Catastrophizing Ourselves to Death

If democracy were truly in peril, then defence of the realm would not consist of pontificating on a book tour.

Photo: Rene Asmussen

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Neil Postman warned in 1985 that the future would be less Orwellian boot-to-the-face and more self-induced Huxleyan coma. That premonition has become our present and Amusing Ourselves to Death is the subject of renewed appreciation. What Postman’s new admirers tend to overlook, and what would perhaps even surprise the late professor himself, is that what we may end up amusing ourselves to death with is, well, musing about our death.

For all our effort to destigmatize mental illness, I wonder if the law of unintended consequences has fostered an increasingly extreme form of collective catastrophizing. That is, not so much fatalistic defeat as shared perpetual worst-case what-iffing. It’s all we can talk about: the end of democracy, the death of the planet, market meltdown, the next pandemic, broken systems, and our inevitable replacement by machines—that is, if a giant asteroid doesn’t extinguish us first. We have a generalized anxiety disorder at the civilizational level.

Ali Smith captures the feeling perfectly in the first sentence of her novel Autumn: “It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.” Never mind that our present is a period of unprecedented peace, prosperity, invention, sharing, and self-awareness. The end isn’t near, it’s already here! Of this we are certain. Only, what we can’t quite figure out is which end will out first. So, we ruminate—in the news and social media, at work and at home, and quietly to ourselves at night instead of sleeping.

It is true that growing from local to global scaled complexity but, and with all due respect to the “mo’ money, mo’ problems” law of physics, it also proportionally increased the opportunity to collaborate. Our problems, in other words, do not exceed our capacity to solve them. My theory is that the trend responsible for “slacktivism” and “virtue signalling” ultimately rounds up to confusing concern for action. 

It is in the public interest for the public to, well, take an interest, but identifying a problem without also offering a solution has no value. Catastrophizing makes no pretence about offering solutions but it will be the death of us all if it keeps us idly what-iffing. It is not simply a waste of time, it also mistakes effects for causes, and blunts our entire vocabulary of problem-solving tools. Complaining, in other words, is no substitute for framing.

President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” omnibus proposal failed because it was catastrophizing in disguise. The problem to which it purported to solve, that everything is broken, confused feeling for fact. That’s why the only way Biden could move from base-baiting to legislation was a much leaner, more targeted package. Try to solve every problem, all at once, and the risk is solving none of them at all.

Focus is critical but applied to the wrong problem, or the right problem defined the wrong way, and any effort, however well-meaning, will deliver poor results if at all. Climate change is not an effective framework because it confuses temperature, an effect, for a laundry list of root causes. What-iffing about the effect of clear-cutting the Amazon Rainforest at the expense of taking specific action today is the very definition of missing the forest for the trees. Isn’t it enough to do the right thing in and of itself or are we only motivated by threats of inconvenience? Fail to keep the problem simple, or make it bigger than it needs to be, and the risk is a self-imposed impediment to results.

If democracy were truly in peril then defence of the realm would not consist of pontificating on a book tour. The barbarians are hardly at our gates. Yet every time a communist with capitalistic characteristics, petrostate thug, theocrat, necrocrat, terrorist, illiberal hack, or sore loser from the rogues gallery of usual suspects, posts to social, we get another wave of what-iffing articles and books all but rolling up the civilizational carpet for a going-out-of-business sale. Democracy is a solution to a problem. It is not a problem itself. Confuse solutions for problems and the risk is giving up ground already gained.

Pushback to this argument usually comes down to the suggestion that there is faithful vanguard of do-gooders just waiting to spring into action and solve every problem—if only those dastardly obstructionists and their big business friends didn’t gum up the works. This is true only insofar as Thomas Frank has observed in The Wrecking Crew, that there are those who deliberately refuse to govern. It's far too convenient an excuse, however. First, it's a classic no true Scotsman cop-out. Second, it's an insult to pragmatic LBJ-style vote-count politicking. The other side cheats? Hold the referee to the rules. They won't play ball? Score on their open net. Took their toys and went home? Show up and show off your character without contest.
 
We have come to expect progress and so our repeated failure to solve problems undermines our relationships with one another and feeds disillusionment. What-iffing is a reasonable response to feeling beset by problems on all sides. If that's all we do, however, we'll have turned anxiety into a self-fulfilling prophesy, and it will be what-iffing, not our imagined problems, that gets us in the end.