Goodness Is Quiet [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on July 1, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

What is it to do good? It may at first seem like an inane question until you consider how completely unmoored from simple kindness that we’ve become.

It’s the best concluding sentence in a non-fiction book: “For in the end, he [Aldous Huxley] was telling us that what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.” ~ Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

Like many of my friends, I did not watch the most recent presidential debate. I knew, like we all knew, that it was not really going to be a debate of ideas or an opportunity for serious comparison of party platforms for moving the country forward. It was an entertainment. It was billed with all the hype of a UFO wrestling match. It featured referees called moderators who mostly did nothing but pose and let the contestants trade blows. Think about this: we do not think it odd or sad – or reason for disqualification – that one candidate requires a real time fact-checker because he is renowned for outrageous lying and is a famous bully. He draws a crowd, ups the ratings, and that is more important and far more entertaining than an a thoughtful exchange of plans. One need not be credible if drawing a crowd is the criteria.

“…they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.”

What is it to do good when we do not expect good from our leaders – or ourselves?

Here are synonyms for doing good: behave morally. Act virtuously. Behave virtuously. Be kind. Do the right thing. Act in good faith. Conduct oneself ethically…There are many, many variations.

Yesterday was our local 4th of July parade. The man who drove around the assembled families in the brown truck with a large flag waving with from back, “F*CK BIDEN, certainly was not concerned with doing good. How did it not occur to him that there might be children at the parade? How is it that he didn’t care? He was, like his role model, not at all concerned with conducting himself ethically. I assume he thought he was doing good for his team and that is precisely my point. Where is the expectation of good? Lost in the entertainment. The bully behavior mirrors the bully behavior.

Here are other synonyms for doing good: stand out. Steal the show. Boom. Reign supreme. Make the big time…There are many, many variations.

What is it to do good?

It is no more or less than what we expect it to be. What we allow it to be. If we want better, we must first be better. Our candidates mirror us, not the other way around. Right now, in the absence of serious debate, awash in noisy entertainment posing as political discourse, all we know is that we have competing ideas of what it means to do good. One is concerned only with itself. One is concerned with helping others.

For me, booming may draw a big crowd, it may be entertaining and sell abundant advertisement, but I will go with ethical every time. Kindness, like genuine goodness is quiet and has no need to draw attention to itself. Doing good, the kind that is focused on helping others, does not grow old.

read Kerri’s blogpost about DO GOOD

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Note The Trail [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on April 18, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

Our pin-on-the-map lands between two airports: O’Hare to the south and Milwaukee’s General Mitchell to the north. On clear summer days, or unseasonably warm days like last week, we recline in our Adirondack chairs and watch the planes Etch-A-Sketch in the sky. According to our recent 5 minute contrail-count-study, at any moment, there are more planes in the sky than one might believe.

It always makes we wonder if Ben Franklin or Leonardo daVinci joined us on the patio would they calmly count contrails from their Adirondack chair or would their heads explode at the wonder of it all. It amuses me to imagine Leonardo hopping around with excitement and pointing to the sky.

In my recent past the phrase “digital exhaust” was relevant to my work in the wild, wild world of software development. Like a contrail, the output of our incessant tapping of keys leaves a trail marking our arc through digital space/time. The particular characteristic that had me hopping out of my chair was the notion that “reading” the digital contrail not only marks our past but is a great way of foreseeing future action. Past patterns are terrific indicators of future behavior. Just ask the FBI.

Kerri keeps a paper calendar where she records the significant and insignificant details of every day. It’s a behavior she inherited from her mother. Beaky was a great recorder of events and maker of lists. If I want to know if we had dinner with 20 in November of 2016, Kerri flips open her 2016 calendar and hits me with the details: yes we did and we had blackened Tilapia, small potatoes, and roasted asparagus. I’ve lost many a debate to the entries in the calendar. Her calendars are our personal analog contrail. Our unique life arc through space/time.

It’s helped me answer one of Tom’s questions about his great-grandmother Isabelle. He found a box with stacks of daily flip-calendars that Isabelle kept, each day had a notation about the weather. A hardworking ranch woman, standing on the porch of the farmhouse, in the days before airplanes, she stared at the sky and made a note in her calendar: hot sun, not a cloud in the sky. Tom looked at me as we went through the stacks in the box, asking, “Why would she do that?”

Contrails.

read Kerri’s blogpost about CONTRAILS

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Commune [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on February 15, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Art is communion of one soul to another, offered through the symbolic language of form and content.” ~ Alex Grey, The Mission of Art

I just looked up the word “mystic” in the dictionary. Just as a word can clarify, it can also obscure. “Mystic” is one of those words. Mystic implies intention. A seeker. A receiver. Someone unique; out of the ordinary. Yet, who isn’t searching for a truth that dances beyond the intellect? We will – all of us – be “absorbed into the absolute” someday and each of us, in our own way, must reconcile our individual lives with our inevitable disappearance into unity. Everyone is a mystic, whether they realize it our not.

I’m sitting in our bed, it’s February, and the birds are singing outside. The sun is pouring through the window and I’m thinking of looking up another word: bask. The birdsong pulls my heart into springtime yet I want to issue a caution. Be careful, birds! Today feels like spring but tomorrow will feel like winter. Suddenly it occurs to me that, in their song, the birds are issuing a caution to me: Sing! Today is all you have. Luxuriate in the sun and quilts.

