Whenever I start getting really down about the incoming twinsies (Presidency Trusk) or the fact that Congress is going to be a sea of red or the fact that tariffs are going to make purchasing things I need nearly impossible, I look back. In particular, I think of Depression-era recipes.
They can be gloomy. But they can also show how people who had next to nothing survived the extreme austerity of the time. They showcase incredible ingenuity and creativity, like using potatoes or cream sauces to stretch incredibly expensive beef cuts and grinds. They used beans in everything, and I mean everything. I found some such inspirations here; sorry in advance for the ads and whatnot. They’re really interesting to examine as an indicator of how we survived lean times. And in a lot of ways, they show us how much we rely on each other.
We’re nowhere near there. Most of us these days feel like we can’t survive without a mobile phone, which is interesting, since they’ve only been used widely for the past 30 or so years. Or Internet, which predates phones by only about a decade. Without access to relentless tech, we don’t know what to do with ourselves anymore. But for the first quarter of a million years of human evolution and existence, we managed without them.
We seem to have this worldview that’s only informed by the world immediately surrounding us. It tends to stop at the end of our noses. To say we’re lacking in perspective is a considerable understatement. And yet…if it came down to feeding ourselves versus paying our mobile bill, we’d let the phones go. Especially if it came down to them versus feeding our families.
What is most embarrassing about this time and place in human, but especially American, history, is our lack of willingness to throw any elbow grease at the problems. We mostly refuse to protest, refuse to contact our elected officials, refuse to vote. Then we have the audacity to turn around and play the blame game.
Anyone who has ever lived through a revolution will tell us we don’t want one. And we really don’t. The collapse of modern American society is not going to help us at all. We do need to figure out more inroads, however. We need to figure out how to take our power back. We have thrown it away almost entirely through scores of elections and non-participation. The Democratic process is on life support in this country.
A few things I think would help:
- The media needs to stop covering absolutely everything Trusk and others do. We need coverage of the legislation being signed and the important things like that. We do not need eleven million photos of Muskie trotting about with his kid on his shoulders. The restoration of actual journalistic integrity is vital. Why would this help? 1: Show them they are not that important. People like Trusk wither and die without constant attention. 2: It gets us back to focusing on what’s important, instead of screeching incendiary rudeness to the rage bait that “journalists” supposedly write. A massive withdrawal of the paparazzi would be very useful. Get on them like white on rice when it comes to policy. But that’s it.
- Building community for community’s sake. Lots of people know and trust their neighbors and that’s awesome, but lots of people isolate behind doom scrolling, alcohol, drugs, sex, other addictions. When we put the phone down and start paying attention to what is actually happening in our communities and in the world around us, that’s real engagement. That’s participation. And when we united on a grassroots level, that is the foundation of uniting on a national level.
- Dare to be wrong. Instead of insisting your worldview is the only one that should exist, talk to people with opposing views and try to understand where they’re coming from. Or don’t talk about the incendiary stuff. Politics is a tiny slice of our lives; we have the whole rest of them to share with each other. Get creative and stay curious. I am not suggesting anyone give up on their morals and values, but I am suggesting that we all might relate on so many other aspects of our lives, our intelligence, and our hearts, than the flags we plant in our yards during election season.
To be clear, I absolutely don’t do any of this stuff perfectly, and I’m not suggesting you have to. These are just some ideas for building ourselves and each other up starting at our foundations. Who we are, what we want, how we gauge success, what makes us happy: you’re going to get a different bouquet of answers from every single person on the planet. How can we build each other up instead of tearing each other down? How can we stay curious and continue to invest in ourselves and each other in ways that are actually real.
Because the show in DC and government offices everywhere isn’t really real. The decisions being made can have devastatingly real consequences, but if we band together and determine that we call the shots, not them, we do’t need a revolution. Just an active, participating public.
Distractible Content 