Everyone wants change, but no one wants to change. The deus ex machina plot resolution is a fantasy and maintaining hope in fantasy is the first obstacle preventing change.
Set design for Act 5 of Pierre Corneille’s Andromède as first performed on Feb. 1, 1650 by the Troupe Royale at the Petit-Bourbon in Paris.(Stage Design: Giacomo Torelli/ Engraver: François Chauveau/Public Domain)
By Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter
Listen to Tim Foley reading this article
AI isn’t going to save us. Tech innovation isn’t going to save us. Your favorite politician isn’t going to save us. The Epstein files aren’t going to save us. China isn’t going to save us. The aliens aren’t going to save us.
No one is coming to save us. There is no deus ex machina resolution to the plotline of the human story.
We’re going to have to save ourselves.
In ancient Greek theater they used to resolve plays by having gods come in at the end to punish the villains and reward the heroes. The actors playing the gods would either be lowered onto the stage by a crane or raised by machine from a trap door below, hence the term deus ex machina.
Today it’s used to refer to any lazy plot resolution where the protagonists are rescued out of the blue by an external force rather than by the fruit of their own struggles and character development; if the gods just come in to save them at the end, then nothing they did up until that point mattered, leaving the audience dissatisfied and staring at the writer instead of at the story.
When you look at the existential crises facing humanity today, it’s tempting to find hope in some belief about external forces coming to our rescue without our having to struggle and change ourselves. You see such salvation stories everywhere:
- Elon Musk is going to automate everything so we don’t have to work and then help humanity become an interplanetary species.
- Artificial superintelligence is right around the corner and it will explode our scientific understanding of the universe and give birth to transformational new technologies.
- The release of the Epstein files will expose all the corruption that’s been poisoning our society and lead to the arrest and disempowerment of all the evil bad guys.
- Electing progressive Democrats or populist Republicans can put heroes into office who will transform the American political system for us.
- The rise of China is going to reshape the world order and help bring about the end of capitalism.
- UFO disclosure is happening any minute now and it’s going to bring in alien technologies that will save humanity from destruction.
Snapping Out of It
And it never happens. The Greek god never makes his entrance. The actors are left standing there in a long, awkward silence while the set collapses around them.
It’s never gonna happen, folks. Apollo missed his entrance and Zeus is a no-show.
Nobody’s going to save us but us. We’re going to have to change. We’re going to have to act. We’ll keep hurtling in the direction of tyrannical dystopia, environmental catastrophe and nuclear armageddon until we do.
We’re going to have to help each other snap out of the hypnotic trance of propaganda and awaken to the truth of what’s really going on in our world, and show each other that real change is both necessary and possible.
We’re going to have to wake up enough that we can use the power of our numbers to force our rulers to stop stealing from us, oppressing us, killing our biosphere and murdering people.
We’re going to have to awaken from the trance of ego and become a truly conscious species, so that we can build a healthy world without falling back in to our self-destructive patterning when the revolution is over.
Everyone wants change, but no one wants to change. That’s why the deus ex machina plot resolution is preferable in our minds.
It’s just a fantasy, though. Change is coming from nowhere but ourselves. Maintaining hope in the fantasy is the first obstacle preventing us from waking up to reality.
Every species eventually hits a juncture where it must either make adaptations to changing conditions or go extinct. We are at that juncture today. We’ll either pass that test or we won’t, and if we pass it, it will be because of our own efforts, sacrifices, and self-transformations.
Nobody’s going to do it for us.
Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes. For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.
This article is from Caitlin’s Newsletter and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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wow. good luck to all of you.
We are just not smart enough, not strong enough, not wise enough to fix what our limitations have wrought. Humans are merely clever and that is not enough.
We’ll keep hurtling in the direction of tyrannical dystopia, environmental catastrophe and nuclear armageddon because human behavior is dictated largely by two principles that psychologists call the pleasure principle and the reality principle.
In a nutshell: people do what makes them feel good. When they feel bad, they must alter their environment in such a way as to remove the discomfort. They can either change their external environment or their internal environment. Political action, labor and environmental organizing would certainly bring change that would relieve social and environmental distress.
But the billionaires, fascist, and war mongers who made this world as a living hell for many generations know this is not as profitable as holding down wages and profits. Profits can be maximized if people can be made to alter their internal environment in such a way as to endure or even enjoy discomfort (to what it refers to as learning “to enjoy sitting on a tack.”) for in order to maximize profit, discomfort must be correspondingly maximized as well.
There are a variety of ways of getting people to attempt this. If they are inebriated on drugs or alcohol, their pain will be attenuated (at least temporarily) and their will to resist blunted.
In order to possibly help each other snap out of the hypnotic trance of propaganda and awaken to the truth of what’s really going on in our world, and show each other that real change is both necessary and possible. We must organize with the young generation of the under 40 crowd for they are not too far gone in enjoying discomfort with drugs, alcohol, religion, or the dreadful fear of unemployment and seeing their family suffered.
The problem, in two quotes from George Carlin:
“Now there’s one thing you mighta noticed I don’t complain about: politicians.
Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from some other reality.
They come from American parents, American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses, American universities, and they’re elected by American citizens.
