means to understand what is happening now.  Coping with the present then becomes a matter of knowing how to use the past correctly; knowing its limits in defining the moment we're in.  Coping with the present is also benefited by sincere consideration of knowledge that seems new to one's ears, accepting that we are learning new things from science, to  engage in  truly objective analysis that is independent of historical experience regarding unprecedented occurrences involving ourselves and the world we live in.

Coping with the present is also benefited by letting the moment  be just as it is (for the moment) in order to step away from the angst, and to orient one's self to the immediate present without measuring it, adding to it, or subtracting from it without analysis; to experience in the moment what goes unnoticed, the sun shining, the breeze, the temperature of the air, the sounds of nature, one's own breathing and being right now.

Until next time, stay faithful.