A National Outbreak Of Sobriety

     “May it please milord hero, the world is not what we wish it to be. It is what it is. No, I have over-assumed. Perhaps it is indeed what we wish it to be. Either way, it is what it is. Le voila! Behold it, self-demonstrating. Das Ding an Sich. Bite it. It is. Ai-je raison? Do I speak truly?” — Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road

     I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve quoted Heinlein, here and in other places where my writing has appeared. On occasion, I ask myself whether I’d have become the person I am without his influence. Occasionally I’ve differed with one of his sentiments, but not often, and not in a superior, I-know-more-than-you-about-this spirit. And today, I think I know why I hold him in such esteem.

     Heinlein was a sober man. Just as in Star’s comment at the top of this piece, he took reality as it comes, and worked within its constraints. When pontificating about anything real, he stuck firmly to observable, verifiable reality. He limited his finesses to his fiction.

     Just now, many millions of drunks are awakening to some of reality’s hard surfaces. Some are angry that reality hasn’t indulged them. They don’t seem to recognize that one can’t “legislate” changes to the laws of nature. Not that it hasn’t been tried.

     I’m off on a ramble here, so follow along if you like, surf away if you don’t. I don’t promise any millennial illuminations, just a few thoughts about aspects of reality we’d prefer to be otherwise.

A man said to the universe:
     “Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
     “That fact has not created in me
     A sense of obligation.”

— Stephen Crane —

Nobody rides for free,
Nobody gets it like they want it to be,
Nobody hands you any guarantee.

— Jackson Browne —

     Matt Bracken, whom I admire greatly, has penned one of his darkest forebodings:

     Folks in the post-war generation born between 1946 and 1964 are now sixty or older. Scanning social media, it’s hard to miss the anger building against Baby Boomers. Those born after them are increasingly placing the blame for their woes on the unrelenting greed of the Baby Boomer generation. They believe that the Boomers had the sheer luck to be born when America was in its ascendency, and so they accumulated all the wealth, and now they are determined to take it all with them to the grave, not sharing a penny with the generations which came after.
     […]
     So add anger toward the Baby Boomer generation to the anger of Blacks against Whites, the poor against the rich, socialists against capitalists, Democrats against Trump Republicans, and a witch’s brew of social anger is being stirred with more and more fire building under the bubbling pot.
     Our social contract is so frayed that when riots begin the withheld anger boils over.
     White Baby Boomers living in single-family homes in affluent suburbs will be at the greatest risk of any demographic. The anger toward them will be come from several social vectors at the same time. People displaced from urban cores by rampant criminality will have no compunction at all against invading the homes of empty-nest Baby Boomers. Their lives will be taken in the first minutes if they are fortunate. If not, their prolonged abuse and torture will serve to amuse the new tenants.

     A grim imagining, to be sure. Moreover, it has a nonzero chance of materializing in the foreseeable future. The key insight is a simple one:

     There’s a great deal to say about the process from which this situation developed. I’m not going to say any of it. It is what it is. The past isn’t just a foreign country; it’s an inaccessible country, frozen in time’s peculiar amber. We must live, plan, and work today.

     There are many ways of partitioning a population into demographic cohorts. The one of importance today is not one of the usual ones. Indeed, it has an unpleasant cast:

• There are those who accept reality and its constraints;
• And there are those who think they’re owed.

     These are not like racial or ethnic distinctions. Individuals can move between them, and often do. Many other characteristics are found in both cohorts. Nor is it fair to say that one cohort is “good” and the other “bad.” I’ve known career criminals who were utterly realistic, and individuals who were sweet as sugar, kind to everyone they met, who nevertheless were consumed by envy.

     One dominated by envy is unable to perceive reality clearly. It’s a lot like being drunk. The cause-and-effect chains enforced by the laws of nature, including human nature, are out there operating smoothly, as they always have. The envious either are blind to them, or will them aside. They “want what’s coming to them,” and that’s all there is. Who said anything about work?

     He who “sobers up” – i.e., who accepts reality as it is – will usually operate sanely thenceforward. He’ll understand that nobody rides for free and that nobody owes you nothin’. He’ll work for what he wants. There’s no guarantee that he’ll get it, of course, but simply by accepting the italicized propositions, he greatly improves his chance of getting it.

