Wandering Through The Desert

Wandering Through The Desert

I usually take the ride out through the ranch country of San Diego County, through the Anza Borrego Desert, on my motorcycle.  The 74-mile ride is a good day in the saddle.  But today I made the trip in the car with Kim and Betty since we were being followed by our Sonoma friends who had never been to this particular desert oasis. In the Spring, the super-bloom of the desert can be a spectacular sight worthy of a special trip to remind us that life lies dormant in the most severe and apparently barren places, but can burst forth with minimal encouragement to flourish in the bright sunshine. The inland ranch country of the United States, and specifically Southern California, even more specifically in San Diego County is the “heartland” of America. The areas we passed through included several Native American reservations, the State Park named after the Anza-Borrega Desert and then the unincorporated town of Ramona that stands as an anachronism of modern American life.

Whenever my friends and I travel these days, we always take separate cars. We use walkie-talkies to communicate easily about stops and notes of sightseeing interest. This has its roots in our tendencies to prefer the independence and convenience of our own vehicles, further encouraged by the Coronavirus and our collective preference to both stay safe in our respective bubbles and yet unbound by the ubiquitous face masks of modern pandemic life. The symbolism of our mode of transportation tells a good bit about modern life. We, as a country, pride ourselves in our heritage of fierce independence. We are libertarians in our history, but we are more collectivists than we like to admit. We are gregarious as a species and cannot escape the sociological preference to not be hermits holed up in our own solitary abodes. We prefer to travel en masse when we can, not just for safety in numbers, but also to enjoy the fullness of the experience of one another’s company. We are smart enough to know that there is a rampant super-virus, what is being called a novel Coronavirus because it has never before plagued human being and, as such, is a new medical and social phenomenon to which we must adapt ourselves. We have adapted by always having masks at the ready, by getting tested (inconvenient as it may be) often (Kim and I tested negative as of Monday), by maintaining social distancing when we are in proximity to one another, trying to keep our activities, like dining, out of doors when possible, and by traveling separately, but equally in our technologically-connected vehicles.

The desert adapts to its environment by learning to lay dormant and bland in the severe heat of summer. Plants and animals learn how to husband the life-giving water that is needed to prosper. They quietly hibernate in peace and present a harsh and unfriendly exterior only to use the opportunity of moisture to scream the songs of life by showing their colors and reminding the world that they are alive and well and ready to participate in the ongoing beauty of life. We are social animals that are not inclined to change our ways of wanting to hug and embrace one another in close proximity, but we are cerebral and adaptive beings that understand that the heat of the desert does not always lend itself to blossoming forth with all our natural verve. Instead, we are prepared to adjust and stay close enough to remind ourselves that we need one another and appreciate our closeness even though we cannot embrace at the moment. Our trip was a pleasure of wandering in that physical and emotional desert for the day. We enjoyed the paucity of color and gusto and sucked the marrow of the day and our surroundings in a sensible yet fulfilling manner.

During the ride through the desert, we used the modern technology of Sirius satellite radio to listen to MSNBC for updates on the painfully slow unfolding of the national electoral process in its third day of development. The pain of the process has taken two distinct forms. The first is the pain of waiting that we all understand. It is never easy to have what we feel is an obvious change for the better take seemingly forever to reveal itself. There is a certain sense that the tantric pleasure of a slow evolution of all-important change might be better and more fulfilling in the long run. The attempts by Donald Trump, a man who I will forever refuse to call President, to rush a false narrative into the ears and hearts of his otherwise blind followers are contrasted by the slow and steady approach of Joe Biden to insure the democratic process is followed until the counting of the last vote has been made. But the second form of pain is the pain of realization that nearly half of us in America are stuck in a false reality that wants desperately to cling to a past that doesn’t exist, a solitary dominance of selfishness that wants to be on top at all costs and without any sense of responsibility to either ideals or others.

The desert shows us that life can be harsh, but that beneath its scrabble-hard surface lies a beauty that can flourish at the right moments if it can be so wise as to adapt to its environment. Husbanding the life-giving water is the means of survival for the desert. We as humans have to adapt or die in the same way. We can use technology to help us, but it requires the wherewithal of self-awareness and adaptability to survive and thrive. As I have wandered the desert of my political soul, with its oasis or mirage of the dream of social consciousness, I, like many, have wondered what of the other 50% and their militant views that so diverge from mine and from what looks now to be the slim majority that will technically rule the country for the next period? How do we embrace them and change their minds or at least find acceptable common ground that keeps enough of the peace to make progress toward collective prosperity?

I have formed a preliminary socio-political view to match my economic views of the need for collective and egalitarian consumerism. That view is that the opposing view is one that denies the need for adaptability to the extent that something is needed to prompt or prime the pump of change. These are a body of people who want desperately to maintain an untenable status quo and to not embrace change. Therefore, the only thing to do is to find the Pavlovian solution to that dilemma by giving a large share of those people a sense that we understand their pain and want to help address it. This is where the creativity of technology needs to help us. We need to find ways to measure and display their improved situation that is both cerebrally convincing, but, more importantly, emotionally satisfying. This cannot be in any way an attempt to mitigate social justice and pure and simple racial equality, but it can and should give those people an economic stake in the game of adaptable prosperity. Education would seem to help, but may not be the cup of tea that they respond to. There must be benefits that appeal to this unique cohort, so some research is needed to tease out this solution.

I know it sounds like I am trying to Brave New World the opposition, but giving people hope and realization that change can benefit them is not as manipulative as it is logical and helpful. The answer really is as simple as finding water that feeds the half of us that are now going to be wandering through the desert as the rest of us have for four years.