Abiding Sense Of Tragedy

Getting older has disabused me of the idea that age brings wisdom. At least not directly. If you're paying attention, age brings with it a sense that you've seen the play before. There are fewer surprises and even fewer reasons to interfere with the nature of things. There is an acceptance of what is and what will be.

My view of human behavior has also changed with age. It is not a generous view - I think people will take the course or path causing the least amount of effort regardless of the outcome. Not true for all people, obviously, but most. This makes it much more challenging to assemble good teams and influence the machine. Maybe near impossible for the latter, because the machine has no interest in our inactive frustration.

For me, this has meant learning how to navigate the environment without tremendous hope for positive influence. Trust me when I say this is a feature, not a bug - it keeps me going despite the probability of an unfavorable outcome. It just makes it more difficult to motivate other citizens who are seeing the same landscape and prefer to check out. Perhaps it's the combination of national and local political circumstances and micro-local personnel challenges, but I've developed a healthy cynicism of how much people are willing to tolerate before they are willing to take action.

And what I've come to realize is this is the normalization process as part of the human condition. Unless you've been radicalized, which carries its own dangers, it is far more appealing to stay on the float than to jump in the water.

When people like Donald what's-his-name and Chris Sununu are piloting the float, that is the tragedy.