In “Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation” (1789), Jeremy Bentham raises this point in the context of his defense of Utilitarianism:
“Is it possible for a man to move the earth? Yes; but he must first find out another earth to stand upon.”
My first interpretation of Bentham’s statement was that the need for finding another Earth makes moving the Earth impossible.
A few years ago, the idea of Donald Trump becoming the president of the United States was as unthinkable as the Earth shifting beneath our feet. Clearly, it must be possible to move the Earth, but this does not make Bentham wrong.
The second statement is not a disqualification of the first, as I had previously thought. It’s a condition. A man can move the Earth, but only if there is a second one already in place.
It is extremely easy to want to return to the worldview a lot of us had prior to Trump’s presidency, a time that we now call "normal." I want to caution against this wishful thinking. It does us no good to long for the way things felt before Trump moved our Earth.
Using Bentham’s reasoning, Trump is a result of the normalcy we had then, not a digression from it. In order to move the Earth as drastically as he did, he had to be standing on another one that was there for taking.
Trump did not create many of the problems that we now associate with him. Systemic racism, unemployment and inadequate funding for public health existed long before his presidency. It is not useful to pretend that those things were abnormal before Donald Trump became the predominant reason for them.
Trump stood for everything that was wrong with our country and exacerbated it: casual racism and sexism, bigotry and the prioritization of economic goals over environmental and human needs. His platform embodied these notions when he campaigned, and national support for him is grounded in these beliefs.
If you say you want a “return to normalcy,” you’re saying that you want to move the Earth as well, just in the opposite direction of how Trump did. Though I do hope it’s clear that it needs to be moved somewhere different from where we were back then.
Since we are trying to move the Earth as well, let’s take the same strategy Trump used. We can stand on everything that is awful about our present society, and get to work moving the Earth to a place where those problems are minimized.
It’s not enough to go back to where we were before, as that is what brought us here. Instead, our focus should be on dismantling the Earth Trump stood on to put us here. This means we also have to challenge the norms that paved the way for his rise to power. I hope it’s obvious that the direction we should move the Earth in is a lot better than our normalcy ever was.
