…continuing from two weeks ago.

Perhaps to reach optimal productivity from discomfort, we need to first establish world-wide-spread comfort. If we have a comforted / comfortable constituent base that feels secure in opportunities for education, peace and prosperity, then perhaps the burden of the necessary awareness from discomfort can be properly placed on the shoulders of more thoughtful worldwide and community leaders and experts, who are capable of mitigating existing and unforeseen threats to our long term survival. As long as we have a constituent base mired in discomfort and on the less preferable side of widening wealth and power gaps, we have an audience for populists, despots, tyrants, autocrats, oppressors, and fringe fear-mongering fascists spouting divisive rhetoric. And as long as we have that audience, we will have an us and we will have a them.

Today we spend more on broad interventions toward things like education, peace and prosperity than we do on narrow interventions toward things like climate change, environmental damage and readiness for future pandemics. According to Toby Ord in “The Precipice” today we spend more on ice cream than we do on existential risk. (Ord, 2020, p. 58). Yet from where I sit, our efforts, both broad and narrow, are haphazard and misguided. To me, it appears we have left opportunity out of the equation. To me, it appears that we continue to be blind to the coin flip that occurs at birth. And because of this instinctive ignorance, divisiveness runs rampant and reigns supreme.

We have new leadership in this country. Or do we? For me, leadership is not about intention and rhetoric; leadership is about action and progress. For me, leadership is not about today; leadership is about tomorrow. For me, leadership is not to be boss, or to think I know better or best, or to estrange, or to put others in their place; leadership is to listen and understand, with compassion and empathy. We will see if our leadership is new or merely a candy-coated version of the status quo.

But this is where comfort becomes dangerous. What if our leadership makes their constituency comfortable? Will they then continue to stretch for optimal productivity from the discomfort of existential threat? Or will they be lulled into a comfortable false sense of security? Simply leveling opportunity will not resolve risk. Greater and more equitable opportunity may encourage a more educated constituency to seek understanding and become a more active part of the effort toward long term survival, but if not properly guided, this advantage may also sidetrack or distract us with too many opinions, or (worse yet) we may simply create a larger false sense of security and allow the advantage to be spent on more selfish short-term us-them efforts.

We are in a difficult place. We must seek discomfort to become aware and to encourage change, but we must create comfort to discourage divisiveness so we may work together; or at least work on what is important. And we must narrow the gaps, yet we are still operating on a strong instinct to widen the gaps. It is a multi-level entanglement of contradiction and hardship. In recent months we have seen our government send stimulus payments to individuals. I believe this has helped to restore some sense of validity (and yes, comfort) to many in need. Today I read that the IRS is considering withholding a next round of stimulus payments from those that owe the IRS. Withholding validity from those people who need it most and those people who have suffered most from a coin flip. Today I also read that some Republican leaders in the House and the Senate are once again rallying around Trump; despite some distancing as little as 10 days ago. Perpetuating divisiveness that hurts those people who need cooperation the most and helps to maintain the status quo. Oppression. Our government, our bureaucracy, once again blind to the coin flip, and once again instinctively maintaining the gap, and once again keeping “Those People” in their place.

I am screaming inside. Yesterday, three paragraphs above, I wrote “we will see if our leadership is new or merely a candy-coated version of the status quo.” It appears, on multiple fronts, that the question is being answered – We have (so far) entered an era of candy-coated status quo.