As a fan of the Good News Roundup, I have been inoculated against despair daily by an amazing team of writers, led by Goodie. After getting my dose today, an observation nagging at me all week came into focus. Politics with a small “p” is not news to most media outlets. Good news is news, but doesn’t get as wide a play as bad news (the more violence and sex involved, the better).
But this week, around Monday, a tipping point was reached. Many tipping points, actually. Assumptions are falling like rain, and major media outlets are scrambling to get wet. All from subtle things, but important things, happening in the zeitgeist. Like many other tipping points of this kind, it started with death and violence on our screens (TV and computer) — but morphed into a rippling of consciousness raising on a global scale like seeing the Berlin Wall come down.
When not-news (in the cynical sense) spreads so fast and so far that major media change their angle, a tipping point is revealed. A week ago was cops vs. looters. Monday Trump and Cotton pushed the line too far, enabled by Barr and other yahoos. Their actions — and, more significantly, their inactions — brought a response tidal in nature and impossible to capture in journalistic reports.
This week? That could be the best kind of news of all.
Cops are fading to the background and letting the protesters take control of the streets. Military personnel sucked into the maelstrom are being disarmed and disbanded. Provocateurs who show up like mosquito when trouble is afoot have slithered back into their hidey-holes. Mayors and county executives are being confronted if they resist, allowed to join in if they are ready. Protesters who were the core last week are being joined by thousands of protesters today who found themselves taking a step over a line they didn’t cross just a week ago.
Another tipping point, for thousands who stand to protest. A further tipping point for those watching and talking to their friends and relatives about the issues of the protest instead of the issue of “law ‘n order” knee-jerk responses.
And knee-jerk responses are losing their panache and their power to play with any force in the chattering heads. I saw David Brooks and Mark Shields on NPR yesterday (another of my favorites) and it wasn’t even a debate. It is obvious now to all citizens that this change must come, and the time to dither has run out.
Another tipping point reached.
n mathematics, catastrophe theory is a branch of bifurcation theory in the study of dynamical systems; it is also a particular special case of more general singularity theory in geometry.
Bifurcation theory studies and classifies phenomena characterized by sudden shifts in behavior arising from small changes in circumstances, analysing how the qualitative nature of equation solutions depends on the parameters that appear in the equation. This may lead to sudden and dramatic changes, for example the unpredictable timing and magnitude of a landslide.
Wikipedia
A whole wave of progressive and near-progressive officials and candidates now have an opportunity we rarely get.
Sometimes you can’t avoid an impending catastrophe, but you can still see it coming, and you can have your plans ready when it emerges. The new growth economist Paul Romer famously said “A good crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” Very often, leaders, policymakers, and strategists can only get the resources and political capital they will need to institute their desired changes when they are operating in near-catastrophe situations, either when a catastrophe appears impending or one has just occurred.
Chapter 4. Models -- Foundations for Organizational Foresight
Nearly 20 years ago, I protested against the madness of the Patriot Act and the ensuing wars with no point. 30 years ago, I protested against the first Iraq war — a pointless exercise in colonial masturbation all for oil interests. 40 years ago I protested against the rise of the neo-conservatives and the Moral Majority, and the escalation of the drug war into the madness of incarceration on a massive scale unprecedented in our history. 50 years ago I protested against Nixon and the last gasp of the domino theory of colonial masturbation. My predecessors protested for civil rights 60 years ago. Predecessors before them fought for Democratic Socialism (Henry Wallace and Eleanor Roosevelt), women’s suffrage, unions….
Wave after wave. Nudge after nudge. Edging toward a catastrophe edge in multidimensional and multicultural space.
As we slide toward the edge, we are ready for bifurcation — a clean break between two outcomes: one of lower order and more entropy and another of higher order and more synergy. Millions of us, living and dead, have worked toward the latter. Obama gave us the hope we could get there. Bernie harangued and battled to change the platform and the agenda. Most of our Presidential candidates this round took the baton and made it commonplace. And now Joe Biden — Joe frickin’ Biden, for Pete’s sake! — only needs to gather the threads and doesn’t even have to campaign in any traditional sense. His best option now is just to look and sound Presidential. Mellowed by age and experience and dedicated to finding what is possible and leading a team of professionals in politics and government, he himself is a variable unlikely, but now an agent of change. Looking and sounding Presidential is in his DNA and essential to his public persona, as natural for him as breathing at this point in his life.
Catastrophe theory of arousal
This was presented by a sports psychologist named Hardy and is based on a three-dimensional model which examines how performance is influenced by the relationship between somatic arousal and cognitive arousal.
Catastrophe theory like inverted U theory claims that as somatic arousal increases then the quality of performance improves. However, catastrophe theory adds a third dimension to this prediction by stating that the performance will reach maximum potential at the optimum level only if cognitive arousal is kept low.
Motivation And Arousal
Jake Rodgers
I remember the caucuses of 2008 very well. I was in the Dennis Kuchinich group wearing blinking alien antennae (OK, I like the silliness of the caucus. I’m an Iowa Democrat). When my group wasn’t viable, by a mile, my 18-year son and his friends came over and my son said, “OK, Dad. Get in line for Obama”. And I did. Obama wasn’t a hippie, but he motivated my son and his friends and that was important. Right now, a whole citizenry is ready to listen to their children, and our children are talking.
We are aroused from our slumber, our cynicism, our despair. But the knowing we have to do something is everywhere. The virus has turned our attention inward and brought to the foreground public servants too long languishing in obscurity. The spark of another senseless death, fanned by the spectacle of useless policing ideas that protesters must quickly be contained and then ignored, pushed us to optimum arousal. The catastrophe is coming. We fall up, to higher orders of synergy, instead of down to lower orders of conflict and entropy. Once we go over the edge, we can relax again, confident We The People are now again in command, and our leaders will have to follow. We will be able to relax again, after a job well done. We fall together, gravity of the chains holding us back having fallen away.
We were ready to rise. We may not have known it. We may not have felt it these past few months. But the edge of the catastrophe curve is near, and we are happily sliding to it, or reluctantly clawing to hold it back a bit more. But gravity is kicking in, in reverse. We are ready to let go. We are ready to rip things apart knowing better ways to organize await the opportunity and have been ready for a long time. We are all coming to the knowledge that letting go will be OK. We are ready and know in our bones and our hearts that whatever happens in the aftermath will be better than things have been.
We can taste the freedom, and our hunger for it is irresistible. It’s about damn time.