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It’s funny how the same statement can have such different meanings. Take, for example, something along the following lines:

We all agree to stick together, with one another and with this agreement, and see it through no matter what; we will follow through with this compact to our very ends.

A noble statement of shared determination—or a suicide pact?

It all depends on the context, really. At a very basic level it’s arguably the same thing, but circumstances can make the practical meaning vary widely.

. . .

Believe it or not, I arrived at this probably rather odd, esoteric observation from the relatively brass-tacks deal on tax cut and unemployment benefit extensions which has caused such a kerfuffle the past few days. As far as I’m concerned, the actual substance of the “deal” itself is not really all that important. Nor are the alleged political implications, real or otherwise. Except inasmuch as it’s one more demonstration of how unfit-for-purpose is much of the machinery (in this case figurative, though a literal meaning often applies as well) on which our nation depends.

As my BFF among The Economist bloggers, “R.A.,” expressed it:

No reasonable person interested in improving the American economy and insuring against debt troubles would draw up the policy compromise that seems to have been reached in Washington this week. But no reasonable person starting from scratch would design America’s sclerotic political institutions, in which a single Senator can derail the plans of the majority party and a determined minority can bring the business of governance to a standstill. … In the highly imperfect world of Washington policymaking, America could have done much worse.

I pretty much agree with all that he wrote, as far as it goes. The problem is that this kind of sentiment seems increasingly to present rather pressing questions which no one really wants to vocalize, let alone attempt to answer.

For example, if by way of a brief tangent, the continued extension of unemployment benefits is, itself, starting to look awfully dubious to me. I may lose my liberal membership card for saying so, but at some point, maybe we aren’t there yet but certainly at some point, isn’t it just kind of stupid to keep paying people to do nothing? By all means, I realize that those on unemployment are required to seek work and, to shore up my bleeding-heart qualifications again, I absolutely believe that most people on unemployment would really prefer to have a proper job doing something relatively productive than to be “on the dole.” I recognize quite well that the simple reality is that there aren’t enough job openings out there just now. (Indeed, I really, really do understand the difficulty of finding respectable, reasonably-paying work of any kind, trust me on this.)

And it seems to me that, whatever reasons one may choose as explanation, private sector enterprise is just not fulfilling its ideal role of job-creation machine in America at present. Maybe it’s just because we’re trying to recover from a financial crisis and such recoveries are, apparently, always painfully slow. I don’t know. Regardless of the reason, though, does it really make sense to just wait it out, probably for years, with millions of people who are willing and able to do something productive being left idle, regardless of whether we give them financial assistance or not? When we have a long list of needs which can really only be paid for by governments and when, clearly, any objections on the basis of government spending “crowding out” private investment cannot be considered valid at present, however much or little sense they might make at any other time?

I don’t see how. And yet, the conclusion reached is the same:

“…Democratic hopes for an infrastructure-based stimulus programme are politically impossible…”

“Can’t do it; Republicans will block it.”
“Can’t do it; it won’t pass the Senate.”
“Can’t do it; politically impossible.”
“Can’t do it; politically impossible.”
“Can’t do it; politically impossible.”

And while this is usually simply considered a dead end and prompts discussions to go in some other direction, the answer to the obvious follow-up question is basically the same:

“Shouldn’t we do something about the Senate/Republicans/politics in America so that they aren’t a constant obstacle to useful actions?”

“Can’t do it; politically impossible.”

That’s not really an answer, though. Because sooner or later, push always comes to shove; if a sclerotic political system makes America now and forevermore incapable of taking action to address important problems in anything like a timely or efficient fashion, if at all, then… sooner or later, America is fucked.

I realize that, as we are constantly reminded, most of the people and organizations participating in America’s national dialogue seem capable of looking about five minutes into the future at most, and maybe 15 seconds into the past. All the same, really, if we are taking as given that American politics are near-paralyzed at system-level, then either

1. You’re of the belief that America is on a collision course with a major disaster and will not be able to avert it or even respond to it in any meaningful way, and you’re just resigned to this, or
2. You don’t think significant government action will ever be necessary in America at any point in future under any circumstances, which is at least a consistent belief but which I think most of us would regard as rather implausible, or
3. You’re assuming, consciously or otherwise, that “something” will be different, at some point, somehow, though you can’t really offer any plausible scenarios for such which don’t require suspending your “can’t do it; politically impossible” rule.

I’m not 100% convinced of said “politically impossible” rule, personally, but I’m probably at least 95%, and of the above three options I find 1) the most reasonable conclusion, far moreso than a “big disaster which is just big enough to prompt necessary reforms without being big enough to ruin us” Goldilocks scenario.

I would certainly advise, if anyone wanted my real all-else-being-equal advice, that America should replace its political system with one that is not paralyzed, rather than wait to see what happens.

But, of course, that’s “politically impossible.”