This is the best we can do, folks. This is what we have to offer. It’s what our system produces. Garbage in…garbage out.
If you have selfish, ignorant citizens…if you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you’re gunna get selfish, ignorant leaders. And term limits ain’t gunna do ya any good. You’re just gunna wind up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans [leaders].
So, maybe…maybe…maybe it’s not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here. Like…the public. Yeah, the public sucks! That’s a nice campaign slogan for somebody: “The public sucks! Fuck hope! Fuck hope!”
Because if it is really just the fault of the politicians then where are all the other bright people of conscience? Where are all the bright, honest, intelligent Americans ready to step in and save the nation and lead the way?
We don’t have people like that in this country. Everybody’s at the mall, scratchin’ his ass, pickin’ his nose, takin’ his credit card out of his fanny pack and buyin’ a pair of sneakers with lights in them.” —George Carlin
hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leWjdWUR_KI
“Let them march all they want, as long as they pay their taxes.” Alexander Haig
The citizenry is too pre-occupied to care enough to revolt, to bring the whole thing down and draft a new constitution.
In the non-trivial Pogo explanation: “We have met the enemy and he is us”, we have the basic form of our dilemma. While it may be true that we are our only source of salvation (no rescue from our incomprehensible malfeasance from benevolent ETs, no ‘coming to our senses’) ‘we’ have long proven that making the changes to preserve the best of the earth’s existence is just too hard; making the necessary changes in how we (everyone) live are simply not on the table as options…and will only ‘be on the table’ when there is no table left to be on.
In the mean time….we must keep trying.
Thank You Caitlin!…and all excellent comments.
I believe there is one factor that contributes to all our increasingly complicated lives…that we all have the personal ability to change.
We CAN cure our cancer. If we choose to limit our consumption and our population growth we can achieve a sustainable peaceful coexistence for ourselves and future generations.
If we choose to limit ourselves…that factor alone could unite us… and the confrontations among groups of humans could probably become manageable. But as you said Caitlin we must make that choice ourselves.
For decades known as the technological quick fix. A belief somehow sources of problems will also provide viable solutions. Which would require a 180* shift in outlook, honesty about the causes of those problems, and foregoing easy profits. Rather improbable; mostly just an excuse to keep doing the same old thing.
Never mind any serious political challenge to an econ system defining away devastation of human communities and ecosystems as externalities. An economics certain the only motivation is the utility function; individual gain. And the only purpose of corporations is profit–and that is encoded in law.
Never mind the dominant neoclassical economics is using models based on assuming climate change is linear. As a result, econ dogmatists argue changes won’t be significant, thus far too costly and disruptive to go for any grand reforms. Never mind actual scientific data shows logarithmic acceleration. Never mind right wingers yelling about climate hoax don’t look at the evidence of agronomists, hydrologists, soil scientists, botanists, foresters, oceanographers… Plus the direct witness of people who fish for a living, farmers, hunters, and Indigenous Nations world-wide. Even the Pentagon takes climate change very seriously. They’re preparing for the likelihood severe ecological damage will result in massive social dislocations.
If we have to rely on the human race to wake up before things can change, we are doomed to extinction. I think those who are awake will retreat into a silent existence since they’ve done their job of waking up. You are NOT going to wake up anybody who is not interested. It takes a lot to leave this material world of illusion and ego. It’s called Maya in Buddhism.
When I watched Alan Watts’s videos about 20 years ago, I only caught a small fraction of what he was talking about, even though I had spent several years studying spirituality. I wasn’t there yet, or I wasn’t ready to hear what he had to say. My brain would drift off into other places. Today, I watch his videos, and they speak to me. The awakened ones are scarce. We are outcasts who don’t fit in society, and if you try to share with others who are still asleep, they might call the police to check on you or advise you to seek a psychiatrist.
The world right now needs a significant paradigm shift to break through all the noise. I thought the internet would have helped, but I’m afraid it brought on other issues. If Avi Loeb is right about 3I/ATLAS, maybe on 12/19 we’ll learn that it is a mothership seeking to share its advanced knowledge with our human race, and it will change everything. Then again, once they study the human race, they’ll change their minds and head back to their faraway galaxy. ;)
Truth Be Told, Caitlin! Well stated. I love your pinpoint writing.
As Einstein succinctly stated it:
“The problems we face cannot be solved at the level of thinking that created them.”
With all due respect to Albert: May we lessen our “thinking”, heighten our feeling, and commence doing!
A few lyrics from Grateful Dead’s ‘Throwing Stones’:
A peaceful place, or so it looks from space
Closer look reveals the human race
Full of hope, full of grace is the human face
But afraid we may lay our home to waste
Heartless powers try to tell us what to think
If the spirit’s sleeping, then the flesh is ink, yeah
History’s page will be neatly carved in stone
The future’s here, we are it, we are on our own
On our own, on our own, on our own!
If the game is lost, then we’re all the same
No one left to place or take the blame
We will leave this place an empty stone
Or that shining ball
We can call our home
(I’ve always particularly liked “The future’s here, we are it, we are on our own
On our own, on our own, on our own!” It sums up so much – as well as echoing, in my opinion, what Caitlin says.
One of my favourite songs.)