The dancers in the wings

The dancers in the wings

“We are in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic right now.  Three billion people are on lockdown so hopefully we understand there is some bigger issues involved now” - Dan Carlin

The big topic is the big topic.  How much government influence should there be? Like prising apart an atom or like trying to look at the back of your own head.

To my mind some sort of sea change is necessary and I’m being uber-utopian here.  The current shit going on would require a shift in the public, private, corporate segments of society - all of society.  The shit we are in dependent on mutual cooperation, a confederacy of dunces. New, sea change-inducing mechanisms may be put in place.  New ways of doing things that would symbolize and make real new attitudes that would seek to make a more stable world. At the government level, say, a pledge would be made to be a True Public Servant, to dutifully uphold the Public Good.

And “the public good” would be different, the current covetous spirit exorcised - and now may as well say it - my values would be the ones by which most lived by - less cars, more travel, no giant Winnebagos - and damn, maybe hard work would somehow be de-incentivized and the whole thing collapse.  Whatever. I will be the solitary philosopher king.

The meanness that lets the average American support policies of genocide reverberates through our American life.  Meanness with its best friend and travel partner Stupidity.  I’m for a more engaged and informed populace. Less bad television, more history books, diminished valorization of the automobile and an increase in muscle-powered pursuits, running, hiking, biking and rowing.  The mountains being so popular that climbing reservations years out would be made - smartly peopled nature a good thing. More smart engagement, less stupid meanness.

And too a vow in corporations to care aoub the society at large that this business wants to go about acting in a corporeal way within.

Alas, I feel the current shit isa  manifestation of the trained inability of masses of people to actively self reflect and make changes.  This obviously goes beyond seeking change through current political channels yet in the mass-mind the dance between Republican and Democrat is the only dance capable of being perceived.  Change must come from without and that means coming from the world of the unseen. Republicans and Democrats dance in the spotlight as though the spotlight was more a projector generating reality.  Change exists in the shadows among the other dancers in the wings. Occluded from the current reality tunnel.

The current shit has already had a narrative placed on it, those that have a little more intelligence (i.e. those that are in positions of power and have money) seeing what may extend the status quo/their existence.  The rich and powerful are suffering at a level they deem acceptable - not to villainize this class really, just noticing the vibe right now. We don’t blame that class, instead we blame the government.

The plebeian counterpart to that pledge of the politicians are mass movements, people taking to the streets, people deciding what the parameters of allowable obedience-disobedience are, voting with the public presence of their bodies.  And, interestingly, currently as we are in the shit of this virus the main response is to ban gatherings of more that ten people and urging people to just outright stay inside. Not deliberate, maybe more an artifact of actual real treatment fo the Covid-19 pandemic: it's not like some critical mass was about to be achieved.  Current (pre-pandemic) public policy concerns weren’t near to even getting close to the threshold of what would make Americans take to the streets.