An old dream. A new day. Enough said.
Filed under: Power, Possibility | Tagged: truth, hope, unity, empathy, decency, science, election, 2021, legitimate election, Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden | 1 Comment »
An old dream. A new day. Enough said.
Filed under: Power, Possibility | Tagged: truth, hope, unity, empathy, decency, science, election, 2021, legitimate election, Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden | 1 Comment »
In the aftermath of my calls with Horatio I often feel as if I’m descending the mountain, as if I’ve just spent a few precious moments with the wise being sitting at the top. He will no doubt frown at my assertion because, as he says, he puts his pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else. Pants or no pants, Horatio is clear-seeing. He is in-sight-full.
This morning he interrupted my diatribe about the insurmountable dangers of competing information bubbles. “We have to stop the narrative of polar-opposites,” he said, “We’re not a polarized nation. We’ve been invaded by opportunists.”
His point was simple and distinct: It’s not a two-way street. PBS is not the polar opposite of FOX. CNN is not in an apples-to-apples comparison with the likes of OAN. “PBS has a virtuous intention. CNN has a virtuous intention,” he said, “The same cannot be said of FOX or NewsMax or Limbaugh and all the rest. They are opportunistic predators.”
Waging war on truth for profit is not the same as attempting to report the truth.
Horatio continued, “PBS or CNN might be feckless or inconsistent, they may get things wrong, but they are not predatory. They serve a decent intention and the same cannot be said of FOX.”
“The incentive for hucksterism is vibrant in the United States. Apply game theory,” he quipped. “The incentive for waging war on us and our institutions for personal power, personal gain and financial benefit is great. It’s been with us for a long, long time and is now perfected to a fine art. We are living in a confluence of hucksters.”
Josh Hawley. Lindsey Graham. Marco Rubio. Ted Cruz. And all of those who voted not to certify a legitimate election, even after a violent insurrection on the Capitol driven by their willing support of fabrications. Opportunistic predators all. Yes, a confluence of hucksters.
He paused. “We are not radicals,” he sighed. “We’re not being radicalized. PBS and CNN – the NY Times – are not the ideological polar equivalent of FOX or Limbaugh. They are not attempting to radicalize us or disseminate lies for power, profit or position. We have to stop it. We have to say it differently. The press needs to say it differently. Call it out. The press, the real press, not the hucksters, are keeping the world alive. They’re doing the work and the work is often dangerous. It’s inspiring.” he said. “We are living in a golden age of the press. The real press as distinct from the opportunists, the predators.”
They are not the same. Horatio is right.
After our call I went into the studio to find a painting to use in the Melange, something I’ve not used before. “Use this one,” Kerri recommended. It’s one of many I painted of the same theme. “It’s timely,” she said.
Yes. Timely.
read Kerri’s blog post on the UNTITLED PAINTING
untitled ©️ 2019 david robinson
Filed under: Art, DR Thursday, Heroes, Seeing | Tagged: CNN, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, election, fabrication, huckster, Josh Hawley, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, legitimate election, liars, lindsey graham, Marco Rubio, NY Times, opportunist, PBS, radicalization, republicans, Ted Cruz, The Press, truth | Leave a comment »
Looking at the sketch, Kerri said, “I think that’s how a lot of people feel right now.” I asked her what she would name it. After a moment she sighed, “Collective Exhaustion.”
Horatio and I spoke this morning. He began our conversation with this: “The real deficit today,” he said, “is in truth-telling.” He just ran for local office and experienced the truth-telling deficit firsthand.
Horatio is reflecting on these past several months and, in the absence of truth-telling, asked, “What’s the point?” It is a great question and perhaps the single question we-the-people ought to be asking. What, exactly, is the point?
Is the point to win at any cost? To lie, slander, obstruct? To enable? Get-your-own-way? To keep your seat no matter the cost? To make profit?
Or, is to participate with honesty in the hotly collaborative process otherwise known as ‘democracy’?
Managing civilization through the necessary debate of differing points of view is, historically speaking, a relatively new aspiration. One that requires good intention and a commitment to shared values like…truth-telling.
Democracy as we understand it is a nascent experiment. Whether or not the experiment succeeds or fails, to a certain extent, teeters on Horatio’s question. In our recent national dedicated-rejection of truth-telling and embarrassing romper-room-enabling, we have no alternative but to ask, “What is the point?”
That we even need to ask the question is exhausting. That we need to answer it is essential.
read Kerri’s blog post about COLLECTIVE EXHAUSTION
collective exhaustion ©️ 2002 david robinson
Filed under: Art, DR Thursday, Identity | Tagged: collective exhaustion, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, exhaustion, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, truth | Leave a comment »
It is a continued irony. The fuel driving the angry wearers of red hats, those who fervently seek a bygone world with concrete truths, a simpler time awash in black-and-white thinking, have wrapped themselves in a fox-cloak that shields them from fact or data – the very thing that might deliver them to their holy land. Science, the lodestone of reason, the giver of hard truth, is the first thing they deny. Their wizard, magnified through a foxy megaphone, has magically transformed facts into threats, assaults on ham-headed belief.
And, so, we continue the dance of two competing narratives.
