the age of precarity

Are things as bad as they seem?

Spiritual exhaustion, moral collapse, environmental degradation. Dall-e by the author

David Brooks, writing with a sense of exasperation and exhaustion, claimed 'America is having a moral convulsion'. He notes that this is nothing new, cycling around like clockwork every 60 years or so. If correct, it means perhaps that we each get one go at moral restoration, a chance to point the ship—and perhaps our lives—back toward true north.

Brooks then introduces a curious word. Referencing Albena Azmanova, a political theorist at the University of Kent, he suggests society has 'entered an age of precarity in which every political or social movement has an opportunity pole and a risk pole', and attributes this moral convulsion to a breakdown of trust and a polarisation of attitudes. In other words, as social structures dissipate, and leaders and institutions squander their moral authority, instability, uncertainty, and a precarious existence follow.

Four decades earlier, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian dissident, made a penetrating, and unpopular, observation in an address at Harvard University. He claimed the West was spiritually exhausted. Has the West run out of spiritual energy, left with nothing in the tank to provide moral frameworks or fortitude, and so now experiencing economic, geopolitical and environmental exhaustion? From spiritual exhaustion, to moral convulsion, to everyday exhaustion.

what wobbled to caused our world to shake?

Precarity. What an interesting term to describe the volatile and uncertain times in which we find ourselves.

Precarity, like other stressors, is felt particularly on the fringes. As the centre wobbles the fringe convulses. Or, to put it in more practical terms: when the plane hits turbulence, those in first class clutch their champagne, while those at the back clutch their children. It's much more violent for those removed from the cause, like a tidal wave that races across the ocean just a few centimetres high, that breaks onto the beach with terrifying force.

And so, Brooks' moral convulsion, experienced as precarity on the outliers, is a consequence of some wobble in the centre.

What wobbled?

On one hand perhaps the fault line between tradition and modernity, between conservatives and progressives—one aspect of the kinds of polarisation to which Brooks refers—fractured. While that may not offer an overall explanation, we could probably find evidence of significant contribution.

Self-referential truth

However, within that fault line we can find another, more insidious, fault line: that which separates reality from unreality. A post-modern post-truth world where everything is both fluid and self-referential means that the centre lacks foundation, and any shock races to the fringes. No authority can withstand or resist the person who claims they have a franchise on the truth, and that disagreement constitutes rejection, and so those who oppose are to be cancelled.

To be clear, this is not a left-right political argument, but a metaphysical distinction. We can hold to varying political positions, social attitudes ... but when we cannot agree on what constitutes reality, and that it is a function of what one personally feels and believes, then we have a problem. However, when you put your finger into an electrical socket you will immediately grasp that 'perception is reality' is really quite silly.

Since Solzenhitzyn's insight we have seen the rise of the the self-referential narcissist: the self-serving person who holds themselves out as the arbiter of truth. It's very difficult, if not impossible, to have an effective conversations with someone who holds, first, that they are absolutely correct, and that, second, if you happen to disagree then not simply is your position invalid, but you have no right to exist and should be cancelled. It's not personal, it's not about you, but rather the natural consequence of you holding onto what is, according to those in power, untrue.

This is upside down.

As our good friend Kierkegaard pointed out, the crowd is untruth. In other words, the wisdom of crowds is often little more than shared wailing: a cacophony of noise in which all think they are singing a song, the right song, while they are in fact badly out of tune. Cast your mind back to the ‘follow the science’ claims during the pandemic.

the wobble starts in us—not out there

We are pondering therefore, in a very summary manner, whether precarity is a consequence of a metaphysical earthquake that has split thought and act, ideas and reality. In other words, is precarity the result of more and more people having less and less in common, and everyone having a platform that allows them to dial up the volume to a screaming match, broadcast on full shout setting.

Solzhenitsyn observed that the fault line that separates one from another actually runs through the human heart: it is me who is fractured, me who wants to choose badly, and me who wants to be served first. Multiply that out by seven billion souls, and we might have a better understanding of the moral violence being done to our societies.

I suspect, therefore, that an intellectual and spiritual wobble starts somewhere deep within each of us, and ripples out to emotional, economic and environmental exhaustion. The chasm between people is a manifestation of the abyss in the human soul. I appreciate this is an hypothesis that needs to be investigated, but does it seem to make sense to you? Is there a possible link between the way we think and the way we treat one another, and then the way we treat our institutions and our environment?

There are, of course, very good people doing very good things. Alas, they are in the few. How do they become the many? It starts with you. Your actions today setoff a tidal wave of disruption: and that disruption can be for the good rather than for the bad. Consider that as you cast the stone of your actions into the pond of life.