What Trump teaches us. A cultural diagnosis.

Trump's stunning victory is a potentially worldview-shattering event, while heralding a new era.

Though Trump’s 2016 victory was a much greater shock, and we’ve since seen strongmen gaining power across the globe, it still feels like a critical threshold has just been passed. As someone in my network put it: “the timeline for collapse has been significantly shortened. We've only got a few years left.” 

Living in between worlds

There's a growing sense that 'the system' is at a breaking point from which there is no return. Some people have been quoting Antonio Gramsci, writing while imprisoned by the Italian fascist regime in the 1930's: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”

Though a new world has to be build on what is life-enhancing in our current world, the conviction is growing that the old neoliberal system cannot be salvaged. That its flaws simply run too deep. Mere reform, then, can't offer us what our future demands. Some argue that this is why Harris lost. The Democrats were unable to offer a new and forward-looking vision of where the country should be going - beyond saving institutions threatened by Trump and 'tinkering around the edges' of the current system. While there was clearly a deep need for a fresh vision of what kind of society comes next, the Dems bet on protecting the status quo.    

Trump, of course, powerfully spoke to this need, making clear he'd "blow up" the system and restore a lost America - with more traditional social and gender roles, an authoritarian governing style, and an exploitative approach to the economy and foreign policy. Trump was thus able to represent change in a more convincing way. As our old world collapses, and a viable alternative for a new world hasn't emerged, the loss and uncertainty of the in-between makes people also highly vulnerable to demagoguery and anyone who projects awesome power.  

What Trump reveals about us

Worldviews give us a sense of who we are, where we come from, and where we're going - which are now all called into question. 

Paradoxically, Trump exposes what's wrong with 'the system' by embodying its flaws - he must be the personification of the shortcomings of our modern world(view). Think of his unquenchable thirst for money, power, and status. Of his transactional, exploitative, instrumentalist approach to others and life itself. And of his opportunism, serving no greater God or value than him self.  

Psychologists tell us that narcissists tend to confuse and deceive us. They're often powerful figures - charming, highly charismatic, and with a jealous-making degree of (what seems like) self-confidence. They can be bold and daring, doing and saying things that most of us shy away from. They tend to be low in conscientiousness, and thus do not care much about a great deal of things. They don't seem to be hampered by the fears, vulnerabilities, and insecurities that plague most of us. And they're unconstrained by shame, as well as by empathy - they don't feel and cannot empathize with others' pain and suffering.

Unburdened by these very human qualities and experiences - from conscience to empathy to shame - they often project great power. At first sight, the narcissist may therefore profoundly enchant us. They can be refreshingly bold, fun, and liberating. Their existence quietly promises to us that we may be that free as well. Because they appear highly self-confident, we're inclined to trust their direction. We unconsciously assume that since they're so certain, they must be right, and know better than we do. They also tend to be successful, consolidating money, power, and status in ways that others envy. And amazingly, they so often seem to have the winds at their backs, as if the system structurally favors them. 

Psychological survival

But when we look deeper, we start to see the problems with this persona. Their self-confidence is only skin-deep. They need continuous admiration and are unable to admit fault, take responsibility, or self-reflect. People who challenge or criticize them quickly become enemies to be revenged. They will do anything to uphold their false sense of "grandiose self", because this is nothing less than a matter of psychological survival to them. This makes them display opportunistic, deceptive, and immoral behaviors. They also tend to be pathological liars, as reality itself is demanded to confirm and submit to their desired self-sense. (And all of this is likely a result from a childhood in which they were deprived from the crucial sense to be loved and worthwhile.) 

Trump, rather than admitting his loss in 2020, had his people storm the Capitol and then spent the next four years systematically undermining trust in democracy. His ego simply couldn't handle this defeat, and so he bent reality to keep his grandiose self-sense intact, no matter the harms and risks. 

More generally, the narcissistic persona is not amenable to democracy. Democracy's inclusion and tolerance of diverse viewpoints - including critical ones that hold governing powers to account - runs counter to the narcissist's primal need for admiration and praise. Authoritarian governance, with its personality cult and ability to dictate reality, is therefore a natural fit.

