Kerri is the true fan of bacon in our house. If I’ve pinched her last nerve, if she’s having a hard day, bacon for breakfast will always turn the tide. All of this is to say, this cartoon is less about bacon than it is about bargaining.
Have you ever made a deal with the universe? If this, then that? I don’t know about you, but I am notoriously bad at keeping my end of the universe-bargains. There’s always another piece of flourless chocolate cake. That whiff of bacon is sure to invoke another bargain-on-top-of-the-last-bacon-bargain.
I suspect the universe smiles when we bargain. Silly humans, tossing up imagined obstacles in the name of good behavior. And, you know what they say, every obstacle is an opportunity!
Posted on December 8, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative
“I think we all see the world from our own little unique bubble.” ~ Julie Taymor
“You never know you’re in a bubble until it pops.” ~ Andrew Revkin
The word “bubble” has taken on wildly new significance in the past few years. We refer to our information-tribes as bubbles. This notion of “bubble” is defined by ideological agreement. The universe in the conservative bubble is unrecognizable to the universe in the progressive bubble and vice-versa.
We also create support bubbles, friends and family who have quarantined so they can safely gather together in their bubble. This bubble is defined by an agreement of safety.
We see photographs of people dining in plastic pods. Bubbles, bubbles, everywhere.
These bubbles are ultimately about safety. A support bubble provides a measure of protection from the pandemic. An ideological bubble provides a measure of protection from opposing points of view.
At the end of his days, Stephen Hawking popped his own multiverse theory – an infinite number of “pocket universes” – bubbles by another name – and posited something simpler and provable. It is the beautiful progress of science to burst previous understanding once new information is available. In science, as in life, nothing is static. We admire people like Stephen Hawking, who pursue truth, who are expansive and capable of saying, “I know more now. I had it wrong.”
Growth, maturity, is a parade of bursting bubbles.
We are currently witness to the latest in bubble-fossilization, the outright infantile resistance of fact driving a deeper retreat into the hard-shell bubble of reality denial. A Fox Parler. It’s a pressure cooker of conspiracy theory and magical thinking – anything to explain away those pesky facts, data points, and court rulings. All bubbles eventually pop and we know from history that angry-insular-bubbles burst violently. The killing fields. German villagers sweeping ash from their sills each morning. Planes flown into buildings. Mustard gas.
This violent bubble burst will be shared by all.
I suppose that is the point. If we’ve learned anything from this time of pandemic it is how utterly interconnected we really are. No matter how far we think we can retreat, bubbles, no matter how well blown, are permeable. The air I breathe is the same air you breathe which, lately, has been the problem. The air I use to blow my bubble is shared with all other bubble-blowers. My perceived independence is an illusion in a dynamic universe of interdependence.
Our dedicated bubbles will someday burst and, with any luck, as we form new bubbles, we will, like Stephen Hawking, be capable of saying, “I know more now. I had it wrong.”
The Direction of Intention 