Elder Advice – Thinking Inside the Box-Week 17
To avoid taking a position on the current chaos which could only be described as “fetal” I make a habit of cutting the electronic umbilical cord completely one day a week. It helps. And lessens my anxiety and depression about the current shortage of Zoloft.
For one out of every seven days, I “pull the plug” - to use the anachronistic. To avoid exposure to “politics”. From the Latin “poli” meaning “many” and “tics” meaning “unrelenting blood sucking creatures”. And to Ghislaine Maxwell, whose lawyers argued should be released on bail while awaiting trial for sex trafficking minors for Jeffrey Epstein, because of the risk of contracting coronavirus in jail. And to the Trudeau family- now officially the Little Piggies who said “WE, WE, WE, all the way home.” And to Doug Ford’s crystal-clear pronouncement on Ontario’s Stage 3 re-opening: “"It's going to come very shortly, hopefully sooner than later…" And to routine corporate corruption and bureaucratic box-ticking and the media eating its own. And the politicization of art. And debates over whether ordering a skinny latte is fat shaming. And endless commentary by people who show all the symptoms of never having read a book, much less Orwell’s 1984.
And on and on and on…
But every now and then, a warm wind breaks through the flatulence. This past week, my friend Susan sent me an uplifting link to https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ . An open letter written by sane people. By which, of course, I mean people who think exactly as I and all other sane people do. The signatories are well-known intellectual leaders. By which, of course, I mean people who are not me. They are people who literally spend their days thinking deeply. And they are concerned about the vogue for public shaming and ostracism and its consequences for basic principles of progress, justice, fairness and freedom. While the disturbing back story is the not insignificant number of luminaries who expressly declined to sign the letter because of their fear of repercussions, news of this kind is more than welcome.
Elder Advice? Rely on your friends to help you curb the craving to just curl up and consume chocolate. Or overindulge in lavish alliteration.
Chocolate. That reminds me. It’s time to get back to “flattening the curve.” By which, of course, I mean my abdominal curve.