Mr. Lincoln on our situation

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

5:40 a.m. I am suddenly struck with the idea of contacting Mr. Lincoln about what is going on, it has been so long. I was feeling my deep weariness and it put me in mind of him saying there was a core of tiredness in him, toward the end, that nothing could touch. And that reminded me of our conversations of nearly 20 years ago.

Mr. Lincoln, if this is appropriate, a few words on the deeper things going on in our country?

You will remember, they are all your countrymen. There isn’t one legitimate set of opinions and everything else error and wickedness.

Yes, I do know that. Learned it a while ago.

Some never do. But you are not wanting to counteract a feeling of despair, I know. You are wondering, where does this all lead?

I am. I take the politics of it to be only the surface phenomena. As usual, I’d want to know what is going on beneath the surface of things.

You know that already. Nothing has changed.

Since the last time we talked, you mean? I don’t remember how long ago it was, but a while.

Nothing has changed in the order of creation. The world still turns, and it turns despite us, and regardless of us – and yet it hinges on us. And that isn’t so easy for people to understand. They may see it one way, occasionally they are able to see it two ways, but in my experience, only few can see it from every side. It is like saying, God is personally interested in you, and God has other fish to fry, and God will grind you for your own good if need be. The three things seem to contradict each other, and people can’t make sense of it.

It’s all in how you look at things.

It is – but the other ways of looking at things are still valid. That’s the thing. Any way you look at a thing, there’s always another way you might look at it, and see it a little better, a little fuller.

Your specialty in life, seems to me.

If you can’t see the other fellow’s views the way he does, you can’t understand him. That doesn’t mean you’re going to agree with him, but at least you will know why you don’t agree, and how you don’t agree. If you don’t see things as he does, your opposition or even your support will have its flanks in the air, you won’t be rooted in anything, and you are likely to keep getting surprised.

So, all this polarization. My own metaphysics would say it reflects what we are as individuals, including a whole lot of unconsciousness.

Now if you will look at people’s reactions as individuals, you will see that no two people are reacting exactly the same. Some are outraged, some despondent, some scared, some indifferent. This isn’t because they do or do not understand the situation: It is a reflection of what they are. Are you all upset by the elections?

I can’t put much stock in any of it, for some reason. It doesn’t seem vital, the way it did for so much of my life. It feels all superficial and unknowable.

So you see, that is your reaction. That is what the election is to you. At other times in your life you would have been affected quite differently.

Oh yes. I wasted years of my life on politics, rooting for the team, believing that events followed the politicians rather than the other way around. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I can’t believe in it anymore.

And perhaps that is a stage that many go through, putting their eggs in a political basket and worrying over the basket. Have you thought of politics as a displacement activity?

Surely not a phrase you ever heard in 3D life.

I have had time to learn a few things eavesdropping, you know.

Smiling too. Well, displacement activity? Meaning, keeping people busy while other things happen?

Yes, but not what you may think. Not a magician’s trick to pull the wool over your eyes while he does some sleight of hand. A way of channeling energies that exist and must be dealt with but perhaps cannot be dealt with so easily on their own terms.

I’m getting that you mean energy generated by life that may be discordant and might even be dangerous if not led into safer channels.

When politics breaks down, you get wars sometimes. When wars get out of control, you get an end of civilizations, sometimes, as happened in 1914 and 1939 and even in 1861. None of those wars could ever have left the societies involved as they had been.

I sort of remember us discussing that, a long time ago.

It is better to hash things out in all their ugliness than to let them simmer beneath the surface until they break out uncontrolled.

So, the anger and the fear and contempt and all that are actually being vented by campaigns, so that it acts as a safety valve?

Is it not obvious? Your politicians ride the wave, whatever it may be, persuading themselves that this expresses their deep belief, but you will notice how conveniently the belief changes in the face of any demonstration of a new wave. But nobody creates the wave. They may ride it, may encourage it, may fight it – they don’t create it. This is something vastly larger than human scale.

Yes, I see that. The astrology of the moment determines the mixture of forces in play. The combined psychology of all living humans determines what is at issue. The contemporary manifestations of these energies (culture, media, popular feeling, etc.) determines roughly what the bounds of the arena will be. We as individuals are way smaller-scale than that. That is the playhouse we step into, to do our best.

You can find the same sense of things in my speeches, if you know how to read them. But of course they were my words to my contemporaries. What else did I have to offer them?

I suppose you might have mentioned displacement activity. (Smiling.) I’m sure The Times of London would have commented in a learned fashion.

Or The Times of New York. But seriously, it’s all in my state papers, between the lines. I said I never tried to steer events but to be guided by them. The one would have been beyond my strength, and the other was plenty. It seems to me the prudent course is to do your own proper work, to tackle each day as it comes, to remember to reflect, looking for larger meanings and subtle opportunities, and to trust in God. I was never a conventional Christian but I could tell that our affairs were somehow a working-out of something larger, and I didn’t and still don’t know any more appropriate way to say it than to call it God’s purpose here below. I know that grates on some people, but they are free to rephrase it however they like. It’s still the same reality: There’s something always being worked out, on a scale larger than human but somehow tied to human, and the individual- so tiny in the scales – yet is somehow important in the working-out.

Well, I feel it too, and couldn’t have put it that well. I suppose it is one more special case of All Is Well.

In my blackest days, I never knew a day when all was not well – but sometimes it required a copulate change of mood before I could see it. Obvious now.

I am always moved to say it just this way, don’t know why: God bless you, Mr. Lincoln. And thank you for this.