And so, arriving at last back where we came in, I’m left with the strange sense that our Constitution, flawed-but-wondrous document that it is, looks less and less like a noble statement of unity, lately, and more and more like a national suicide pact. Not that it is necessarily such, inherently. But in context, the choice, whether made willfully, resignedly or without any conscious thought at all, that we are not going to alter it or the system of customs which has grown around it, even if this inevitably means disaster, does seem to draw unavoidable comparisons with a suicide agreement.

Which, to a certain extent at  least in theory, I consider entirely legitimate, respectable and indeed unavoidable. Call it pessimism, fatalism, a Norse outlook, morbidity, clinical depression, whatever; the fact is that I really think we all, again consciously or otherwise, choose our own doom. It may well be that we actually meet some other doom first, of course. (As a good liberal and secularist I believe random chance plays a large role in our lives.) But, in striving to avoid certain fates, we ultimately select, if only by default, some other fate which, in the end, we will accept as the least unattractive of various unattractive options.

You refuse to fly, and drive everywhere instead? In a sense, you’ve chosen to be killed in a car accident. Or you refuse to travel at all? You’ve chosen to die of neglect, totally isolated after a long, dull life of deprivation. You can’t choose “none of the above;” as I always think when I see another story about how “such and such nutritional or lifestyle choice kills x millions of people every year,” you’re still going to die somehow. You smoke, you’ll probably get cancer; you don’t smoke, you’ll still die of heart failure; you don’t smoke, get lots of exercise, live on leafy vegetables, green tea and multivitimins? Well, maybe you’ll live to be 118 but you’ll outlive all your friends and loved ones and die alone, obsolete, and probably having been hopelessly feeble and senile for years. Nothing and no one lasts forever. We choose our own doom, by choosing all the other dooms which we will make it a greater priority to avoid.

A nation does not have the same effectively built-in mortality as a person, of course. Yet sooner or later, it must still change or die, and there’s the rub. To you and me the “die” part is inevitable and relatively close-at-hand no matter how much we are willing to change, but even for a nation “change” is not necessarily a perpetual “get-out-of-death-free” card. (Even if that nation is not politically sclerotic). Our being is mostly defined by what are right now, after all, whether person or nation; we can change a little at a time and continually feel like we’re still “us,” but change too much all at once and we cease to recognizably survive as ourselves.

It has been argued that dinosaurs, for example, never really “died out” but evolved into birds, instead. Yet, not only are all the individual dinosaurs dead, whatever extent their lineage survives it is plainly so different that it can only be considered “true” in a very abstract sense to say that dinosaurs, even as a type of life, really “survived” whatever cataclysm ended their reign in any meaningful sense.

To live…

To die.

So it goes. At least man, though, and presumably entities produced and maintained by man, can recognize this situation and consider our various options, and exercise some conscious influence in what doom we end up meeting. And, having observed close family members die in a variety of ways, I really consider that no mean privilege.

But it doesn’t happen by itself. Ray Kurzweil is far from being the only person, or product of persons, convinced that he can live forever. I’d like to live forever too, actually, or at least not die in the foreseeable future, but I recognize that, as I am fond of quoting, “he who defends everything, defends nothing.”

I choose my own doom, in various senses. Most pointedly, for the time being at least, I refuse to bow to both personal fiscal realities and our society’s dominant professional custom and just “get a real job.” Returning briefly to earlier parts of this essay, I probably actually have this choice unlike many people, at least if I were patient and determined enough to pursue it. I don’t want it though. I do not want to live like that.

And I am well aware that, whether because I am a terrible salesman or I’m simply being unrealistic or I’m just plain unlucky, years’ worth of experience suggests that as long as I stick with this choice I will remain poor. And I am further aware that, in YOYO America (where, at least if you aren’t part of a big influential group with its own lobby, You’re On Your Own), this means that I am vulnerable. And that, sooner or later, some crisis or other will probably knock me down and I won’t have the resources to pull myself back up.

Of course, the unexpected could intervene, for good or ill; it may not happen. Something else could happen. But I don’t see what, at least. And for the time being, I accept that, because putting the yoke of “permanent” employment ’round my neck again, presumably for the rest of my life, just doesn’t feel like something worth surviving for. In a sense it would require changing my life beyond that faint but fateful threshold which divides the recognizable and meaningful existence, worth preserving, from the existence which is so changed and/or at variance with one’s hopes that it does not activate the self-preservation instinct.

I don’t think that America, however, is intentionally choosing its own doom. Instead, as per usual, we as a nation are probably determined to avoid even recognizing the existence of hard choices, let alone the prospect that we won’t go on forever as we are, won’t be able to simply bumble along and inevitably find that things will “work out somehow,” because they always have before.

The result of which feels awfully like a national suicide pact, to me. And even if I’m of the belief that we all sign one of some type or other, I still would recommend actually reading the pact which our name is on and considering whether we wouldn’t rather tear it up, and sign some other agreement saying “change significantly, yet within reason, and probably continue until at least 2350″ rather than remaining signed up to “stay exactly like this through the end (which could be any time now).”