My longer posts each week seem to rotate between something happening in the world around us (more often political stuff lately) and something more sublime (why do we have to force ourselves away from our media-diet of controversy (which we say we hate, but do we really? — after all, we all know by now that we actively perpetuate it…). Given that cadence, I guess it's time for...the former (ugh).
Honestly, I've not been immune from what the sucking-us-down has been doing to all of us. It does, ironically, seem conspiratorial (conspiring against us). How do we engage, and not stick our head in the sand (pretending what is happening isn't), without becoming incapacitated by it all?
The range and depth of issues is confounding; impossible to both enumerate or itemize. Why should we even have to? But, what happens if we don't (maybe the exact opposite of what we tend to think; but, who knows?)?
It’s like watching a ship take on water. But, you feel it a little differently if you’re on that ship. You feel stupid, angry, and most of all…helpless. “Do something!” we scream (at ourselves in the mirror). We know panic doesn’t help, but we’re increasingly desperate for an effective alternative. And, if we’re honest, we all have this sinking feeling that we’re aiding-and-abetting things somehow.
How does one, then, resist what truly needs to be resisted? We don’t know how, in part, because we still haven’t collectively re-agreed on the what. So, what should be resisted? We need a better answer than the easy one of simply saying, “the other side”.
We have to find out though. We must find a way to identify it. The ship is going down and we’re going with it. Our very survival is being pressed now into differentiating between a basic understanding of what is good and bad and what is being co-opted as being so (yet another horrifying example here…yes, go ahead, add 1 more thing to the controversy column). In other words, we are having to rediscover what really is at the core of our individual and collective conscience. Perhaps the silver-lining is that this is long overdue...and is now happening (or starting to). What do we really want collectively? What do we really need collectively?
