[Oe List ...] Jaime for Friday July 11

[via OE]

This completes my "forwards" from the Saipan Tribune for a while.


Jaime




Consciousness andimage


 
Kenneth Boulding in 1956 published The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society, which began aconversation that I later joined after drinking deeply on the “earthrise”picture of ’68, deciding to be a citizen of the blue orb in the sky.  My consciousness and an image merged into astory that determined behavior.  Boulding’sinsight follows the following basic premise: 
We operate out of images.
These images govern our behavior.
Images are created by messages.
Images can change.
Changed images create change behavior.
 
I mention these five points again to remind me of theirrelevance, still.  It illuminates thebehavior change that earthrise brought, just like a friend’s pat speech.  She says, “I only have three things to say: reuse, reduce, recycle.”  From consciousness and image spin a lively story.  Sometimes though, the effect is not too lively.
 
When I was in grade 11, I took a psychological test.  A counselor briefed me on the result.  Her message: you are over-achieving.  Idid not exactly know what that meant but at the time, I was alarmed that if Icontinued the academic path I was in, I would turn cuckoo.  Cuckoo was the image.  I focused on sports, athletics, and sociallife instead after letting academic excellence fall by the hallway.
 
A friend received scholarship from a sponsor to attend avocational High School.  He consented butreceived a jesting message that his family did not consider him smart enough toattend liberal arts High School.  Itlingered so he nursed a deep slight past his adult life, blaming his family forsubverting his academic direction.
 
An older friend did not resemble any of her four siblings, abit darker and shorter.  Her father jokedthat the day she was born at a Manila hospital during WWII, the electricityblacked out and she might have been inadvertently exchanged as a baby, thus,the dissimilarities.  When she turned 40,the unintended cruelty of the joke came out in an emotional outburst thatclaimed her family never wanted her all along.
 
A good friend from the Philippines signified to her adviser afterHigh School that she wanted to be a nurse. She felt she did not get a supportive response.  So she shifted to pursue secretarialscience.  The adviser commented that shewas not pretty enough to be a secretary and not smart enough to learnstenography.  The adviser was notreceived to be jesting so my friend took her negative response to heart.  Others rue today with the lament that she seemsstill trying to prove she was prettier and smarter than anyone else, or just aspretty and smart as the best of them.
 
The above examples are personal at the individual level ofhow messages create images that determine behavior.  In a larger scale, the image that has definedus in the last three hundred years as a specie is the way we are organized.  We created nation-states, beginning with thebreakdown of the imperial entity after the Vatican blessed Spain and Portugal’ssplit of the known world, to the feudal states in Europe, and the colonies ofcompeting empires.  
 
After WWII the nation-states exploded in Asia and Africa butthe former colonizers agreed that the new nation-states would follow thesovereign lines of their former masters.  Spanish occupiers (and their successors) neversubdued the Moro in Mindanao, yet they were included in the new politicalentity named after Spain’s Principe Felipe. The same arrangement did not sit well with the Tutsi and the Hutu inRwanda.  The “nation-state” reels fromthat misjudgment!
 
There are now global issues that require global solutions andas Simon Anholt in his TED talk on the Good Country Index said, we electleaders who we ask to lead by looking through “microscopes when they should belooking through telescopes.”  We know ofglobal challenges but we are reluctant to jump into proposed practical globalresponses because we are reluctant to change as a specie.  The reality of climate change, for instance,is not a Canada, China, or Chile issue; it is a worldwide issue that 7 billionpeople need to look at and decide how to deal with.
 
Politicians in the Commonwealth respond to issues as ifpolitical entities can operate as islandsseparate from the realities of one planet. The issue of a besieged planet does not recognize nation-state.  Only the image of one blue orb withoutboundaries impact the story of our lives. 
 
How to act in this instance, in our violent instincts,echoes Jean Anouilh’s Antigone: 
“You grab the wheel, 
you right the ship ... 
You shout an order, 
and if one man refuses to obey, 
you shoot straight into the mob. …
The thing that drops when you shoot 
may be someone who poured you a drink 
the night before; but it has no name. 
And you, braced at the wheel, 
you have no name, either. 
Nothing has a name —
except the ship, and the storm.”
 
The ship and the storm. On one planet earth, the option to shoot is no longer required but we cannot affordto be less radical.  Time to peek on thetelescope.


j'aime la vie
pinoypanda2031 at aol.com

yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!

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