A few nights ago, at dinner, Brad told us of an initiative he’s launching at his work. It is cathedral building. Rather than legislating behavior they are, with great intention, cultivating an environment of inclusion. Equity, not rooted in reinforcing distinction and separation, but fostering a culture of belonging. Unity. Reaching for the truth that lives beyond words or intellect or legislation or rules or pronouns or… An everyday intention: the “communion of one soul to another.” A corporate initiative borne from a mystic impulse? Float all boats? Equality beyond lip-service? A bottom line AND a service motive?

It can happen. It is happening. I find that incredibly hopeful. Mystical, in fact. Artistic.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE MOONRISE

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Make A Small Choice [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on January 3, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

When we saw the sign planted on the side of the road – and then another, and another – we wondered what inspired the message and the movement. We were not surprised to learn that the community had recently experienced a cluster of teen suicides. The signs were a message to their young people, a love letter to their children.

The WHO reports that more than 700,000 people die by suicide every year. That’s more people than die by homicide or war combined. Even as I write this I am startled at how antiseptic a statistic can make hopelessness. The data of despair.

The signs appeared on the roadside because the violence-of-hopelessness had faces and names and addresses. And parents. And teachers. And friends. People moved, they pulled together. The threat transcended the numb data and became personal. They needed to talk. They needed to grieve together. They had no idea what to do so they made signs: you matter.

I thought a lot about those signs during our long drive home. Campaigns for change most often fail. They lose steam. They dissolve into abstraction. Behavior cannot be legislated. The messages we receive in the media are mostly violent. Ask most people about a blow to their self-esteem and you’ll hear a specific story. A moment of bullying, a glancing blow that altered the trajectory of their life one degree but, over time and distance, that small degree of violence made a huge difference.

In the same fashion, tiny acts of kindness, one small gestures of support, can send titanic ripples throughout a lifetime.

On the road, there was a distinct message sent to us by the people that roared up behind us, flashing their lights, riding our bumper. There was an entirely different message sent to us by the people who slowed their speed to let us in the lane of traffic. Small choices. Tiny moments. We are humans and learn to respond in kind.

Each day an opportunity. Each moment a choice. When we truly believe what the signs say, we will make certain that in small ways and large, it will be a priority to instill in each and every heart the message that they are worth more than they know. No one arrives at despair by themselves. No one arrives at hope by themselves.

I believe we actually do know what to do. It might begin with a sign or a curriculum but real hope – the intentional creation of worth – will shine through millions of small choices, communities dedicated to filling each and every day with tiny moments of support.

read Kerri’s blog post about WORTH

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Throw Some Light [on KS Friday]

Posted on November 19, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.” ~Jerzi Kosinski

Out of seeming chaos, pattern is found. And, from pattern, chaos is born. It’s a creative cycle. I spent some time this week swimming up the river of systems theory, synthesis instead of analysis. The means of production in an agrarian economy; the means of production in an industrial economy; the means of production in an information economy. The relationship between the methods and materials, the behaviors and the purpose, systems take on a life and energy of their own. The toil to feed more people led to toil to automate to relieve manual toil, led to automation to relieve intellectual toil, will lead to… we can only imagine. And, we do imagine: imagination is the relationship between the present and the future. Stand back and you’ll see, amidst the mess and chaos, we attempt to evoke a better world.

It is not a coincidence that a banana taped to the wall is considered art in an age in which Tucker Carlson is considered a source of truth. Ironically, in the golden age of information, we are befuddled by vapid minds and empty suits. Bananas and duct tape. Shock without substance can only evoke anger and will illuminate nothing. Anger for anger’s sake can only destroy. There’s no nourishment in all of this anger candy but it is certain to lead to national-diabetes and rot our teeth.

Marcel Duchamp, at the beginning of the last century, entered a toilet as sculpture in an art exhibit. He lived and worked in the age of industry at the threshold of mass production. His gesture had purpose and aesthetic framing. What was formerly craft and individual creation was now stamped into being on an assembly line. That’s old news to us but, in his time, it was a shocking revelation. A world war was raging. The collision of old practices meeting new technology was playing out on the battlefield. His exhibit entry evoked questions about loss and gain in the dawn of a new world order.

Sometimes it seems that we are spiraling into chaos. Polynices and Eteocles, brothers who will not compromise, kill each other in a battle for dominance. All lose. A father’s curse fulfilled. In our great art, the work that evokes truth and throws light to our hearts and minds, we have all the guidance we need – if we choose to pay attention. Yesterday I wrote to Mike that it seems we will need to walk the path of Romeo & Juliet: “Two households, both alike in dignity…”will lose their children to violence rather than sit down at a table and earnestly talk. And, when it is too late, when the primary is lost, the formerly indignant will sit and mourn together.

Chaos. Pattern. Sometimes the pattern is chaos. The children die. The mother takes her son across state lines with a big gun and pretends, after he murders people with his big gun, that his crime was self-defense. Bananas taped to a wall. A judge who broadcast to all that a guilty verdict might trigger his decision for a mistrial. He’ll just wait and see if he agrees with the jury. So, here we are. Lady Justice takes off her blindfold and takes sides. Is there a more profound statement of ethical collapse? In the age of information, misinformation gets equal billing; anger-candy.

What might Duchamp put on his pedestal today? What might evoke an honest conversation, throw some light and love, on what is lost and what is gained?

read Kerri’s blog post about FIRE AND SMOKE

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