Lightning Joe - a piece of work
Chance at Greatness Du Jour...
posted Sunday, 18 November 2007
I supposed I'd better weigh in on the much-ballyhooed Hollywood Writer's strike, since everyone else who should also know better is doing it too. When "everyone else" jumps off a cliff without the benefit of bungees, you won't have to put up with me any more.
Seriously though, the writer's strike is perhaps the last great hope for our culture.
Pretty sad observation, that. But we've blown so many other chances for greatness, and reality only gives us three chances to get it right, in my experience. By my count, we're already far overdrawn on our cultural credibility account, and can expect a foreclosure letter in the post any time.
Briefly, then, a littany of some near-misses from greatness:
After quite genuinely saving the world from a Very Bad Thing in WWII, we seem to have taken on the concept that as a country we could do no wrong on the force front. What followed that adolescent attack of hubris was a long progression of wars that not only had negative outcomes, but no durable rationales to start with, and were entered into through subterfuge. Strike one (at least!) for greatness.
After the Twin Towers in NY were not-so-urbanely renewed by a well-conceived criminal enterprize in 2001, we had an unprecedented chance to take the high road by "interfering" in certain countries' cultures through domestic development strategies that might have made them better off in their own homelands, and thus less likely to produce people intent on sending us a message. The world would have given us, the victims of the act, a great deal of lattitude for such a "forcible" developement agenda, which monetarily would have been a bargain compared to the war we started instead. But we, no followers of Mahatma Ghandi, cut straight to the bottom of the food-chain by resorting, once again, to ill-conceived force justified by domestic-audience subterfuge. Greatness: strike two.
After being warned for decades that our ever-increasing output of carbon dioxide threatens the thermal equilibrium of our planet, we had the choice of taking our own paid scientists at their considered word, and using that conviction to make a change for the better. We pay them to do the thinking, after all, and it's a bit disingenuous of us to then decide that the evidence they present us with has no basis, after they've done the observations and the math for us. So what do we do instead of taking up world leadership on such a crucial issue? Why, we complain that we, the richest country in the world, "can't afford" to impose on our rapacious free market the burden of responding to reality. We expect reality to quietly get out of the way of our profit margins.
Strike three for greatness, if there's any sense in continuing the count.
But now we have another chance at greatness. Call it a base-walk. Even if we can't see past the use of force as a diplomatic imperative; even if we don't care that the world boils, so long as our own rich can still afford air-conditioning and endangered caviar; even if we lay waste to whole countries to feed our obscene thirst for oil, we still have a shot at the cultural big-time.
So how to grab the ring on the next go-round? How about killing television, how does that strike you for a cultural Heimlick Maneuver?
Television is at one and the same time the worst medium for real information on current events, and the best popular anesthetic for the cultural malady it creates. If I were dictator and could make only one change before being overthrown by the outraged populace (but what are the chances of that, eh? (I mean the "overthrow" part)), it would be to kill the idiot box and make sure the corpse was chopped, burnt, shredded, and drown beyond resurrection. But I might not have to become dictator after all, because this writer's strike could do the job for me.
Do I really think so? Of course not.
But I can dream, can't I? What would we do in a world without an electronic teat to simultaneously lay us prostrate and tranced for hours every evening, and yet convince us that we are each of us the one flower of creation, without peer on the earth?
I don't know what we'd do in that case.
But I'd love to find out.
Seriously though, the writer's strike is perhaps the last great hope for our culture.
Pretty sad observation, that. But we've blown so many other chances for greatness, and reality only gives us three chances to get it right, in my experience. By my count, we're already far overdrawn on our cultural credibility account, and can expect a foreclosure letter in the post any time.
Briefly, then, a littany of some near-misses from greatness:
After quite genuinely saving the world from a Very Bad Thing in WWII, we seem to have taken on the concept that as a country we could do no wrong on the force front. What followed that adolescent attack of hubris was a long progression of wars that not only had negative outcomes, but no durable rationales to start with, and were entered into through subterfuge. Strike one (at least!) for greatness.
After the Twin Towers in NY were not-so-urbanely renewed by a well-conceived criminal enterprize in 2001, we had an unprecedented chance to take the high road by "interfering" in certain countries' cultures through domestic development strategies that might have made them better off in their own homelands, and thus less likely to produce people intent on sending us a message. The world would have given us, the victims of the act, a great deal of lattitude for such a "forcible" developement agenda, which monetarily would have been a bargain compared to the war we started instead. But we, no followers of Mahatma Ghandi, cut straight to the bottom of the food-chain by resorting, once again, to ill-conceived force justified by domestic-audience subterfuge. Greatness: strike two.
After being warned for decades that our ever-increasing output of carbon dioxide threatens the thermal equilibrium of our planet, we had the choice of taking our own paid scientists at their considered word, and using that conviction to make a change for the better. We pay them to do the thinking, after all, and it's a bit disingenuous of us to then decide that the evidence they present us with has no basis, after they've done the observations and the math for us. So what do we do instead of taking up world leadership on such a crucial issue? Why, we complain that we, the richest country in the world, "can't afford" to impose on our rapacious free market the burden of responding to reality. We expect reality to quietly get out of the way of our profit margins.
Strike three for greatness, if there's any sense in continuing the count.
But now we have another chance at greatness. Call it a base-walk. Even if we can't see past the use of force as a diplomatic imperative; even if we don't care that the world boils, so long as our own rich can still afford air-conditioning and endangered caviar; even if we lay waste to whole countries to feed our obscene thirst for oil, we still have a shot at the cultural big-time.
So how to grab the ring on the next go-round? How about killing television, how does that strike you for a cultural Heimlick Maneuver?
Television is at one and the same time the worst medium for real information on current events, and the best popular anesthetic for the cultural malady it creates. If I were dictator and could make only one change before being overthrown by the outraged populace (but what are the chances of that, eh? (I mean the "overthrow" part)), it would be to kill the idiot box and make sure the corpse was chopped, burnt, shredded, and drown beyond resurrection. But I might not have to become dictator after all, because this writer's strike could do the job for me.
Do I really think so? Of course not.
But I can dream, can't I? What would we do in a world without an electronic teat to simultaneously lay us prostrate and tranced for hours every evening, and yet convince us that we are each of us the one flower of creation, without peer on the earth?
I don't know what we'd do in that case.
But I'd love to find out.
comments