NEW YEAR'S MESSAGE: What matters …

This has been a rough year for the world and for my home-country, the U.S – contentious, I think, would describe it well.

(The vibrant face of unrest...)

When you look at what we have, as a human society – in medicine, agriculture, transportation, communication, information – the power and flexibility-of-choice that those supports provide make our possible realities goose-pimplingly exciting.

(Sometimes, in small moments, we seem so close to perfect...)

And this possibility, this palpable, immediate potential brings into a stark spotlight the REALITY of what we do do, what we choose to do within our vast possibility, as a society.

We slip into thinking about our own yards, our own pockets, the playthings and distractions of this current day, rather than the pressing and inevitable needs of tomorrow and of the next generations. We break into argumentative factions, ignoring information and valid perspectives that are presented to us, rather than seeking some clear common ground as one species and building on that.

(actual mail ...)

And where our voices are used in an official manner, we conventionally conceal our feelings and motives under pseudo-rational slogans and catchphrases, rather than stating plainly and compassionately what is being done and what is desired. Anyone with internet access could collage together a well-supported essay on each of these topics, or a book of the total phenomenon that is – essentially – human nature's present iteration.

(Eric Garner embodying peaceful protest ...)

*     *     *

Every generation has its version of these familiar critiques: what is U.S. presence in Iraq was U.S. presence in Vietnam, was Columbus in America and Alexander into Thrace, Britain in India and Rome into the West, and each man-made fire against every dark forest. But parsing out history's relevance to present-day frustrations is not my goal.

(History is not gentle to our hopes for humanity...)

What I have to offer is a prologue to what is, and an epilogue about what can be in our human existence to come.

Before telling any story of what is, it is incumbent upon us as storytelling creatures to acknowledge what matters, to narrow down the field and focus that narrative arc on something of value. So what matters? To a sociopath, there is only one person that matters {self} and only one objective {the successful control of power}. But they are only about 4% of humanity, so here's for the rest of us: what matters is the species {humans} and the health of its context {all the dynamically living and nonliving elements that, if supported, will support us}.

*

What does this mean for us, for the story we tell? It means that:

1. We have to tell this story together. The human world is too interwoven now for an “us/them” to be appropriate or efficacious. When your vote affects them, your trash poisons them, your waste deprives them – when California's air quality is influenced by China's pollution and 1990's car exhaust is contributing to 2010's atmospheric carbon – “them” and “us” is a false dichotomy: “we” are the story.

2. We have to remember what it is, qualitatively, that we value. The world population is going to be about 7.7 billion by the year 2020 (that's 3 times what it was when my dad was 20). And I volunteer in a high-kill dog shelter where we try every week to keep as many alive as funds will permit … but we still have months where I see 30 dogs “humanely” stripped of their consciousness. When population exceeds the support of resources, people have to make smart and difficult choices to minimize suffering. Apply that principle to the human animal – which our species-biased brains mark as a graver matter – and you begin to see where our every life choice “Do I drive or walk? Flush or let the water stand? Bear two children or adopt one who has no family?” becomes a matter of principle.

(Everyone you touch, for better or for worse, absorbs your energy a little...)

3. We have to imagine one another's perspective. This is the hardest visionary muscle to exercise. But if this is to be a “we” story, which it must be in order for us to deal effectively with the immanent and superhuman dangers at our door, then the storytellers have to maintain a perspective that is male and female, young and old, dark and light, thin and thick, with different mental and physical proclivities (weak knees or breast cancer, addiction or Alzheimer's), and each having some resources to offer and others lacking (oil but no water, trees but no steel, fields but no energy). Imagining this begins with an understanding of what we share: a desire for love and safety, a commitment to our kin, a hunger for personal significance and purpose in this life. As independent persons we are nothing compared to a rising sea level, an infections and contagious pandemic, a dry well and a burnt field. But as a species marked by its ingenuity and and cogent adaptations, we may be able to invent a story that travels beyond those dark swells.

(You don't have to be a perfect character in this world, or a main one. just a good one...)

And what can we be? Here, in this age of growing environmental severity and resulting social tension?

At this point, I'd like to offer my general coping strategy, which I use whenever I'm confronted with unknowns that make me fret: I imagine the worst, then the best – consoling myself first by noting that reality seldom reaches its worst possibilities (so mankind for all its folly has not ended yet), and tempering myself second by acknowledging that moments of perfection are rare and fleeting (as they must be in order to sustain their high value).

The worst we can be is finished: not just insecure, or corrupt, or oppressed, or decimated, or endangered, but finished, with no remaining tellers and no remaining audience, a finally silent story. And the best we can be is simply what we should be – not equivocated by the normative measures of progress and gain, nor by the conventional "rightness" of the reigning status quo (which in the US once included chastising disabled persons, disenfranchising women, exploiting children, endangering factory workers, violently breaking protective unions, enslaving foreigners, and staying quiet about family abuse).

The best we can be is our principles embodied, with clear ideals and congruously ethical actions. If we believe that we, the species, truly benefit from health, safety, education and empowered citizenry; community effort, social support, kindness, and respectful validation of a spectrum of belief styles, abilities, and methods. And if we believe that we, as individuals, have the capacity to imagine beyond ourselves and our immediate perceptions … then we should start closing our eyes, picturing what the best possible shared world would look like, and come the next day – and years of days – start doing / talking out / planning / supporting what we wish everyone else were doing for the ground that we all walk on.

(a thoughtful detail that makes a survey worth its time...)

(A refrain of purpose that raises others' long, hard work from trivial to meaningful...)

(A sense of adventure, appreciation, humor that makes your learning curve -- even fun...)

(A sense of choice, and of power in that, that makes your decision -- every decision --
a statement, a model, a step forward...)

*I know, I know. I've been thinking it to myself: “You could have just said 'See the Golden Rule.'” But axioms claimed without strategies Are like thread without a spool – That is to say, an all-over mess.

Happy new year, my crest and kin. Satan spur, Earth feed, and God bless.

~ 27 December 2014 ~