Catalysts
“In chemistry, a catalyst is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without being consumed in the process. Catalysts work by providing an alternative pathway for the reaction to occur that requires less energy, which lowers the activation energy required for the reaction to proceed. As a result, the reaction can occur more quickly and/or at a lower temperature than it would without the catalyst.” – from https://scitechdaily.com/science-made-simple-what-are-catalysts/
Brains
System-1 / System-2 processing
“When System 2 is otherwise engaged, we will believe almost anything. System 1 is gullible and biased to believe, System 2 is in charge of doubting and unbelieving, but System 2 is sometimes busy, and often lazy”
Thinking Fast and Slow – Kahneman
“You may be tempted to think that System 1 is bad and that we always want to avoid it but that isn’t true. If it weren’t for System 1 taking most of the load of decision making, we’d get nothing done. Our brains just aren’t powerful enough to process all decisions through System 2.” – from https://unconsciousagile.com/2023/09/17/systems-1-and-2.html#fn:ThinkingFastAndSlow
Politics, Groups, Individuals
I, along with many other Americans, am incredibly disappointed in the recent election results. And at the same time, many other Americans are happy with the results. Then there are others in the third category – ‘did not vote’ – who apparently don’t really care either way.
Three groups with three different choices. So now what.
For the most part, the basics will continue as before. Each day all 3 groups will sleep, wake up, eat, do some type of activity – work, school, etc. There will be cleaning and shopping to do. People will engage in different forms of transportation and communication, clothing and shelter. Life will go on, with most of our mental focus and energy generally on “one day at a time”.
But over longer time things will continue to change. Our addictions to cheap / low-cost stuff will eventually force hard choices. (I saw a post where someone summarized dtrump voters as “trading your daughter’s future for the price of a bag of groceries”.) It’s understandable to be distracted with short-term immediate pressures, but I would hope the better side of the human spirit could rise up to remind oneself of the longer-term implications to a wider group of individuals. But I see people with addictions struggle all the time with decisions, so why should this be different.
(We as a country need to look in the mirror and take an honest assessment of who we are. What we say we value versus what our behaviors actually show to be our true values. Ultimately dtrump is just an individual. He’s just a catalyst for a large underlying group brain-chemistry that apparently wants to keep pushy aggressive males in positions of power. ‘Keep gas cheap and we’ll let you get away with anything.’)
Let’s clarify the stakeholders. The media hype is always around the votes (keep it an exciting “close race” so they can sell more ads). The stories talk about the “majority” but what they really mean is “majority of votes”, not “majority of citizens”.
There are 3 large groups of citizens involved:
- voters for dtrump
- voters for Harris (against dtrump)
- those who did not vote
There are just over 160M registered voters in the US, so that means almost 20M of those who could vote this election, did not vote.
There are over 250M US citizens over age 18 (according to recent census data). So that means another 90M people don’t even register to vote. Let’s say several of them have complications – maybe criminal records etc. (side note – estimates are 1M to 5M people have voting restrictions due to felony convictions and/or incarcerations. Our new president-elect is a convicted felon but he can vote and also serve in public office due to inconsistencies in the laws and enforcement). So let’s say even a high number like 30M either can’t or should not vote for some reason. That’s still leaves another 60M people who don’t even bother to register to participate in the democratic process.
So here are the total numbers:
- just over 73M who enabled dtrump and team
- just over 70M who tried to stop him
- over 80M (20M registered and 60M unregsitered) who did not vote at all
Oh, Father tell me, do we get what we deserve?
song lyrics by KALEO
Whoa, we get what we deserve
And way down we go
Way down we go
Mud and Flowers
The only sense of hope I have is that this (and other emergent Autocratic efforts globally) will lead to more people waking up and taking action and eventually evolving into some better level of human progress. Much like when the majority of nations figured out that slavery is a bad thing, hopefully our current times will lead to some new sense of decency and freedom emerging as a new stabilizing global force. But you have to take the long-view perspective.
It is during phase transition – when the temperature and pressure of a system go beyond what the system can withstand and matter changes from one state to another – that the system is most pliant, most possible. This chaos of particles that liquefies solids and vaporizes liquids is just the creative force by which the new order of a more stable structure finds itself. The world would not exist without these discomposing transitions, during which everything seems to be falling apart and entropy seems to have the last word. And yet here it is, solid beneath our living feet – feet that carry value systems, systems of sanity, just as vulnerable to the upheavals of phase transition yet just as resilient, saved too by the irrepressible creative force that makes order, makes beauty, makes a new and stronger structure of possibility out of the chaos of such times
Maria Popova – https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/11/06/transition/
“Most people are afraid of suffering. But suffering is a kind of mud to help the lotus flower of happiness grow. There can be no lotus flower without the mud.”
Thich Nhat Hanh – “No Mud, No Lotus”
So it looks like we might have to walk in the mud for a while and endure the parasites, but new things will grow.
“All together now, all together now
song lyrics by OK Go
All together alone in the chrysalis
We’re all together now
All together now, all together alone in the chrysalis”
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