Outside my window, fresh snow cover sparkles in fields and clings to the pine branches. The land is quiet and the snow undisturbed, not even by squirrel tracks.
The Christmas lights and decorations are gone. Inside, on the day after Epiphany, our home has been cleared of the advent candles, the Christmas tree, Christmas cards and letters, and numerous creche displays. New Year’s Eve celebrations and resolutions have come and gone. On a table, alone between the past and the future, a small poinsettia holds tightly to its final fading red bloom. (Poinsettias symbolize miracles, joy, cheer and success).
The silence contrasts with the persistent insolent sounds of a fracturing society, a crumbling democracy and grieving virus victims. We’re at a point between what has been and what will be. (I know, because my fingers hesitated when called upon to type the year 2022.)
President Biden, in his January 6th speech, declared our country at an inflection point between the past and the future. We have an opportunity to choose the miracles of the poinsettia or acquiesce to growing anarchy. Acquiescence lets past events duplicate and expand into the future, like a chain reaction, bringing more disintegration of truth, trust and the “American way.”
Many people and news analysts fear this trend is inevitable. The verity of truth continues to crumble. Vacuous fear continues to seek a source. The continuing surge of suspicion and mistrust splits apart families, neighbors and nations. A continuing sense of powerlessness explodes into conspiracy theories and increasing violence, like the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a failed attempt to change the presidential election results.
Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers involved in the violence at the U.S. Capitol, has said that their actions were a rehearsal for future organized attacks. It seems impossible for 2022 to escape the impervious fallout from 2021. The poinsettia wilts as Pogo says, “We have met the enemy and he (sic) is us.”
Brian Greene’s book Until the End of Time has led me to consider how humanity may be influenced by the theory of an expanding cosmos. You who are scientists will probably wince at my armchair understanding of astrophysics. After all, my English, philosophy and theology studies have not exactly prepared me to delve into the science of the cosmos.
Greene explains that the universe and the cosmos are continually expanding. Everything in the system, every object and particle, is moving further and further apart. Increasing distances weaken connections among all things. The logical conclusion is that all connections will break apart. Ordered clusters will explode like an overinflated balloon. When the balloon bursts, its shape collapses — no more balloon.
Gone will be all forms of clustered particles, from guacamole to galaxies, black flies to grizzly bears, to moons, planets and suns. The cosmos will reach entropy, a state of disorder. All will be chaos.
This law of material entropy seems similar to the trajectory of a weakening democracy and civil society. The forces at play include fear, ignorance, hegemony, racism and resignation. They lead to the disintegration of trust, empathy, love and understanding. Wars and rumors of wars continue.
We witness the weakening of international conferences, the U.S. Congress, state legislatures and exchanges on social media. Like the astrophysics theory of entropy, human beings may be on a course of separation from one another that will distance all effective communication and lead to a reign of chaos on the village green, in governments, and across borders. My poinsettia withers.
However, there is more to the story. The trajectory toward the disintegration of democracy and toward chaotic human behavior may not be inevitable. Greene theorizes that even as the universe heads toward greater and greater disorder (entropy), there is still energy for forming new units of particles into asteroids, stars, planets and galaxies. The law of the conservation of energy suggests that even entropy cannot prevent energy from functioning.
So, perhaps the continuing political and social disorder and chaos we are experiencing is not inevitable. The law of energy conservation may team up with the human psyche’s aversion to chaos. It may be possible for people to turn that energy toward building new foundations of truth, trust, empathy and love of neighbors. Even those pessimistic media analysts express a natural yearning to resist an inevitable demise of democracy. They reveal a felt need to discover ways to clarify the truth, expose conspiracy theories, rebuild trust and strengthen democracy.
We don’t have definitive answers. However, we may begin by overcoming apathetic attitudes toward movements such as white supremacists, the Oath Keepers, Q-anon conspiracy theorists and racist groups. We may move ahead by seeking innovative ways to come together to discern truth and build trust, instead of seeking divisions. We can recognize that there are many efforts already underway, some with decades of experience.
There are conflict resolution workshops, prison reformers testing restorative justice, municipalities experimenting with guaranteed monthly incomes and fair mortgage access. There are groups welcoming refugees, faith communities offering safe space and advocating for justice. There are groups seeking to restore environmental health, and organizations seeking nuclear weapons disarmament. There are small discussion groups organized to gain empathy and understanding of one another.
In addition, there are many organizations working to heal relationships. Among them are the NAACP, Southern Poverty Law Center, Doctors without Borders, World Council of Churches Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel, the Red Cross and Red Crescent, and the United Nation Relief and Works Agency,
I’m sure readers can list many more opportunities to participate in building community. The tradition of marking a new year may be a good time to reflect on our choices. We may feel the alienation among people and the demise of our democracy is inevitable in these times. But it may be just as inevitable that our humanity will draw us together like hydrogen and oxygen uniting to create life-giving water.
My thirsty poinsettia may bloom with miracles, joy, cheer and success. New life is ours to choose.
(John Buttrick lives in Concord. He can be reached at johndbuttrick@gmail.com.)