I have never cared about Groundhog Day. Ever. It is, after all, a ridiculous premise that the angle of the sun on a particular day and how it shines on a rodent’s back has predictive insights into the appearance of Spring. It gets any attention at all due to the marketing brilliance of the Punxsutawney, PA. Chamber of Commerce and the desperate search by the news media for any story that is a feel-good item.
People have always sought some definitive solutions to unanswerable questions. Go to a fortuneteller. Read Tarot cards. Interpret the tea leaves. Look for a woodchuck’s shadow. They want to know the future.
Some people start a book by reading the last 25 pages first to allay the anxiety of not knowing. Acknowledging how little we can know about what happens next is difficult. The future scares us because it’s so dark in there.
The lack of opacity in looking into the future is reflected in the absence of light during the winter. This year, we recorded the cloudiest winter ever in the greater Boston area. It’s been brutally cloudy. So, too, in the headlines. Israel, Ukraine, floods, looming national elections… We are in the midst of a global polycrisis, which occurs “when crises in multiple global systems become causally entangled in ways that significantly degrade humanity’s prospects. These interacting crises produce harms greater than the sum of those the crises would produce in isolation, were their host systems not so deeply interconnected.” I told you it was dark out there.
This is why conspiracy theories grow like mold in tough times. They provide simple solutions to vexing complications. Why were there fires in California? They were set by Jewish space lasers. Why are there progressive, democracy-minded people in power anywhere? Because the world is controlled by the “Deep State,” a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles. Climate change is either manufactured or illusory, and that some nefarious force—be it the United Nations, liberals, communists, or authoritarians—wants to use climate change as a cover for exerting massive new controls over the populace.
Simple solutions would be great. A secret decoder ring or a direct line to an oracle would be terrific. And if you have one, please lend it to me. But in the meantime, we must work the problem: with faith and reason, calmly and judiciously. How else do we move forward?
No one has a clue about the profound results of climate change. No one sane can say they know the way out of Gaza. No reasonable person can suggest that Taylor Swift is doing psyops for the CIA to get a second term for Joe Biden. We can look at trends. We can respectfully listen to divergent ideas with our hearts open to learning something new, something we have not thought of before.
Mazel tov to Punxsutawney Phil and his handlers. May they live and be well with the mediums of the world, the Tarot card readers, and the clock that tells the correct time once a day. As for us, let’s grab some flashlights and get through the darkness together.
Before Shabbat 