Grieving This World

A swirl of seemingly disparate thoughts just might form something coherent.  It's all prompted by the stream of topics I run across--power, political movements, optimism, climate change, the Dream Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about when we think "good intentions" are enough and we forget our history.

Injustice laid the foundation for what the United States has become. Violence is a feature of empire. With our long history of subjugation and plunder, Mr. Coates states the U.S. is in no position to hold ourselves up as an example for other countries--we are not exceptional. And it's easy to overlook how those of us who are privileged benefit. Greg Epstein reviews Coates' Between the World and Me:

If you, like me, applauded with all your might at the election of our first black president, but had never truly stopped to re-evaluate your life in light of the fact that slavery was the single biggest industry in early American history and thus the “down payment” allowing us all to enjoy lives of relative, super-powerful comfort, welcome to The Dream.

I would still like to think that change can happen; that there's a reason to be optimistic. Political movements like #BlackLivesMatter emerge and make a difference, but power exists and power generally gets what it wants.

Injustice ties in with the question of our survival as a species as we hurtle toward environmental disaster. Epstein:

Fittingly, the book ends with an expression of profound fear: that the same human motives and frailties that created the institution of slavery have morphed into a technological juggernaut that now threatens every human life, and our very planet, in the form of climate change. Will we, together, come up with a better way to live?

Mr. Coates is not optimistic. He suggests that the arc of history bends toward chaos. It could be we face near-term extinction. How do we face that fear? How do we carry that sadness? How do we grieve something far beyond any personal loss?

And so I come to feel a need to understand more about grief. I suspect grief is not about comfort. And there is likely to be a lot of discomfort and suffering in the years to come.

Sometimes a loss is unexpected, but there are definitely losses to be anticipated. It seems that preparation, when possible, is preferred. Does it mean anything about our social mindset when a literary review indicates that "death is a hot topic right now"?

But I'm not really sure what preparation entails. There are the five stages. There are notions of a graceful exit or a planetary hospice. There are the regrets of the dying.

Mr. Coates talks about how distraught his teenage son was after Michael Brown got killed last year. He decided not to tell his son that everything was going to be OK. He allowed him to feel that pain. False comfort leaves that child ill-prepared for the real world. It's a "bitter pill" to take, but a necessary step toward finding one's place and purpose in that world. The worst thing is to not be ready.