Word Traps and the Stories We Tell Each Ourselves - Strive For Original Thinking- Clear Thinking- Crazy Eh!
Part 2 of Saving Polar Bears-A big Idea from WW2 (as if it wasn't long enough already)
We need big stories to tell ourselves and our grandchildren. These stories we tell have to be very different from the ones we have all grown up with. These have become word traps that evolve with good intentions,then devolve to anxious obsessions to be maintained.
What happens when the stories we tell ourselves become obsessions,ones leading to ways we develop new technologies. Over time feeding those obsessions leads to the point of total failure and exhaustion of all the the glues and patches that hold all things together?
The rising prices or availability of food caused the French Revolution, and preceded unrest causing the Arab Spring, rebellion across North Africa and in Syria. Then there was the grand daddy of revolts in 1918 Russia. “Let them eat cake,” was one of those stories people in power told themselves. Is that happening in the US with lack of safety net support?
According to The World Central Kitchen and Feeding America, one in six Americans and one in four children are going hungry due to the Covid crisis coupled with government stalled plans to bring aid the poor.
What are the stories political parties tell themselves, same for religious leaders and communication networks. What are individuals learning,believing as they scroll through philosophy and science and faith. What happens when these stories become obsessive and the stories can no longer sustain themselves? What happens when political parties no longer work for the people, and people begin to work for government? It is said God uses good people and evil people use God. What happens when information is too good for rating and revenues and bad for people. Change happens. Stories get flipped. That change can take many forms including...WW1 &WW2 , Korea,Vietnam,the Middle East etc...
It all looks like what we have today, brought on by the Covid-19. It looks like that. It looks like nature and God sending messages in the clearest way possible. The indomitable human spirit again fails to hear and pushes those stories it tells itself, just a little bit further up hill. The human spirit rolls that rock back up the mountain one more time. Once again the powers that be and there are many powers ,offer remedial redemption. Not a cure but a vaccine to the problems of mankind with a flu pandemic smarter than any that came before. Flattening the curve does not kill the problem,it just keeps coming in waves.
The human race can tell itself it will win again, because that is what it does in a race.
WW2 tells us about desperate failings, leading to aggression with a running start, against the comfortably complacent. The need for humans to have something to do, is a compliment to those stories they are being told.
The most recent desperate fight for the soul of America is the most recent and documented story we tell ourselves of the limits of pushing common sense and denial to it's limits, amid mounting, spreading , destructive social pandemic of decline , rising anger and worldwide inequity. Washing hands, social distance and mask wearing a metaphor taken to the ultimate absurdity of human existence. Not talking about Covid here. An existential threat. First a threat to the strongest democracy in the world, then the rest will fall easily. It will only take a click of a novel send button.
Another mythical push button war, this time the convenience of a voice activated push button society.
The actual pandemic that exposed all the layers, of all the falsehoods, of all the fictions ever repeated and written and thought to keep the peace. Amid the pandemic is the climate change clock. There is always a clock. Have we seen too many clocks? As Clint Eastwood's character,Dirty Harry talking in the third person would say in a movie, “did he fire six shots or only five? We as humanity some would say, who's counting, as the 44 caliber hand gun ,the most powerful in the world is pointed squarely at each of us, “One has to ask themselves one question, do I feel lucky”.
A comedian recently said “Boomers,” are obsessed with WW2 ,what test are they studying for? Many Boomers grew up in the shadow of WW2 with photos of dead uncles in uniform sitting on top of the newest greatest invention, the television set. So what test ARE we studying for... Security has become an obsession because of the stories that have been told to us , repeated by us ,and taken to obsession. What are the stories told today. Theses new stories have been flipped include excessive consumption, don't save-spend from past generations of save-don't consume narratives. The word “save” has intrinsic means as does “consume.” The story of consumption told and retold has brought civilized and uncivilized to the same point in history. We all face a natural systems collapse, and a clock. Do you feel lucky? For many Covid will get them the most savings they will ever have for a long time. Spend wisely.
We have to ask ourselves and re-examine these stories we have been told and the stories we repeat and why they exist, before we see the most personal of inequity forced upon each and everyone of us.
The answer has been for the last 120 years, a plane and a gun. From controlling the seas, a ship and a gun, from the century before, to potent combination and obsessive stalemate of mutually assured destruction didn't go far enough. This next century will be a keyboard and a gun. The gun always wins when matched with every new technology. Just as a person cannot surrender to an airplane , they can surrender to a keyboard.
Human hope will be at a premium, and in a bureaucratic way,there will be a pill for that.
With every planned social order, the most underrated aspect comes down to,not if they have a roof over their heads or food in their stomachs, is has always been what will those people do after those basics are met? Being ignored is the next stage.The ignored are beginning to vote. They are being counted, they matter.
Saving the polar bear is a seemingly impossible task, the bay is too big, the ice too thin. A floating airstrip a desperate thought, but a hopeful belief in science. Thinking big thoughts are a first step, we may just save ourselves with the stories we tell each other, we need to save everything else to.
We need big stories to tell ourselves and or grandchildren and those stores we tell have to be very different than the ones we have grown up with. opinion Ken Gigliotti
Topic: Word Traps and The Stories We Tell Each Other (Read 1293 times)