THE BEGINNING COMES AFTER THE END: Notes on a World of Change by Rebecca Solnit (March 3rd, HAYMARKET books )

The back cover of The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a world of change calls it a sequel to Hope In The Dark.  That book relates the historical moment in 1955, when Grace Lee Boggs ushered in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. That event, says Solnit, began the era of progressive social change. Now it may seem eclipsed in a distant past..

What we may not realize in our present world's incessant "newness" is the ageless persistence of social values--old ways and wisdoms. In our rising world view, interconnection is a core value. Solnit shows how underlying transformations are often obscured by a longer arc of history. The scale of what's underlying is seldom recognized. Yet these currents shape destiny. 

In Rebecca Solnit’s new book, The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a world of change, there is plenty of evidence for a long view of political change. Though in our current period of backlash, after decades of progressive change, many people wonder if it's permanently gone. Not necessarily, explains Solnit, because ideas and change tend to occur over years and often form undercurrents. For instance, at this moment around the world energy resources have changed from fossil fuel to Sun and Wind.  Many countries prefer cheap, clean and abundant energy that also protects the environment. As the industry has matured, usage has deepened. Cheap Venezuelan oil may have buyers, but alternative sources have become mainstream. 

The longer view of this astute book, also considers the journey of indigenous people. It’s now apparent how their ideas, often unacknowledged, have shaped America.  As much as John Muir proselytized about the pristine forests of America that had known no humans, all were inhabited by tribal nations for centuries. They maintained lands and in forests this included “burning.” Once condemned as savagery, the method's been adopted by foresty professionals to maintain healthy growth.  

When in 2024 four dams were removed from the 263-mile Klamath River, wildlife returned, including the extinct Chinook salmon. Once this fish, numbered in the tens of millions, was a major food source for wildlife and people. After the dams were removed, communities joined with scientists to implement years of careful research and reconstruct the environment. The area became a safe, beautiful place for people and animals. Unexpectedly, the salmon returned.

Unlike their counterparts in Europe and the West, who viewed nature as a force to be conquered, indigenous people worked as stewards of lands. They coexisted with trees, rivers, mountains--considered "relatives” on the planet. Tribal people rotated crops in harmony with cycles of land. Women, whose work was respected, were offered leadership roles in tribal governments. Ideas in our constitution, such as "one man, one vote" came, not from Europe's monarchies but from Indian Councils. Colonial leaders in the New World, like Jesuits before them, learned from Indigenous practices. 

Where are we now? “The beginning comes after the end.  A chrysalis is the beginning of a new butterfly. But in that chrysalis is no elegant transformation.  The caterpillar falls apart-it turns to goo.  And something profoundly different reconstitutes from it, guided by the hitherto dormant imaginal cells. In that slurry, the dissolving caterpillar’s immune system perceives the imaginal cells as alien and attacks them. But they survive, multiply and set in motion the instructions to become a butterfly.”

Cues from nature may help us understand social development. For Solnit, it's a way to tell the story of who we were in the fall of 2024. "Important parts of a society, maybe a civilization, had changed profoundly, even while there are people trying to change them back. The most profound change is worldview. Descendants of settler-colonists have come to recognize and understand the importance of Indigenous presence and rights to the nation we have become. Many other foundational realities about our world have been acknowledged about gender, race, justice, equality; nature itself and the science that explains it. "Practical, tangible changes are consequences of those changed views.”

 “There are many fragments to this mosaic of changes. ...underlying most of them is the idea that everything is connected, that the world in a network of interrelated systems, that the isolated individual is at best a fiction, and that the natural and social realms run more on collaboration and cooperation than competition. Its a shift away from many of the old hierarchies and segregations and the cruelties they normalized.”  

In The Beginning Comes After the End, Solnit also examines how “ideas of interconnection emerge from many sources--new economic models, new scientific ideas about biology and psychology, from Buddhist and Indigenous world views. From hopes and desires to undo the terrible loneliness and tendency toward isolation and the severing of connections and relationships between people, people and nature, that seem entrenched in current social configurations..”

This is a big moment in our history and a slim volume. I found her optimism sensible, based on practical realities of human thinking after centuries of social evolution. Thinking about the world as interrelated, we might realize humans don’t really direct but follow nature’s patterns. A wise stance, if we want the Earth and it's inhabitants to continue as living entities. Recently, Budddhist monks travelled the United States bringing hope and joy-- a message of peace. 

Weigh that direction with the menace of nations choosing their partners for a new dance with nuclear weapons. I remember the useless underground shelters built in suburban basements. People wondered if they survived such attack, could they ever go out? (Bringing back Dr.Strangelove may be exciting for tech billionaires short on thrills and our traditional enemies, though for former allies it's a sad vote of no confidence in our leadership.) 

I pray that nations will not be so dazzled with power and paranoia, they destroy the world.. Read this book for another view of history. I am feeling Solnit's undercurrents and they are filled with multitudes...

S.W.