Stop Worrying About US Politics and the Future
As soon as I woke up, I grabbed my phone and looked up the election results. Trump is in the lead. Shit. It seems more likely that he will win now. As a European, not what I hoped for. And I'll get into why in a bit. One hour later I refreshed the news and it was clear: Trump will be president again. What a start to a day filled with worry, uncertainty and stomach ache.
After breakfast I started work - long live home office - but the results of the elections were in my thoughts time and time again. And in case you wondered, this is the reason why Europeans obsess over US elections.
But why would I be fearful of Trump then? In the last years I have watched quite a few videos on World War I, the in-between period, and WWII. And one facet I dislike about him is his rethorics. I see similarities from those periods to today: a rethoric full of superlatives and extremes, promising easy solutions to complex, structural problems. And guess what, Trump already had four years to fix those problems. But the problems are still here. It is obvious that it takes more to solve them than "only a few days". If it were that easy it would be fixed by now.
The Uni-Polar World Could Crumble And Lead to More Wars
And I also recently stumbled upon an intriguing video on the return of wars. It explains that in the last couple of decades we lived in a uni-polar world, where the US was the sole super-power which could shape the world and its politics to their liking. Full of problems in itself, but it still created some sort of global order. On the other hand, in a multi-polar world multiple forces with similar strength try to reach the top, and this creates disorder: more uncertainty, more conflict, more wars. It is similar to when a cartel leader dies: the "order" is gone and a bloody in-fighting for succession begins.
So as the US declines, other nations can try to challenge the status-quo. And (disclaimer: as an outsider European who knows shit) I tend to believe Trump and his "America First" philosophy will accelerate the decline of the US as the global bully. Again, a shitty world in its own right, but some sort of order. And that is where my anxiety kicked in.
I Got Sick of Worry
What will this mean for us in Europe? Will the Ukraine war end with Russian gains? Rewarding their aggression and leading them to invade other countries in the future? Will World War 3 break out? Would the rest of Europe be prepared for war? Will loved ones have to fight and die in war? Would Atomic Warfare break out, killing millions upon millions? Shit, my stomach hurts.
How to Worry Less: Easy to Understand, Hard to Live By
This mental merry-go-round ruined my mood for the whole day. It took a while and one or two nights until I remembered the serenity prayer:
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
It is clear, I cannot influence US politics. I cannot influence global order. I cannot influence whether war will break out or not. It is beyond my circle of influence. Knowing this is a simple step. And the more I thought about it the more it helped a bit, but it did not fully take away my worries.
And then I remembered another quote I love. Reminding me that we as a generation are not alone in our worries. And it is nothing novel. And that even in all this uncertainty about the future, we can chose to be human and do sensible human things. I will close with this quote as my words have nothing more to add:
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things - praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts - not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
C.S. Lewis - 1948