Robert Reich on why he’s optimistic
"I have faith in the goodness and reasonableness of the American people when they become aware of huge problems that threaten our and the world’s existence,” Reich, a public policy professor and former Secretary of Labor, writes. “We are, I think, coming to a tipping point in how we understand the challenges to our continued existence."
Reich quotes Jeremy Lent, an author with whom I wasn’t familiar but whose books are praised by people I respect, including physicist Fritjof Capra; neuropsychiatrist Dan Siegel; and environmentalist James Gustave Speth, with whom I frequently interacted for a decade when he was president of the World Resources Institute.
Lent says:
“A civilization built on a different foundation would start from an acknowledgment that the deep interconnectedness of all life is not romantic aspiration but scientific fact — confirmed by complexity science, systems biology, and Earth science, and affirmed by wisdom traditions of cultures that never lost that understanding.
"From this recognition, different goals follow: not perpetual growth but setting the conditions for all people to flourish on a regenerated Earth. Not maximization of returns on capital but the kind of reciprocal, mutualistic relationship with living systems that makes long-term human wellbeing possible.
"There is no blueprint that will save us. No one person or group can design in advance what such a civilization will look like in its particulars. But a framework of core principles can orient us — the way a distant horizon orients a traveler moving through unmarked terrain.
"You may not yet see the exact path, but knowing the general direction changes everything about which opportunities you embrace and which you recognize as alluring detours.
"The trance that keeps us from seeing this is powerful. But it has been broken before. Every paradigm that once seemed like reality itself — the divine right of kings, the natural inferiority of women, the Earth at the center of the universe — turned out to be a myth that was shattered.”
Reich says:
”I agree with Lent. It’s time to eschew the myths that contributed to the reelection of the most dangerous person ever to occupy the White House, myths that continue to limit our beliefs and imaginations: that widening inequality and an ever-larger military are necessary and inevitable, that we need a billionaire oligarchy to guide our economy and a ‘strongman’ to lead our government, that a political revolution founded on returning American democracy to the ideal of self-government would be too destabilizing, that continued growth of the Gross Domestic Product is an unmitigated good, and that more ‘productivity’ and ‘efficiency’ are always beneficial.
”The most dangerous myth of all is that there is no alternative to the path we’re on, that we have no control over our destiny, and that, just as it was inevitable that we came to where are, our unraveling is similarly inevitable.”
Reich posted this on Sunday. But if he were posting it this morning, maybe he would have ended with “After all, look what just happened in Hungary.”
Also in the news
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BBC: Twenty-one hours was not enough to end 47 years of hostility between Iran, U.S.
NYTimes analysis of failure of Saturday’s one-day U.S.-Iran negotiation
Trump announces U.S. naval blockade of Strait of Hormuz after Iran talks collapse
AP analysis: Trump declares victory, no matter what, and Iran war is the latest example
Iran war sends inflation soaring and the mood of American consumers plunging
Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orbán concedes defeat after ‘painful’ election result
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Trump Washington arch plan includes golden-winged figure, eagles, lions and ‘One Nation Under God’
Democrats are pushing back against outside groups flooding their primaries with campaign cash
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Judge temporarily bars Arizona from regulating prediction market operators and pauses prosecution of Kalshi
Federal judge dismisses another DOJ lawsuit seeking voter data, this time in Massachusetts
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D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser unveils her final budget, with $469 million in cuts
Heather Cox Richardson on the economy, Iran, Hungary, more
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As climate change outpaces evolution, scientists are using DNA to catch up
AP exclusive: Trump administration admits glaring error in its New York health fraud accusations
KFF: How to make a high-deductible health insurance plan work for you
Too young for the MMR vaccine, babies become ‘sitting ducks’ in measles outbreaks
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