Lost Cause narrative | The Direction of Intention

A Perspective Giver [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on October 24, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

I could have sat all day on the porch and stared at the sculpted landscape, the fingers of Lake Powell reaching into the canyon. My artist’s soul rejuvenates in the southwest. It excites my imagination while quieting my mind. Just as the high desert sun warms me to the core of my being, the geography invigorates the core of my artistry.

It’s been two weeks since I sat on that porch and looked with awe at the horizon and watched the colors transform from hot orange to dusty purple as the sun progressed across the sky. It was akin to looking at the ocean surf, a rolling touch of the eternal. A perspective-giver.

While sitting on the porch I pondered our nation’s inability to fully reconcile with its past. It’s impossible to drive through tribal lands and not consider the full history of our nation. It’s been much on my mind recently since it is a central theme of my latest play, Diorama.

Think about it: just this week the maga-candidate-for-president suggested he would stop funding schools that taught about slavery. Nikki Haley, while running for the Republican nomination for president, said that there’d never been racism in the United States of America.

I sometimes wonder in these divisive times if the USA is like an alcoholic that refuses to admit that it has a problem. Why so much denial? Why so many blatant lies? In fact, it’s not new. Take a gander at the Lost Cause narrative propagated throughout the south (and the nation) following the civil war, a tale of happy slaves and benevolent slave owners. You might recognize it as it has resurged as the official curriculum in the state of Florida (and other states) in 2024. Twelve generations of brutality white washed and to what end?

Of course, it is the white-washed America that the reds aspire to inhabit – and to achieve their fantasy they necessarily need to ignore the full scope of our history. There’s no responsibility in a white washed history. In cowboy brain there are only good guys and bad guys so the good guys need never question their actions or confront their shadows. It’s an infantile narrative, not only unworthy of a maturing nation, but crippling to its growth.

The fourth step in the AA twelve step program suggests that, in order to restore our sanity – in order to grow up – we must be willing to make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. We must not be afraid to admit when we are wrong or recognize when we have strayed from our ideals.

A fearless moral inventory. An honest look at our complete history, the good, the bad and everything in between. As Aldous Huxley wrote, we are in a race between education and destruction. An educated populace would never tolerate the lies of the would-be-autocrat and would easily see through the crazy revisionist history that he manufactures and spews. Perhaps that is why he vows to dismantle the Department of Education.

The question before us in November is whether or not our democracy will prevail and mature or will the white nationalist monster, in a celebration of ignorance, eat our collective freedoms and send us swirling into the immoral (and infantile) fascist nightmare outlined in Project 2025? A fearless moral inventory or the path of the Lost Cause cowards?

The choice is ours to make. The story is ours to tell.

read Kerri’s blog about PERSPECTIVE

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Filed under: DR Thursday, Education, Perspective | Tagged: AA, Aldous Huxley, artistry, autocrat, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, education, fearless, history, ideals, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Lake Powell, Lost Cause narrative, morality, narrative, perspective, racism, responsibility, story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Aim The Magic Lens [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on September 15, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

“That men do not learn the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.” ~Aldous Huxley

You may be as amazed as I to learn that Dogwood is not Doll’s Eye. They have a similar creepy Seussian stare but are not kin. In this brave new world, all we need do is aim Google Lens at the question, “What is that?” and, voila! An answer!

I delight that I am living in the time of easy access to information. I could not write as I do without instant access to synonym and antonym, the lighting fast check-of-fact or spelling, the interesting variations-on-a-theme that pop up the minute I jump down a thought-rabbit-hole. Technology has made it possible for me to be a writer. Were I confined to pen and paper my output would be minimal and certainly impossible to read.

Easy information means easy misinformation. It means easy mass-misinformation. If I were the wizard of the universe I’d provide everyone with a Google Lens for information. All we’d need do is aim our magic lens at a pundit, news-bit or politician and, voila!” Accurate or Absurd or somewhere in between! It would make it fairly impossible to toss a lie into the commons and get away with it.

It’s not that I am enamored of just-the-facts. I’m not. I write stories so I prize a good dose of imagination. But in our time, knowing the difference – or caring about the difference – between fact and fantasy – is tantamount.

One of the great challenges of our brave new world is the intentional passing of fantasy for fact. For instance, Florida. If you are a student of history you’ll recognize in Florida (and, now, sadly, other states) the resurrection of the Lost Cause narrative, a history bending education initiative driven hard by the Daughters of the Confederacy at the conclusion of the Civil War. White supremacy sweeping its dark-side under the rug. Lipstick on a history pig.

I’m capable of imagining that my magic Google Info-Lens would put a stop to the cycle of non-sense but it’s starting to dawn on me that Aldous Huxley had it right: at this moment in history, we have the capacity to check every story, to look up every assertion, to scrutinize every source. It may not be as lightning fast as my imagined Lens but it’s close. We simply choose not to use it. It’s so much easier to believe without question than it is to question a belief.

“Huxley feared the truth would be drown in a sea of irrelevance.” Well.

Today on the trail I learned in a nanosecond that a Dogwood is different from a Doll’s Eye. I know it is possible to assert that slavery was on-the-job-training but it takes a dedicated-head-in-the-sand – and a heart full of ugly intention- to drown the truth of history in a sea of utter non-sense.

No lessons learned. No questions asked. Oops. Here we go again.