When “May You Live in Interesting Times” Isn’t Just a Curse

This piece ran as a newspaper op/ed in early September, 2024

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When the never-before-seen happens, it reveals forces — previously hidden — at work in the human world.

In recent years, Conservative America has unfolded in ways I’d have thought unthinkable. And I’ve spent the past twenty years trying to understand what this development reveals about how things happen. (One example:  how a President could refuse to accept the results of a legitimate election, incite an insurrection to hold onto power, and yet remain the leader of America’s conservative Party.)

Now we’ve witnessed another never-before-seen political phenomenon, and this one, too, draws our attention to the deep workings of the human world. Namely, almost overnight, the anti-Trump political force underwent an astonishing transformation from a state of dread and helplessness into a profoundly different state of the spirit.

Among the salient characteristics of this new state are: 1) extraordinary intensity of passion, 2) unprecedented motivation toward activist participation, and 3) a remarkable joyousness.

What does such an eruption (which is so unlike anything — I know of — in the history of American and other democracies) reveal about how our world works?

The Battle Between Good and Evil

That upsurgence of Spirit in the anti-Trump political force seems connected with a fundamental dimension of how we humans perceive the world. Namely, some situations we experience as “The Battle Between Good and Evil.”

Most people with a “secular worldview” don’t believe that such a Battle describes anything real happening in our world. But here’s a reality: the evidence of human cultures and their mythologies that it is part of our nature 1) to perceive some situations in some such terms, and 2) to respond to that battle with intense passion.

Our culture also demonstrates the centrality to our inner being of such a battle. Consider the countless movies depicting our heroes battling against Nazis, or the countless cowboy heroes with their “white hats” defeating the “black hat” gang.

How deeply we love going through the narrative that takes us from the threat from Evil to the victory of the Good is shown by how our biggest “blockbuster” movies take us through that precise process. – Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Avatar. In all of them, we identify strongly with a Hero who is fighting against Evil.

The power of that Battle explains the intensity of the emergent Spirit in the anti-Trump political force. The people in that force perceive the meaning of a Trump victory in November as a threat to everything about America they think Good. (I.e., as a victory for Fascism and tyranny over Democracy and “the Rule of Law,” as a loss of “the land of the free,” and of “leader of the free world.”)

Their dread, in other words, was of Evil getting the power to rule their world.

The intensity of the response to that force’s changing champions – from Biden to Harris – corresponds to the intensity of feeling about whether Good or Evil will rule the world. When the showdown is an election contest, and the hopes of the people inevitably depend on which candidate wins, the drama is steeped in the Heroic dimension.

The Spirit of the Heroic

This archetypal Battle of Good and Against Evil typically features a Hero — whether it be Luke Skywalker taking on the Empire, David going up against Goliath, or St. George slaying the Dragon. Kamala, not Biden, against Donald Trump. The Hero represents “Us” against the Destructive Force.

But it is not the Hero alone who does battle. The “Us,” typically, also participates.

That participation can be vicarious, through our identification. But it is also active: when Luke wages that Battle, we go through what the hero does in our emotions, and even our muscles.

I believe it is that same participatory passion that accounts for another quite extraordinary thing about this political eruption: the exceptionally high proportion of supporters who feel driven to contribute to the fight: filling arenas to the rafters, making countless small donations, providing hordes of volunteers.

The sense of a “Battle Between Good and Evil” infuses a multitude with the Spirit of the Heroic.

(Built Into Us

(An important reality is disclosed by the fact that something deep inside us is primed to see some circumstances as such a Battle, and to respond by seeking out the experience of fighting and winning against “Evil.” (Not that there’s any guarantee that people will judge rightly what’s Good and what’s Evil.)

(If it is indeed part of our inborn nature, that means that evolution crafted us to experience some things in those terms, and to respond to that Battle the way our heroes do in those blockbusters. And the selection for those tendencies implies that perceiving things as “a Battle Between Good and Evil” helped our ancestors get their DNA into the future.

(And it’s doubtful that would have been selected for if it didn’t capture something real and important about our world.

(The secular worldview should be expanded to recognize that reality and importance, which our religious worldviews have long understood.)

“Be Not Afraid.”

As for the conspicuous “Joy” of this movement, that seems connected with the ancient biblical injunction, “Be not afraid!” And with the “champion’s” decision to deal with the threat with confidence, not focusing on the dark possibilities.