All Together Now (Part Two)

[PETRUS]

21. Thank you.

That's quite a story (about Chief Waterman's sister). And I think you're right about "step one" (i.e. re-charging the batteries of our constitutional democracy).

In spite of my pessimism about current circumstances, I have a great deal of faith in ordinary people. Most everyone I've met and dealt with - including people with whom I have sharp political disagreements - are decent and reasonable most of the time. There's a book on my to read list that I haven't yet gotten to (I manage to complete between one and two volumes a week, but that's not a rapid enough pace to prevent my "want to read" list from getting longer and longer): "A Paradise Built in Hell," by Rebecca Solnit. Unless I've been misinformed about its contents, the author looks at places struck by some kind of disaster extreme enough to break down the normal chains of supply as well as systems of order and authority and finds that, by and large, people come together to support one another.

There's a tremendous amount of power in the world, and it's distributed quite unevenly. If science is correct about the way we're stressing natural systems and the likely consequences, more and more people will feel both desperate and threatened, and I expect those with power will wield it, which could get very ugly. But I also think there will be examples of "paradise built in hell." My instincts are that the more egalitarian and democratic society is, the more elegant and humane our response to catastrophe will be.