What Trump teaches us - a cultural diagnosis

Trump's election offers us a painful mirror of what's wrong with us in a deep, existential sense. Displaying on the world stage his narcissism, transactional relating style, and relentlessly ego-oriented materialism, he has opened as many eyes as he has closed. While many are entranced by the personality cult, just as many see beyond the shiny image, clearly detecting the highly predictable patterns of a big yet profoundly fragile and defensive ego: the projections, the need to punish those who challenge him, the relating to others as objects to be used for his own purposes, the chest-beating and strong-arming, the countless ways reality is turned upside down to serve his own ego-needs. 

While performing his show in the theater of global politics, Trump teaches us what it means to be human by demonstrating what it looks like when that very humanness is lacking. 

That is, we may learn more about what day means by experiencing the night. Likewise, we may only truly understand humanity by experiencing the inhumane. 

Tragically, we often only become aware of the true value of things when we lose them. Trump's gaping lack of the most basic human qualities - such as honesty, decency, and empathy - may therefore reveal something profound to us about what it means to be human, hopefully helping us re-appreciate what we've lost sight of in our materialist, competitive culture.

Democracy is based on 'soft skills' as much as on hard rules

As many observers during his first term noted, American democracy is grounded in unwritten norms of decency and integrity as much as it is in the Constitution. Trump broke each and every one of these norms, leaving us with a renewed sense of what it actually takes, on the human level, to keep democracies alive. That is, democracy is based on 'soft skills' as much as it is on hard rules. 

These human qualities thus turn out to be foundational to democracy, yet were long taken for granted. I've come across them in my own research, and refer to them as essential democratic capabilities. These are important qualities that shape human understanding and (inter)action on every level, yet tend to be hard to pin down or quantify. Like non-defensive self-reflection. This is challenging for most of us, yet without it we cannot open ourselves to diverse viewpoints or critique, thus hampering both our learning and our tolerance for those who challenge us. Another crucial one is the ability to listen deeply to another person, and hear out their perspective, even when we disagree. 

These simple yet profound human capabilities are a powerful antidote to the ever-prevalent narcissism of our time. Research findings also demonstrate that these 'soft skills' may result in pretty hard impacts. For example, research shows that when people are listened to with high quality attention, their sense of connectedness is enhanced, making them feel more positive and safe, thereby creating conducive conditions for non-defensive self-reflection, generally resulting in their attitudes becoming less extreme. In other words, something as simple as deeply listening to another person supports them to 'depolarize'.

And the good news is, these are developmental capabilities - meaning they can be trained and developed. However, as societies we currently do little to systematically cultivate them in our citizens. As Worldview Journeys, this is of course what we're relentlessly working on with our research, outreach, and learning interventions like the Worldview Journey.

The taks of 'calling into being' the new world

Next to our sense of who we are, Trump's election also challenges our sense of where we come from and where we're going. If this election has made one thing clear, it's that people reject the status quo and desperately want change. Their belief in 'the system' is broken to the degree that they rather take the chance of blowing it up than to keep on tweaking something that is not working.

For those who don't believe in the direction Trump represents, the search for a new one has been empowered. Arguably, Trump merely accelerates the process of our old neoliberal, capitalist world dying - perhaps imploding is a better word - putting us to the now-even-more-urgent task to envision, articulate, and 'call into being' this new world. As Valerie Kaur put it: "What if this is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?" 

In my view, this new world should be grounded in a a deep understanding of humanity's profound connectedness with nature, as well as broad psychological wisdom of how humans can be supported to actualize their potential and thrive. It should prioritize creating conducive conditions for individual and collective health and healing, while investing in economies that create real value and that work for all people. An enhanced focus on the well-being of children and local communities, as well as the cleaning up of our environments and the restoration of our ecoystems, is central. 

In any case, there is a LOT of work to be done here. Nothing less than a complete regeneration of our world(view) will suffice.