     But drunkenness has a grip. It feels liberating, at least for a while. No constraints! No rules! Just this dizzying ride that seems to last forever. It won’t, of course. That recognition must precede the sobering-up.

     The passage of time steadily separates the sober from the drunken. Over time the gap between then in financial matters, in social status, and in prospects for survival grows ever larger. Some of the drunken awaken to that gap, shake off the fog of intoxication, and get to work righting themselves. Some are shaken awake by the loss of their “enablers.” But some remain drunk lifelong.

     I’ve known men who had a long period of sobriety shattered by an unfriendly turn of chance, and tumbled into drunkenness. I’ve also known men who, though drunk for a considerable time, sobered up, set to work, and eventually joined the ranks of the accomplished and respected. As I said above, people do move between those cohorts.

     The former group often wallow in their miseries. Whatever balm self-pity provides, they slather it on, ignoring whatever insights their misfortune might have borne. The latter group often look back on their drunken period and say “It wasn’t good, exactly, but I learned a lot from it.” The contrast educates them in ways that, quite possibly, nothing else could have done. Yet in both cases, reality continues to be what it is. Its laws aren’t suspended to do either group dirty.

     The analogy does have some rough spots. Being consumed by envy isn’t exactly like drunkenness. But both prevent the sufferer from accepting what he needs to do to improve his lot.

     My self-imposed exile wasn’t for any particular purpose. Maybe it served one even so.
     —No maybes about it, Al. You are not who or what you were. You’re far more. Some of it is invisible to you yet, though it won’t be forever. Just one of the unacknowledged laws of human nature at work.
     Which is?
     —At every moment of your life, you are everything you have ever been. It’s all there, from the instant of your birth onward to this very moment. And it all plays a part.
     Even the pain?
     —Especially the pain.

     [Freedom’s Scion]

     Among the naïve demographic classifications – it’s mainly of interest to socialists – is the partition into Haves and Have-Nots. The appearance of Having can be misleading. Many who appear to Have, including some who Have in great measure, are terribly envious. Similarly, many who appear to Have-Not are happy even so. They might have aspirations, but they’ve accepted their current status as the reasonable result of prior decisions and actions. (Columnist Fred Reed once referred to them as “the successfully poor.”)

     Part of what makes for happiness is the acceptance that there are things one cannot change. Among those things are the past and the laws of nature. Material wealth seems to matter less than the possession of that bedrock realism. It makes it possible to treat past and present as starting points rather than fetters.

     Envy destroys happiness. It focuses the envious one on things he cannot change. He comes to hate them. That he cannot change them only sharpens his hatred. And as one cannot hate natural laws, that hatred must find a palpable target. Usually it’s persons who “have it good.”

     Matt Bracken’s piece suggests that the envious could soon mobilize against those they envy. He cites the Baby Boom generation as the likely initial target, though he also foresees an “All The Last Wars At Once” deterioration into ever finer factions among whom there is no peace.

     What will divide the warring factions from one another is envy. Each will see the others – some of them, at least – as unfairly “having it good.” The criterion may be material, social, or any other pseudo-metric one can imagine. When envy is in the saddle, no good destination is in sight.

     It won’t matter that many who “have it good” worked themselves to a sliver to get what they have. It won’t matter that in many cases the envied one’s true condition is far less desirable than it appears. Envy dismisses such considerations.

     The value of Bracken’s essay to those of us who aren’t ruled by envy is that it points the way to what we should do, if we think Bracken’s predicted future likely. But there’s a lot of envy out there to power the kind of chaos Matt fears. My assessment is that it’s an even-money bet.

     I’ve said enough. Read Matt’s piece. Gather for yourselves whatever evidence you need to decide whether his prognostications are likely or unlikely. Then act accordingly.

     Planning and acting according to what you see and expect is the imperative of realism. Though the Left is doing its damnedest to prevent it, we could enjoy a national outbreak of sobriety. In that case, the future will be bright. Alternately, millions of Americans could sink ever deeper into envy and resentment of others. In that case, trouble is coming.

     Have a nice day.