I'm imagining an after-life accounting where it's proven to me that there was never any hope of a more equitable, regenerative society, where the best way to reduce violence was a good guy with a gun and the military industrial complex made the best of a bad situation and life would have been a lot worse without it, even accounting for all the waste, death, and animosity. In this reality the dream of being raptured away from a doomed planet was as good as it gets, and working the system for security and consumer pleasures while one waits was the best anyone could hope for. In this picture, the rapacious captains of industry are praised as "makers" and anyone who resisted this vision, or despaired at the ecological destruction and isolation, was shamed and expelled.
I can feel what this would feel like, because it's the subtext of nearly every implicit message of the grand narrative in which we live. Hopes and dreams of a more compassionate, collaborative world are entertainments, mere diversions.
I'm pleased to discover that even as I imagine this scenario, there is something within me that is unmoved, convinced that the beauty of compassion and generosity, play and creativity are real, and remain the deeper truth.
And as the image plays out, I stand before those who mock my naivete and pity them.
I can feel what this would feel like, because it's the subtext of nearly every implicit message of the grand narrative in which we live. Hopes and dreams of a more compassionate, collaborative world are entertainments, mere diversions.
I'm pleased to discover that even as I imagine this scenario, there is something within me that is unmoved, convinced that the beauty of compassion and generosity, play and creativity are real, and remain the deeper truth.
And as the image plays out, I stand before those who mock my naivete and pity them.
