I woke up Wednesday morning, November 5, to sigh into my coffee and feel around for equilibrium. It's not an unusual feeling. Far more often than not, the day after an election is a letdown. Why do I keep backing the people who lose?
Maybe it was the coffee, particularly strong and fragrant that morning. Maybe after 40+ years of participating in the political process, I'm finally catching on. I've figured something out --- losing is a good thing. It means I'm still a progressive!
Think about it. By definition, progressives are the minority political group. However we align in terms of party or self-identity, to espouse progressive ideas about society is to buck the norm. We are, if you will, the tip of the arrow. And when the entire society lurches forward as it did in 2008, the pushback is going to be brutal.
It's a continuous process and, given the way humans seem to be constructed, will probably go on this way. Progressives forge ahead, push the boundaries, defy standards and taboos, invent, create, and often thumb their noses at the folks who aren't on board. Conservatives want to conserve ---- be comfortable, stay on the path, harken back to custom and tradition, hold on to the proven way of doing things. Change is difficult and threatening; most people don't like much change.
These two will always be at odds and never truly understand each other.
I won't assert any of my theories about what lures one person into the unknown while another longs for the comforts of home. Neither is essentially bad or wrong or right or good. In fact, while I count myself a lifelong progressive I also seek comfort in familiar people and surroundings.
It is that tension between surging ahead and holding on that is behind the colossal battle that plays out in politics, over the airwaves, and in families. And I imagine that the faster the pace of change, the more strident the conflict. Even for an old dog, future-gazer like me, it is hard to catch my breath. I'm always a few innovations behind.
Last weekend I had occasion to go to the big, new, whiz-bang library on the campus of North Carolina State University. This is a university that has a strong science, engineering and technology focus, and the library reflects that. As I sat writing (it's Nanowrimo.org month!) I saw and heard all around me the students of today ---- leaders of tomorrow ---- discussing, comparing, writing on whiteboards things I have no idea about. Those were some smart young people and they're learning about the world today and the world they're going to shape for tomorrow.
I came away from that experience energized and hopeful. Isn't that the way of things? My generation in the 60s and 70s was at the vanguard of social and technological revolution. Now we're regarded as wizened relics, obstacles to progress. Pat them on the head and wait for them to die.
I truly hope that the confirmed conservatives who want to take us back to a world that existed only in their imaginations do not succeed in scorching the earth too badly before the young'ins can take over.
Progressives are the minority. Fortunately, we can't stop progressing. It's in our DNA.
