“Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.”
― George Lois
There are over 600 people who call me ‘friend’ on Facebook. And I know most of them in person. The one requirement that I have for being friends with someone is intelligence. If you’re stupid, I won’t friend you. Which means if you are on that list of 600 people, I consider you intelligent enough to make the cut.
I also tend to befriend many people who are of the ‘woke’ persuasion. That means that they are observant enough to see through the bullshit myths of society’s woven story. If you are reading this, you are savvy enough to see how privilege is controlling the national narrative. You know that the majority of us are now being pushed to the margins of livability. We are working harder than we should. We are stuck on the treadmill of never getting out of it. We live in fear of becoming a resident of a homeless encampment.
Those encampments did not exist when I was a kid. They didn’t even exist why my kids were kids. Tent communities on the sides of the freeways is a new phenomenon, a scary phenomenon. These people serve as a warning to us all, like heads on pikes in front of a castle.
Many of you woke and intelligent friends post articles, links, and memes on social media about the current Presidential administration and the horrible things it does. They are painfully aware of the official narrative’s ability to sew more seeds of dissent and separation. These people are not just hurting immigrants, but also destroying the environment, ruining the economy, losing face in our foreign relations, confusing the military, giving away public resources, stoking interpersonal violence, and encouraging despicable behavior in common spaces. And I say “these people” and not “this person” because that one person is backed up by a lot of people helping him. If not for them, he would be impotent.
One man can never be that powerful on his own. He has help. Why are we forgetting this? His ego creates the narrative and people fall into lockstep with it. Anyone supporting him is furthering his agenda, too.
Which brings me to this new myth being propagated: There is nothing we can do about it. We the People don’t have any power here. We’re waiting for Robert Mueller to save us. We’re fantasizing that the November Elections will change the tide. We’re hoping that someone else somewhere else is making an effort to disable his support system. This is like sending “thoughts and prayers” to victims of school shootings. We are just as impotent as they want us to be, right?
The hell we are. If you’re a friend of mine, you fuckin’ know better. We know that if you put enough of the right kind of power in the right place at the right time, something, must change. Most of us know that Truth is stronger than Bullshit, that Love is stronger than Hate, and that Peace is The Default state of Being Human.
If you are constantly concerned about threats, you cannot think about solving problems. Hyper-vigilance, the feeling that most of us call anxiety, strengthens the fight-or-flight responses in the brain and body, changing the very structure of your brain stem organs. Basically, if they keep you scared long enough, you will scare yourself without prompting, because you are a biological system that responds to stimuli in a predictable fashion. Check out Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers.
At least…that’s who they want you to be.
But before we get off on that, let me point out one more false narrative they feed us: There are only 2 options to any argument. You are either pro-gun or you’re out to ban all weapons. You’re an ally or you’re a racist. Pro Life or Baby Killer. You are either with us or against us. You are part of the solution or part of the problem. This, again, is as much bullshit as saying there are only 2 races, 2 hair colors, 2 eye colors. Pick a category and get in it. We all must recognize that none of the issues we have in front of us are that cut-and-dry. There is a continuum from “ban all guns” to “do background checks” to “lock them in cabinets” to “pry them from my cold dead hands.” There is a continuum of “I hate other races” through “Those people scare me” to “I don’t know anything about them” to “I have friends of other races” all the way to “I’m in a biracial relationship.” These issues are not either/or.
My friends tend to be the type to think outside the box. We come up with concepts and ideas that nobody else really thinks of. My homies are people who come up with amazing ideas that, when they can be implemented, make some sort of change in the world. But ever since Obama left the White House, our powers to be movers and shakers has been shaken. Our individuality is now hidden, our abilities on pause. We fear the repercussions of a handful of privileged people who think they have authority over us if they don’t like the way we act. We have quieted–with good reasons– that ability to speak truth to authority.
I want to remind you all that there is a difference between power and authority. According to John Trudell:
The point I’m making is that ‘my people’ are Powerful people. We not only think outside the box, we reach outside the box with our toe to test the waters. We explore the relative safety of the space outside the boxes, and we write the map on how to return back to the box just in case. We round up landing parties and seek to boldly go outside that box where no human has gone before. We look for hope and see the devils in the details.
Can we do that here? Can we come up with a solution to the narrative that there is nothing we can do? Can we paint a rainbow where the others see only two colors, black and white? Can we hold all the people from the ground up who support this broken system accountable?
This is my challenge to you, dear reader: Don’t just sit there, do something! Do YOUR thing. Don’t just march or write letters or make phone calls, come up with a new narrative. Think and act and move outside the box in the way you always have, with YOUR purpose in mind. Don’t let fear, or confusion, or screen-time paralyze you. Open up dialogues in person with strangers, both allies and foes. Sing or write or paint or lead. You have always had the power to create change in conformity with your Will. Do you have the power to continue that in the face of the epic bullshit being perpetuated upon us?
When it all comes down to it, we cannot wait for some unknown faceless stranger. There is only us, and I’m using MY power to encourage you.