Month: July 2020

But What Does That Really Mean?

The news is exhausting. Not just all the pain and stupidity. It’s that everything requires interpretation. Even if and when someone in public is being straightforward in their speech, we might be forgiven for suspecting they are not. We are not unjustified in assuming everything we are hearing is spin.

You may find you suffer from this same sort of fatigue from dissembling, obfuscation and manipulation at work as well. I sure hope not (been there, and it’s awful). We would pray and work at, for sure, not wanting this kind of experience among those we count as friends, and most certainly not family. But it happens.

We can at least all resolve to let what people experience in us be authentic. In another, I will take flaws, oddballness, even monumental screw-ups over interpersonal dishonesty or double-speak.

Jesus said, “Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one” (Matthew 5:47 NRSV). People had debased the practice of oath taking by using it in an attempt to cover their insincerity and deceitfulness. Better to just speak plainly.

Save us, Lord, from spin narratives with one another. We see enough of it on the news. May we not devolve into a world where everyone has to guess about everyone else.

Collective Craving, Shared Hope

So as of this coming Friday, July 17, most of Ontario will enter Stage 3 of reopening, meaning, while still socially distanced, we can dine in restaurants, go to the gym, and more. Along with more practical reasons for happiness at this, there is probably an expel-a-long-breath sense of relief at being able to be a bit closer to other specimens of our species in something like a more everyday sort of way.

Maybe at some level there is a similar appeal, even craving, involved in a flurry of extra terrestrial connecting. Three nations are launching scientific missions to Mars this month (there’s a window for that now). And some of us are excited about comet Neowise, visible in the early morning sky.

If as a species we go to some lengths to explore possible proximity (relatively speaking) with other parts of the universe, it seems really not much of a big deal to do the very simple things that will help move along to being closer to one another again right here: You know, the distancing, masking, hand washing. How can any of this be an issue?

Some basic efforts about basic things are worthwhile, in all kinds of ways. I for one want to keep this in mind in a world where it easily can seem that only selfish, I-am-my-own-little-cosmos evil-influenced people succeed.

Mitigating Chaos

It’s easy enough to do. It is easy enough to fault powers-that-be for not being powers- that-do when it comes to being prepared for foreseeable trouble and acting on it. Not to excuse anything, but it is also true that the powers-that-be exhibit human geared-for-failure traits that we share. Or I know that I share.

There is the present. In the present there is this reality, global pandemic, that for decades, decades, has been predicted clearly, plainly, and loudly by highly competent and credible people. Will we humans learn from this? There will, after all, be another one. 

There are other threats, so it is said. They can all be prepared for, or at least mitigated in their impact. The chance of an inadvertent nuclear exchange can be lessened if the people who can do so would pull back even a bit from their readiness for intentional insanity. Or so I hear (via Economist podcast). Some put at 50/50 in this decade the chance of solar activity that would down satellites, and fry world-wide communications and power, maybe for years. Maybe forever. Even with that, it is said, there are things that can be done to lessen the impact (though it will still be horrible).

There is, however, little will to do anything about “low probability, high impact” events, even when the probability isn’t really low, and even when the cost of doing something now is relatively cheap.

There is this human thing, isn’t there. We will ignore or deny facts until the last possible instant, and maybe not then. Instead, deny, blame, make excuses. And everyone around the denial goes down with the denier.

That podcast I referenced made mention of three simple steps we can encourage (which really might mean instilling some courage) our leaders to do to help be prepared for disaster. First scan for present and potential danger. Second, develop a plan. Third (it has to be said), have the will to enact the plan.

Those, it seems to me, are good steps for all of us when it comes to work, the organizations we are part of, family and personal matters. Scan and plan. I say this as one who knows too well the impact of my own failures in such things.

We can lift one another in such realities as, or before, they arise, with a “You can do this” kind of genuine en-couragement.