Science tells us the climate is changing and human activity is driving the change. Carbon emissions sits atop the list of greenhouse gases. It is a fact. Think of it this way: narrative number one: the west coast burns with record-breaking forest fires, the gulf coast is pounded by record-breaking storms because, as science tells us, the globe is warming. Narrative number two: the west coast is on fire because, as the denier expounds, the good people of California haven’t adequately raked their forests.
Repeat a lie long enough and often enough and it will become a mantra.
Hoax. Hoax. Hoax. Fake. Fake. Fake.
It is the national equivalent of an anorexic looking into a mirror and seeing someone who needs to stop eating. No amount of evidence will penetrate the disorder. It is deadly to be so deluded.
And so, we arrive at the election. A continued tale of two narratives. In the complete absence of evidence, forest-rakers, climate-change-deniers, scream across a canyon of missing evidence, “FRAUD!”
Narrative number one: all legitimate votes were counted with every possible safeguard in place making sure it was a fair election and Biden accrued the most votes (sidebar: seriously, in these times with a raging pathological liar in the president’s seat, can you imagine any state not doubling and tripling their vote checking? That is, in fact, what happened. There has never been an election with so many safeguards).
Narrative number two: “HOAX! FRAUD. FAKE. CHEAT.” The red hat team screamed their mantra even before the votes had been cast and carry on their chant even though less votes were cast for their candidate (sidebar #2: their guy also screamed “hoax, fraud, cheat” throughout the 2016 campaign until he won the electoral college and then, magically, everything was legitimate. Keep in mind that he also empaneled a commission to prove that there was FRAUD when he lost the popular vote. His panel found no evidence of voter fraud. None. Zero.)
The evidence of voter fraud in these-never-sometimes-united-un-united-states is statistically zero. That has always been true. It is true – especially true – today.
It’s a pattern and it’s more than exhausting. No amount of forest-raking will change the reality of climate change. No amount of bullying or cries that the sky is falling will change the vote count.
Ignorance is not always about a lack of education. Sometimes it is an absolute dedication to a story that has no merit. It is to build a house-of-belief on shifting sand and claim-in-the-face-of-hard-proof that it is built on solid stone.
Kerri’s been humming this song all week. Time for a cool change. Yes. It is way past time. Her humming is like a rain dance, an invocation of life-giving relief from a truth-drought.
The rain has come; the election is over. Perhaps, the earth will cool, the narratives will unify. A boy can dream.
read Kerri’s blog post about COOL CHANGE
Filed under: Merely A Thought Monday, Pattern, Story | Tagged: belief, Biden, Biden/Harris, climate change, competing narratives, cool change, data, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fact, global warming, ignorance, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lies, little river band, mantra, pattern, proof, science, story, truth, vote | 2 Comments »
“To say that life is destabilized by weakened institutions is merely to say that information loses its use and therefore becomes a source of confusion rather than coherence.” ~ Neil Postman, Technopoly.
“Regularly throughout conversation in Gaelic, ” John O’Donohue writes, “there is explicit recognition that the divine is present in others.” Social fabric is tightly woven and made strong by the recognition of value, divine or otherwise, in all members of a community. During my travels in Bali I was moved again and again by the interconnectivity, the deep assumption of coherence that wove together daily life and community. “If two cars crash, “Budi told me, “the driver’s first thought is not that the other is to blame, it is that they are supposed to meet.”
And when the devaluation of others becomes a national pastime as it has in these once united states, pushing down the head of an other in an attempt to elevate the self – the preferred action of all drowning people – saves no one. It only delays the drowning of all involved. That sound we hear is the rending of our social fabric, the breaking apart of the ship. Those shouts of triumph and scorn coming from the top deck will be short lived. Confusion is a lousy organizing principle and guarantees a watery grave for all on board.
We are awash in information and so we are also awash in an assault on information. Misinformation is our Achilles Heel. So weakened by gaslighting are our public institutions that the single most damning confession of our lifetime, a president admitting for all to hear that he knew and lied about the deadly virus, is shrugged off. “Yeah, well what about Nancy Pelosi’s hair!” I shuddered when I read the inane defense. We flatten. Our values fade as fast as our perspective. Thousands died who did not have to – heads were knowingly pushed under. Thousands will die who do not have to; an estimated 410,000 by the new year. Disposable people.
Neil Postman wrote, “What makes science possible is not our ability to recognize ‘truth’ but our ability to recognize falsehood.” Replace the word “science” with the word “community’ and the statement rings just as true. A community that cannot recognize falsehood is in trouble. A community that will not deal with truth is destined to drown in its own willful confusion.
We will not find our way through this paralysis until we can step out of this car crash and, instead of pointing our fingers and blaming, we step toward each other with wonder at what brought us together, until we are willing to ask, “Why did we meet?”
read Kerri’s blog post about CONNECTED
Filed under: Identity, KS Friday, Seeing, Uncategorized | Tagged: achilles heel, Anam Cara, connected, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, devaluation, divine, falsehood, gaslighting, information, John O"Donohue, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerri sherwood on itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, misinformation, Neil Postman, released from the heart, Sacred, Technopoly, truth, values | 2 Comments »