There is a lesson to learn this year, or maybe we can call it a demonstration. And it is huge, beyond politics, beyond the squabbling, but not beyond education itself.
Let me explain.
We come into the world, and even at the youngest ages, we start to sense the outlines of the great existential issues, grasping the edges with chubby fingers and a still-plastic mind. I am tiny and powerless in a huge world. I am isolated and alone. And someday, I am going to die.
We move into the world, through the world, grappling with these. We find healthy ways to manage. We learn to value and connect with other people, becoming part of something larger than ourselves, healthier and stronger than we are alone. We make our peace with death, embracing a belief about how it is followed by something more than oblivion, or, alternatively, finding grace and acceptance of an oblivion we believe we can't escape.
Not everyone copes well. Fear and panic drive us to more extreme measures. Am I small and powerless? Then I will do everything I can to gather power and might to myself, enough to bend the world to my anxious will. Am I isolated and alone? Then I will find ways to demand the love and attention of others, maybe even use force to take what you should be tokens of affection (but which I have transformed into signs of my own power). Am I going to die? Then I will find ways to make a mark on the world, to build monuments and scribe my name on anything large enough to be seen by everyone. We deny our own nature in order to put on whatever mask we imagine would protect us from whatever fear drives us. We hollow ourselves out and try to cover the gutted remains with borrowed armor, a makeshift Gregor Samsa.
Most of us, at one time or another, succumb to these fear-driven impulses, but if nothing else, our circumstances limit us from taking it too far. But when the fear grabs us, we try some small version of these big fights against the abyss, and we come up short against the restrictions of our circumstances, thinking "if only..."
Well, here's the gift of 2025. We get to watch a man who acts out the worst of human emptiness and fear, who has his whole life (for those of us who have been paying attention) been awful. Have you imagined that given enough power and money, you could silence the voices of fear and emptiness that nag at you? Look on his works, ye wanna-be mighty, and despair.
He slaps his name on everything, worried that if he does not build himself a monument, nobody else will. He acquires (and wastes) mountains of money, and insists on displaying it in an imagined show of wealth. He demands attention and praise for his great achievements, no matter how imaginary. He diminishes everyone else who challenges him or in any way challenges the notion that he is so great that he is above the abyss. He looks for some simulation of love, though he perversely and repeatedly confuses love with submission, which is just one more way he tried to reassert his power over the world. He does all of these things over and over again, because none of it is ever enough.
He has been successful in pursuing this panic-driven campaign to quell his own empty-hearted flailing against the human existential dilemma-- more successful arguably than any human in the history of humans. Women. Money. Submissive butt-kissing from a host of people. A host of people he can look down on. And the most powerful position in the world. Everyone who ever dreamt that power and wealth could beat back the abyss now has an exemplar.
And it isn't working. Never mind the intellectual and moral and ethical and decent human being shortcomings of this thirst for power and wealth. It clearly hasn't done the job. He's not happy, not at peace, not finding joy. I mean, he's got everything he has fought and wrangled and stomped on others for, and he still seems miserable, a joyless hunk of a man whose still grasping for the one more thing that might make it all okay, a grasping so desperate that it slides through ethical, moral, and legal restraints because nothing--nothing--is more important than collecting that Stuff, because surely that will hasten the moment that finally makes him okay. And it never comes, and it won't come, and he will still die.
Mind you, he's not alone. The techno overlords who really do plan to avoid death and have "
more everything forever." The people who believe they are better than the common herd and are therefor exempt from life's hugest questions. The believers who think an angry God has singled them out for different (better) treatment. And they stick to this because fear has blinded them to the obvious-- that fear and panic do not drive us in a direction that strengthens or soothes the soul.
They are a sad, pitiable group of humans, accomplished at games of power and wealth, not so great at humaning. Well, they would be pitiable if they were not making life harder for everyone else.
I mean, we have no shortage of stories about what happens to people who try to escape the boundaries of mortality by pursuing wealth and power and domination of others, people who are certain that if all bonds of restraint on their own will and impulses were removed then--then--they would be happy and at peace. We've heard the stories, and now we are living through a living demonstration and it so much more pathetic and toxic and just worse than any story we've ever heard.
There are better ways to move through the world, better ways to enjoy a rich, connected life. Ways to make the world better, yourself stronger, your heart less a slave to fear and despair. Ways to be full and truly human, and in doing so give voice to a greater something.
I won't pretend, in this space, to know every bit of how that better way is to be found and followed, and my suspicion (along with centuries of human history) suggest that there are multiple paths that depend on the person and time and place.
If you want an argument for education-- a quality education, for every single young human-- this is it. I believe that real education is the process of helping young humans find a way to become their own best selves as they try to understand what it means to be fully human in the world. Not the process of trying to fill up the empty bucket of their head with facts, not the process of training them to have skills they can exchange with corporations for money (though those can be part of the process).
We all have a front-row seat for what it looks like when a country is awash in leaders who are so hollowed out by toxic fear that they are desperate to dominate the world around them, when they are so
terrified of their own humanity that they are driven to reject that humanity and instead clutch to themselves a tower of scraps and patches in hopes that it will somehow prove they are not tiny, they are not alone, they will not die, that they are not, in fact, merely and actually human. There has never been, in all of human history, such a display of how to be bad at humaning.
I'll admit, it's not a great gift. This course in "How Not To Human" is not remotely worth the cost we're paying for tuition. But we've all been forced to sign up for this, so the least we can do is learn the lessons being paraded in front of our face.
We are tiny and powerless and isolated and we can deal with that by A) facing it and B) using empathy and grace and love to connect with our fellow carbon-based life forms. We are going to die, which may mean metaphysical transition or oblivion or some inconceivable other thing, but we can either try to live in denial or use awareness of our brief flicker to give value and beauty to what we set our hearts to do. (Lord, the number of times over the decades I have looked at that man and thought, "Life is too short to live like that.")
Education at its best helps young humans with all of this-- not the how, but the what. Learn about yourself and who you are and who you want to be, your strengths and weaknesses, your aspirations and accomplishments. Be curious about the world, and try to unpack how it is (sciences), how humans can move through it (humanities), and how we can manage the journey (everything else).
That's the lesson of 2025. We are watching our own grotesque
Richard Corey, slouching toward oblivion and demonstrating how the most outsized grasping will not bring the peace that humans crave. That path is a dead end, a waste of our brief flicker without peace, joy, or connection. You can try to slap gold foil and your own name on everything, grind some humans into the dirt while begging for the praise of others, collect more imaginary honors, and even if nobody stops you or holds you accountable, you eventually run out of road, still aching from the soul-sized hole inside.
May we and our children and our students follow a better path. Happy New Year!
