#18: Vagility

In Chile, where friendship and family are very important, something happened that can be explained only by the effect fear has on the soul of a society. Betrayal and denunciation snuffed out many lives…. People were divided between those who backed the military [Pinochet] government and those who opposed it; hatred, distrust, and fear poisoned relationships…. Chileans learned not to speak out, not to hear, and not to see, because as long as they were not aware of events, they didn’t feel they were accomplices. (p. 160) 

My Invented Country by 

Isabel Allende

I haven't been able to gather my thoughts enough to write a post since the school shooting in Parkland, Florida last week. Not that I didn't have anything to write. Instead, I would say that my mind was a sea of swirling thoughts that either shouldn't be shared, because they were unproductively laced with emotion, or couldn't be shared, because they lacked cohesion. Such an event requires the reflection and restraint of a blog post both weighed and measured (in contrast to a Twitter rant, for example) in order for its message to be both appropriate and responsible.

I was thinking of the reality that our world is shrinking. Our population now tops 7.5 billion, currently increasing by 83 million per year. (To feel the impact of such growth, you can watch the numbers increase in real time here.) In turn, as our population increases, the land per person logically decreases, meaning our neighbor's address is inching ever closer to our own. Add in technology's ability to break down barriers and bring any information, events, and beliefs from anywhere on the planet directly to the Smartphone at your side right now and you might even say that our neighbors never asked permission but have unwittingly moved in with us, nonetheless. 

Animals have seen a decline in their vagility, their ability to roam freely and not have their migratory movement impeded as discussed in an article just published in the journal Science. In our shrinking world, humans are increasingly encroaching on natural habitats and altering them significantly, leading to the growth of a new field of study called "movement ecology." Likewise, humans are seeing their vagility decrease as well as we encroach on one another in innumerable ways beyond the straightforward physical. As a result, our future will depend on thoughtful study of human movement ecology as well as deep discussion and debate in order to reach compromises despite our differences. The survival of "I" will demand we increasingly think about the "we." Somehow, we are going to have to figure out how to not only coexist but rather thrive together on this small planet, where we might not have it all but certainly may have more than enough.

Perhaps, it would simply help, if we all began to pay attention more. To the well being of others. To the lives others live. To the views others hold. To the values that underpin those lives and views. To things as they really are not as we want them to be or are told by others that they are. To the impact far and wide of our decisions big and small that reverberate well beyond our own personal space. Paying attention requires steadfastness and constant effort. Paying attention takes the focus off of ourselves and places it on the other, our co-inhabitants within our mutual context. It tempers our demands for individual rights with a sense of responsibility for the well-being of all. 

Heather Lende wrote in her blog that paying attention is like prayer and prayer is like meditation and meditation is like mindfulness. I would take it one step further: for me, mindfulness expands the imagination. Suddenly, new possibilities emerge within the overwhelming complexity of living. At least, this is why I pay attention. This is how I pray. And, this is how I come to the conclusion that thoughtful, reasoned and straightforward gun laws are essential within the crisis of school shootings. I am not talking about laws that ban guns completely in violation of the Second Amendment. I am also not talking about laws that knickknack about, failing to deal substantially with the issue at hand in an attempt to appease without truly changing anything. 

I unequivocally believe assault weapons in any form must be banned. Background checks must be universal and strictly enforced. Gun ownership of any sort must come with required training and certification with regularly required renewal -- we demand nothing less of driving a car, for goodness sake. Why? Because the lives of our children and all our fellow Americans are more important than anyone's desire for unrestricted gun ownership. Further, I am an educator and the public letter written by a furious teacher from Richmond, Virginia resonates with me to my very core and should be read by everyone, including you.  "Hardened schools" as our president proposed are completely antithetical to the educational ideal we hold for public education as well as the Preamble of the Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Let us not forget that the Amendments to the Constitution rest on this foundation of general Welfare, domestic Tranquility, and the Blessings of Liberty. I didn't see our nation advancing these fundamental commitments in Parkland last week and we, the people, must no longer stand by as accomplices but rather demand better. Our vagility and rights must be tempered for the greater good. Such sacrifice is worthy and appropriate as spring approaches. Let us vigilantly pay attention and lead with our imaginations for a better society rather than remain mired in the fears and manipulations advanced by others with selfish intent. In this way, paying attention may finally lead to just actions, in memoriam for those senselessly lost yet full of hope for those still to walk through our school house doors and beyond.

