The totalitarian tendency arises and gains its momentum as a result of uncertainty leading to fear, leading to distrust of institutions, to ceding authority to whoever can convince the populace its problems will all be solved by the “I can fix it all” mantra, and just leave me alone to do it. Of course that’s always do as I say, not as I do. The Trump team has figured that creating chaos and avoiding straight answers absolves them of future accountability.

Less thought, fewer problems. Harumph!

Of course you need a figure to spearhead the dissolution of facts skillfully and relieve its populace of any need to analyze or connect the real dots: Just use the sleeping pill of repetition, fear-mongering, and clownish pantomime. Programs? What? The people? What? My job is to just paint over the issues and problems, nothing so mundane as delving into solutions other than xenophobic hysterics, personality projection, the cult of the untouchable.

The levers of power are attacked by electing local officials who will gum up the works come Election Day. A whole scenario of havoc is planned. You’ve read about this already. The insurrection is now, not just the Capitol attack. Are we who revere democracy ready for this? It doesn’t look like it. The serious thinkers realize that pocketbook issues affect voters more than ideological stances, or the backstage infrastructure. Everything became too complex eons ago.

These people who genuflect see little difference between candidates. The one with the most theatrics is the one most interesting to watch. Of course no one knows what they’re really paying for. Some of us recognize it’s dissolving government as we know it, because big government has “always been the problem.” Never mind that this orchestration is written by the grand financiers, also shysters, who want their capital protected at all costs. Populism would make them responsible to the plebes below, and “we all know where that leads.”

OK. So that lays out the facts. People, though, fear displacement with change and hold onto a past that is recognizable, that buttresses our security or sense of ownership. If one thing is abundantly clear, insecurity forces us to reassemble our beliefs to meet the shifting sands of cultural currents and opportunities.

The human mind is always being asked to be creative if not just for survival, then also for personal expression. All animals have a pattern of adjustments to meet survival needs. But humans evolved the gift of imagination, and look what we’ve done with that. The animal kingdom became the vassals. Out in nature I’m completely aware of this grand leap. It forces me toward reverence and appreciation, for all of life.

We, though, are in just as vulnerable a position with our attachments to the superfluous. God has to be laughing at our choices of folly knowing full well his giving us full agency of our fate might be our eventual doom. But the universe is big, and other projects constantly evolve too and may require God’s attention.

We can revere our celestial fate and make it holy from top to bottom or we can allow illusion to circumscribe our existence. That’s a hell of a lot of power. Its misuse needs no recounting here. We evolved the ego to direct our responses to situations. Give that power to the rest of the animal kingdom and it might implode.

God took a big risk but knew it was inevitable. The mind of man would achieve nothing if not, aside from survival challenges, for having a will of its own. What would man do? The evidence is in, not to surrender to pessimism, but, yes, we’re unique and beautiful, and the once unimaginable is ours to partake and the land we live upon is a place that surrounds us with all the answers we need.

The universe beyond supplies access to knowledge about ourselves and answers to age-old longings. Risks can teach us lessons and success might uncover happiness, or its opposite. Much of the world is not at peace with itself. Perhaps that’s just an evolutionary construct: History suggests otherwise. Technology has exploited the weaponization of communicative algorithms, and not just the productive ones. Materially we’ve advanced, physically we’re struggling, and psychologically we’re insular.

First I tell myself, stop defending the indefensible. We’re bigger and smarter than that. I can hear people say, “Harris is stating the obvious.”

Well, if it were that obvious, why do we need constant reminding? Because collective memory is littered with holes, defenses, and conditionings. We need to stop playing the victims and start accepting the responsibility for ourselves and our world. But first and foremost ourselves, the great universe of what we say and do. Make summer glorious.

Alan Harris lives in Shelburne Falls.