The Old Is Dying and the New is Struggling to be Born
I.
The famous critic of capitalism, Antonio Gramsci, wrote those words. Today, they have taken on a new life and seem more apt than ever. Climate devastation, rising inequality, and a new form of social awareness have revealed the world as a decrepit, decaying one. Values feel hollow. Institutions, if not on the brink of collapse, inspire anxiety rather than trust. Whichever corner of American society—be it media, finance, entertainment, religion, academia, or politics—captures one’s eye, we seem to notice more bangs and bruises than ever before. The skin of the old world has grown purple and its breath shallow. Its wheezes echo loudly.
Despite widespread disillusion, there is little agreement about what the problem is. And no matter how much we roll our eyes in disgust, scream in protest, or ignore the decay, nothing seems to change. As much as we might like to heal or replace the old dying institutions, new and healthy ones seem impossible to birth. This is perhaps owing to capitalism’s ability to recoup every expression of anger or apathy over its problems.
Critics have long pointed out the contradictions of capitalism and contemporary culture. On one hand, they are right to do so and clever at noticing these flaws. On the other hand, capitalism’s contradictions have just resulted in the formation of new versions of itself. The contradictions may be great but somehow they are transfigured into new forms stacked atop one another, wobbling just as much only in different ways. With Whitman, Mr. Capitalism says, “Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes).”
II.
What good amid these? With such a sour taste in our mouths, it is easy to become disenchanted or to log our indignation ever louder. Hearing the death croaks of a shape-shifting, contradictory old world seems to bring only worry that the dying will just go on.
I, Pablo, hear these croaks as well. But I know them for what they are—disguised birth pangs. For I am a midwife.
A key difference between the contributist and the despiser of contemporary forms of life is that we operate in a different emotional register. Common responses to the contradictions and problems of this world include anger, resentment, and frustration. These are valuable and oftentimes appropriate emotions, but we cannot mistake them as final affective destinations.
Just as the desire to criticize is always an intermediate desire, felt responses of anger and disillusionment are not ends in themselves. They serve a purpose—rhetorical, motivational, communal. But the contributist recognizes these purposes as tools in the good of encouraging contribution. Anger is not a state to live in but a propeller to some more meaningful disposition towards the world. There is, thus, a hope in the contributist eye that sees discontent with the old as a penultimate way station. The contributist—seeing opportunities to give—conceptualizes and acts within the world differently from the critic. What once looked like deprivation is now an opportunity for generosity.
I too hear what sounds like dying, and I note the grumbling of others. But I do not grow bitter, for I know these to be the pains of labor. The critical impulse is an important first step, but I am not here to lambast problems. I recognize them, but my mission lies in the child’s struggle to be born. My lenses do not block out what might be going wrong, but they do cast them in new light. Come see with me.