The Future's Bright...?

Barack Obama’s victory speech made me cry.

There. I’ve said it. Perhaps I’m just a sucker for well-crafted optimistic rhetoric. I mean, after all, what a catchphrase: "Yes, we can!" But perhaps there was something in Obama’s evocation of a brighter, better future which resonated with the masses of people out there waiting, desperately waiting, for positive, progressive change. Invasions, atrocities, globalised exploitation, economic turmoil, ecological disaster: things seem bleak for humanity at the moment; repetitive, even backward. For every step along the road of progress, sometimes we seem to take three steps back. But Obama’s speech gave expression to the hope, that glimmer of possibility, that Things Will Get Better.

Here’s the bit that made me cry – I’m going to have to quote at length because it was the cumulative effect of the speech that got me blubbing:

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing - Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons - because she was a woman and because of the colour of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America - the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes, we can.

At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes, we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes, we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbour and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes, we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that "we shall overcome". Yes, we can.

A man touched down on the Moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes, we can.

Now of course it doesn’t take a genius to spot that this version of twentieth-century American history writes a heck of a lot of bad stuff out. Ann Nixon Cooper was also there to witness her country wage pointless, destructive wars – in Vietnam, for example, or in Iraq. She was also there as her country leant financial and military support to barbaric dictatorships. She was also there to watch it stifle fair trade and ignore climate change. She was also there to witness the perpetration of human rights abuses in the name of counter-terrorism. Yes, we can...

So is the future as bright as Obama (and Orange) would have it? Change is slow and (as Nyx put it in relation to my last post) society is stubborn. But I can’t help that little voice inside me crying out with optimism. For every step back, maybe, just maybe, we take three steps forward.

I’m reminded of Chekhov’s play Three Sisters. In one scene, two soldiers (Vershinin and Tuzenbach) debate exactly this point: Tuzenbach sees life as meaningless, but is ultimately a much happier person than the older (and more optimistic) Vershinin, who sees his own suffering as serving a purpose in the great scheme of things:

VERSHININ. How can I express this? It seems to me that everything on this earth must gradually change, and it is changing already in front of our eyes. After two or three hundred years, perhaps after a thousand - the exact figure is not important - a new and happy life will emerge. We ourselves will not be a part of it, of course, but that is what we are living for now, we are working for it, even suffering, but we are in fact creating it. And that is the sole purpose of our existence now, or, if you wish, our only happiness.

[…]

TUZENBACH. It is not a question of two hundred or three hundred years, for even after a million years life will still be exactly the same as it was before. Life does not change, it remains constant, following its own particular laws, laws which are outside your scope or, at the very least, laws which you will never know. Migratory birds, cranes for example, keep on flying and flying, and no matter what thoughts wander into their heads, whether they are sublime or petty it is no matter, they will still keep on flying and not know why they are flying or where they are flying to. They fly and will keep on flying whatever philosophers might be born amongst them; and let them philosophise, as much as they wish, as long as they keep on flying…

At the end of the play, Vershinin leaves his lover Masha, and both return to their unhappy marriages. His final speech, as he waits to say goodbye to Masha for the last time, is almost heartbreakingly optimistic (bear in mind that this was written before World Wars 1 and 2):

VERSHININ. … Life is such a harsh thing. To many it appears as a lonely and hopeless place, but all the same, we have to admit, it is becoming much more clear and more enlightened, and the time is not far away, evidently, when it will become entirely bright and clear. … Formerly humanity was engaged with warfare, filling all its existence with expeditions, incursions, conquests, but now all that has outlived its time, and it has left in its space a huge emptiness, which, for the time being, there is nothing left to fill… Humanity passionately seeks for something, and, given time, it will surely find it. If only it could find it swiftly, swiftly!

Chekhov's play is about the seductive appeal of the brighter, better future. And it's depressingly cynical about it.