Musings on a Dark Day, in a Dark Year, in a Dark Millennium, at Least so Far

Inertia seems such an ironic and oxymoronic concept.

In popular use it represents a desire not to move or change and of course, that’s one aspect.  But the other is of a force in motion that is very difficult to stop.  Each is of course merely an example of resistance to change.

In the United States today, but also in most other current societies, socio-politico-economic forces have developed enormous inertia thus making change, especially benevolent and positive change, almost impossible to attain.  Unfortunately, most frequently such inertia is shaded in tones of negativity: injustice, inequity, abuse of power and authority, and it is almost always shielded and protected by the camouflage of distilled hypocrisy.

Recently in the United States certain “inertic” (a neologism perhaps) forces have been denominated the Deep State, although the most important actors do not involve the state but merely use it as their sword and use journalists whose role once seemed to be the assurance of a continuing flow of accurate information as its shield.  And the people, who are always its pawns, seem, as usual, mesmerized by the inertial patterns woven.

Would that there were a benevolent inertia.  In nature inertia seems clearly neutral but we humans seem to have an “inertic” urge to negate nature and thus, in our sociocultural contexts, we seem determined, at least for now, to ignore either of those possibilities, concentrating only on the negative.  We are apparently not the masters of our fate or the captains of our souls.  Or at least very few of us are.

At first thought one would think that evolution might be a reflection of potentially benevolent inertia but in the shadows cast by almost everything in today’s world, that logic seems irrelevant, at least as far as the human species is concerned.

Still, inertia is not synonymous with omnipotence and if an ember of hope remains alive and there remain some prepared to bear the abuse of fighting against apparently overwhelming currents, perhaps someday we’ll wake to the world of which we dream.  And if hope springs eternal, then in an infinite multiverse, the odds may be on our side.  Thank goodness for physics.

Here’s hoping.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2017; all rights reserved