The US election is just days away and is deeply infecting collective consciousness.
I wanted to share a few things from conversations I’ve been having that I think are worth noting.
1. Election polls say one thing, while election betting odds say something totally different.
Typical election polls have the US election as a neck-and-neck race between Harris and Trump. In almost all reliable polls, the feeling is this election will be very close and could go either way.
Yet betting odds give Trump as high as 67% and as low as a 59% chance of winning the election – it’s not even close from their perspective.
In the aggregate (average of all methods combined) Trump has about a 53% chance of winning.
Interestingly, a 2004 paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, suggests the clear betting favorite in the month before the election has lost only twice, in 1916 and 1948.
Why such a discrepancy? There are many theories. First off, given the way betting odds (markets) and polling predictions (models) are calculated, we should not expect them to be the same as they measure different things.
Beyond that, some suggest betting odds are being gamed by those with deep pockets to tamper with markets. Others admit they have no idea what’s going on and that this election comes down to deep uncertainty.
One thing is clear though, politics never cease to appear like a circus.
2. Overestimating Catastrophe
My friend Kenn Burrows, a professor who taught integrative and holistic health studies at San Francisco State University, points out that one of the primary issues of today is that we tend to overestimate the amount of danger or catastrophe that is taking place in society. Further, we underestimate our resources and possibilities.
I believe he is spot on with this. And election time is one of the most ripe moments where people tend to enter into an uncontained, culturally re-inforced catastrophic view of what happens if their team loses.
To me, this is brought on not only by our limited thinking and culture, but also by our nervous system being too engaged in survival.
The long, slow rise of authoritarian culture in our world is not due to one political side or another, that is merely an illusion from not having a wide enough lens.
Authoritarian culture is an outcropping of our current human consciousness and societal incentive structures.
Said very simply: people, including societal elites, have deeply learned division and are seeking dominance. It’s a learned behavior ingrained in their being. And, the design of our society rewards further dominance – so it happens.
That is the cycle we need to break within ourselves and without.
Yet as the old world builds its momentum every 4 years (election time), we get sucked back into the same old stories.
As I wrote in my “Humanity’s Crisis of Imagination” essay from earlier this year:
“We are often acting as agents of the past, protecting the past, instead of being joy-filled and wonderous humans curious to learn about a possible future.”
The paradox is people talk a lot about wanting solutions, yet don’t pay much attention to them when they are discussed. The lure of the existing culture, the drama within it, and how ingrained it is in our body wins out over new ideas.
This is not for everyone of course, but it seems to be mostly true when the rubber hits the road.
I’m not suggesting we ignore elections altogether or pretend it’s not important, that might be bypassing or missing some of the value in short term in system solutions…
Here, I’m simply raising the question of whether we are getting pulled into another moment of thinking “THIS IS IT!” just like it has happened many times in the past. Overestimating our level of danger or catastrophe because that’s what pop culture does and that’s what survival physiology primes us for.
Back to my essay:
“Just because that is our culture, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to join.”
I’ve often suggested that in order to truly hold a new world, new vision and greater possibility, there is inner work that has to be done to meet and move past the inner resistance that inevitably emerges.
This involves moving past our triggers, becoming more embodied, keeping the background angst turned off, increasing our capacity to feel and think outside the box etc. It’s inner work, mindfulness, practice, become attuned etc. This all bleeds into how we show up in the world once we apply it that way.
To me, yes, there is some importance to this election and some value in participating in some way, but are we overestimating its importance? I think so.
I invite you to check out my essay Humanity’s Crisis of Imagination if you haven’t yet.
More Info on Embodied Sensemaking
Consider this…
During major global events, or quickly unfolding events, it is common for people to want answers immediately.
What’s happening? Why? Who is involved? What will happen next? What should I do? Are we being lied to? Who is to blame? Is this a psy-op etc.
Getting these answers with certainty is usually impossible. But it doesn’t stop millions of social media users from claiming they have all the answers. It can even drive us to want to take a stance of certainty on something because we feel uncomfortable being uncertain (a whole other topic to address.)
In seeking certainty, chaos ensues as people race to be FIRST to have an answer, often leading them to jump to conclusions that may not even make sense.
This is our current culture for many reasons. From a lack of capacity and resilience which adds to our discomfort with uncertainty, to media and social media dynamics of benefitting from being FIRST even if we are dead wrong, to our culture simply creating a mindless habit of moving fast.
In this chaos, so much is missed as we become stuck in the mind and perhaps driven by emotion.
We forget to sense how we truly feel about the global event, what it might mean for us, how people are being affected by it, the layers of human consciousness acting upon it. We forget all the things we don’t know, aren’t sure of or the layers of complexity at play. We often don’t ask those questions about game dynamics, drivers or incomplete narratives – if we do, they are usually surface level and quick assumptions that usually come from our preconceived notion of who the bad guy is.
In this, we miss out on being conscious of the psychological, spiritual, emotional and other important physical drivers of global events. We also miss out on what our intuition or gut might have to add. By this I don’t mean that intuition tells you the exact truth, this is a misconception. More so, intuition provides us with useful cues around what might feel off, what might be misleading, what might be correct, what might resonate or where we might look next.
To be clear, I believe this problem is rampant in mainstream and alternative outlets for news. Both are generally operating at fairly limited levels of consciousness.
