Maybe there's hope
Apr. 15th, 2007 02:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonSo today I heard my mother's seventy-something, Bush Republican, "I don't watch the news or otherwise keep informed because it's too depressing--but I vote!" friend say something that made me pause, take a step back, and say, "Excuse me?"
"I said that I think all this crazy weather we're having this spring is due to global warming."
"That's what I thought you said. Me, too."
"We've got to do something about it."
"Um, yes, we do."
It ain't much, folks, but if someone who has spent a lot of years in denial can say something like that, it means it's penetrated deep into the consciousness of this country. It's a thin reed of hope, but it's something.
Then again, people are rarely walking stereotypes and you never know what they're going to come up with. People are complicated mechanisms, and it's folly to forget that.
I was having this conversation with someone at the height of the Anna Nicole coverage, about how Howard and Birkhead and Mommy Dearest only wanted that baby because of the inheritance. And I said, "Though you never know. Human beings are complicated animals. It's difficult for anyone on the outside of a situation to know with absolute certainty what motivates another person."
"You're naive," she said.
"Why, because although I'm 99.9% sure they're in it for the money, I'm willing to state for the record that I don't know everything, and that human motivation sometimes wanders through some twisting and turning channels?"
"It's about the money," she said.
"Probably."
But those twisting and turning channels that sometimes motivate people to do things counter to their usual pattern, counter to what's expected of them? It's sometimes our salvation. It's the unexpected and the unpredictableness of our species that makes us successful, leads us out of trouble. Sometimes it's our doom, too, and I do believe Birkhead is in it for the money, and that baby probably doesn't have a very good shot at a good life, but... One can always retain a tiny, tiny, tiny spark of hope that somebody, somebody in her life will act counter to their expected behavior and do the right thing.
Doing the right thing--globally, personally--is the twisting road that leads us out of the darkness.
"I said that I think all this crazy weather we're having this spring is due to global warming."
"That's what I thought you said. Me, too."
"We've got to do something about it."
"Um, yes, we do."
It ain't much, folks, but if someone who has spent a lot of years in denial can say something like that, it means it's penetrated deep into the consciousness of this country. It's a thin reed of hope, but it's something.
Then again, people are rarely walking stereotypes and you never know what they're going to come up with. People are complicated mechanisms, and it's folly to forget that.
I was having this conversation with someone at the height of the Anna Nicole coverage, about how Howard and Birkhead and Mommy Dearest only wanted that baby because of the inheritance. And I said, "Though you never know. Human beings are complicated animals. It's difficult for anyone on the outside of a situation to know with absolute certainty what motivates another person."
"You're naive," she said.
"Why, because although I'm 99.9% sure they're in it for the money, I'm willing to state for the record that I don't know everything, and that human motivation sometimes wanders through some twisting and turning channels?"
"It's about the money," she said.
"Probably."
But those twisting and turning channels that sometimes motivate people to do things counter to their usual pattern, counter to what's expected of them? It's sometimes our salvation. It's the unexpected and the unpredictableness of our species that makes us successful, leads us out of trouble. Sometimes it's our doom, too, and I do believe Birkhead is in it for the money, and that baby probably doesn't have a very good shot at a good life, but... One can always retain a tiny, tiny, tiny spark of hope that somebody, somebody in her life will act counter to their expected behavior and do the right thing.
Doing the right thing--globally, personally--is the twisting road that leads us out of the darkness.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-16 05:50 pm (UTC)Money simply amplifies the ordinary effects of human beings, for good and for ill. It has only the meaning we give it. I think many people foolishly damn money for sins that are actually human in origin, but then don't bless it for good things it's used for.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-16 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-16 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-16 07:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-16 07:38 pm (UTC)