Touch Grass
The opening scene of the new 3 Body Problem series on Netflix is getting attention. In it, a physics professor is beaten to death in front of bloodthirsty crowd for failing to denounce theories that displease the Chinese Communist Party.
Some point out that the summer of 2020 echoed this kind of revolutionary fervor. Some warn of the danger of the resurgence of new forms of communism. Katherine Boyle:
Neo-communism is all around us. It’s a shape-shifting ideology that always looks silly when you first see it’s new form. But make no mistake, when it truly takes hold, it ends with this.
While vigilance toward the recurrent threat of political extremism is warranted, it’s worth stepping back and taking stock of where we are. What is this newest version of the far left doing? How does it compare to the 20th century’s notorious communist parties? The Soviets and the CCP killed around 100 million. The Wokes cancelled (you might say socially murdered) perhaps a few thousand. A world where the far left socially murders thousands is much better than a world where the far left literally murders a hundred million. That’s huge progress.
The other specter haunting the world since the dark days of the twentieth century is the far right. The far right of the twentieth century killed on the order of perhaps ten million, with the Nazis symbolizing the danger of the far right. I don’t even know what the far right does today or who it is comprised of. It is a tiny, sad, marginal group. I guess Richard Spencer is far right. He is a white nationalist. He is a nobody. I had to dig his name up from his 15 minutes of fame some years back. Donald Trump is a moderate, non-ideological businessman from New York City who sometimes speaks rudely about some immigrant groups. He is not far right.
So the opposing specters of the far left and far right, for all the breathless coverage of their latest outrages, are essentially marginal groups that do a tiny fraction of the harm of their predecessors. That doesn’t keep Americans from endlessly entertaining and tormenting themselves with their heroic “anti-fascist” and “anti-communist” quests.
Why do we do this?
What are we doing? Why are we doing this? Why are we making ourselves miserable by fighting these imaginary enemies? It might be as simple as the mindless continuation of an unhealthy habit. We are biologically and culturally evolved to live in fear of death and destruction, to band together and hunker down to survive the next attack, the next winter, the next famine.
Our ancestors fought and fought over countless generations to solve these hard, hard problems. It seemed like things would never get better. Life would always be unremittingly brutal and tragic. But in the last few centuries, we started to see seemingly eternal problems vanish permanently, one after one, at an accelerating rate.
In the last few generations, large parts of the world have found themselves facing the unexpected problem of not knowing what problem to solve because there are no pressing, major problems. We live in our ancestors’ heaven, and we don’t know what we’re supposed to do here.
We expect things to be bad and look for evidence to confirm this expectation. This is our well-known negativity bias. It’s an understandable bias given our history, but it’s become a hindrance, a barrier to thriving in the paradisal world our less fortunate ancestors worked so hard to leave us.
How do we do better?
Now we need to step back, take stock of reality, and adjust our essential way of being. That’s quite a task. No wonder we’ve been putting it off. It’s so much easier and more comfortable to cling to our fear and contempt for our imaginary enemies.
Our essential way of being before, in harder times, was weary, bitter, fearful, pessimistic, and angry. Of course individuals and societies often transcended this state, but the default was negative. It’s just how things were. It was just the sensible response to the conditions of the time.
Now we can do better, we can live better, we can be better. The big challenge now is to shift from minimizing negatives (oppression, inequality, environmental harm) to maximizing positives (empowerment and flourishing of individuals and communities in a million niches). Easier said than done. And I certainly don’t have the answers, I don’t have the blueprint of how to do that.
What I do know is that the better I manage my bias towards negativity and the more I focus on what I can do to develop my corner of the world into something better, the better my life is and, I believe, eventually the better the world around me will be. You have to remember to touch grass:
"Touch grass" is an internet expression that encourages someone to go outside and reconnect with reality, especially by spending time in nature or getting fresh air.
Step back from the culture war, touch grass, appreciate the wondrous world your ancestors built for you, and build something even better for the next generation. The bad news is, you have no excuse for not thriving. The good news is, your potential to do good in this time and place is nearly boundless.