#17: Prose

The 21st century public psyche seems to be fickle. On the one hand, discourse revolves around the future, fueled in part by technological changes and an entrepreneurial spirit. Think driverless cars or a mechanized workforce or virtual reality. The coming revolution rests both on an optimistic outlook in our ability as humans to solve problems as well as push beyond the limits of our imagination.

On the other hand, social media spreads advances as fast as lightning. This alone ignites anxiety in us to get on board (and fast!) or risk obsolescence. Even worse, each advancement ignites fear. The speed of change provides little time for reflection on the inherent complexities or preparation to brace for impact or discussion of associated social ills. Think drones or genetic modification or cell phone addiction.

The other day I came across Welcome to the Post-Text Future in the New York Times. The piece explores a phenomenon: the reading of text on a screen is out of fashion, being replaced by audio and video. The words of our online world in blogs such as this are being replaced by sound and image. Think YouTube or Instagram or Netflix. Clearly, communication is changing with both positive and negative outcomes. I found the following quote particularly thought-provoking and disconcerting:

Then there’s the more basic question of how pictures and sounds alter how we think. An information system dominated by pictures and sounds prizes emotion over rationality. It’s a world where slogans and memes have more sticking power than arguments. (Remind you of anyone?) And will someone please think of the children: Do you know how much power YouTube has over your kids? Are you afraid to find out?

Emotion over rationality equals easy manipulation, no? Further, so much of what underlies the discussion of technological advancement is laced with grief for all that is being lost from handwriting to blogs to newspapers. Will our human communication be enriched with an increasing diversity of means of expression? Or will prose be lost along with the rational discipline it demands, relegated to the graveyard by memes and slogans? I wonder whether we ought to embrace a doomsday scenario.

In many ways, I do worry about the future. Yet, I believe in the insatiable desire of humans to express themselves, fundamentally by speaking and writing. Communication is essential to the survival of living things; by extension, language and creativity are essential to human expression. As such, we may be in for a bumpy ride as we add new forms of pictures and sounds to our daily lives, but my own yearning to write is a testament to the power of language and our desire to interpret experience through prose.

Friday night, I photographed a February sunset. The lantern beckoned from the drive. The sky spoke in streaks of color like the ribbons flowing from my daughter's hair as a child. Fuchsia screamed. Indigo bled. Violet relented. Light stretched through the darkening trees that towered overhead. Nature had me in its grip. I couldn't move despite the tugs on the leash from the dog who had had enough and finds nighttime unsettling. I persisted long enough to snap a photo and pen these very words in my mind. For the photo endures as do the words. Technology will change our lives. Yet, I wrote, I write now, I will write tomorrow. Prose abides.

I will write until the day I die, or until I am robbed of my capacity to reason. Even if my fingers were to clench and wither, even if I were to grow deaf or blind, even if I were unable to move a muscle in my body save for the blink of one eye, I would still write. Writing saved my life. Writing has been my window—flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence—my way of interpreting everything within my grasp. Writing has extended that grasp by pushing me beyond comfort, beyond safety, past my self-perceived limits. It has softened my heart and hardened my intellect. It has been a privilege. It has whipped my ass. It has burned into me a valuable clarity. It has made me think about suffering, randomness, good will, luck, memory, responsibility, and kindness, on a daily basis—whether I feel like it or not. It has insisted that I grow up. That I evolve. It has pushed me to get better, to be better. It is my disease and my cure. It has allowed me not only to withstand the losses in my life but to alter those losses—to chip away at my own bewilderment until I find the pattern in it. Once in a great while, I look up at the sky and think that, if my father were alive, maybe he would be proud of me. That if my mother were alive, I might have come up with the words to make her understand. That I am changing what I can. I am reaching a hand out to the dead and to the living and the not yet born. So yes. Yes. Still writing. (227) 

Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life by Dani Shapiro