David Boles: Human Meme

Returning home is more difficult than the first leaving. We search for the past, and yearn to find meaning in what was as the future compresses our sacred thoughts, and reveals our lost dreams. Entire political campaigns are based on exploiting this human need of a return to the familiar. Unfortunately, that place no longer exists, and the trick is played upon those who believed history can be resurrected merely by want and, by the cold fist of force.

Seeing a doctor online should be easier than visiting one in person. Unfortunately, that is not yet the case when it comes to Telemedicine. Today, you are at the mercy of a stranger who is set against you, following invisible policy, hoping for a payday, betting against the betterment of your health in the process. Yes, these are the tenets and the tar pits of today's Telemedicine. 

Community theatre brings people together -- for a price. Fame and glory do not arrive cheap. Making a name in the local theatre community often involves volunteerism, sacrifice, and a need to be recognized that transcends the economic logic of the day. The local Playhouse needs your blood, and mind, and the price you pay is -- not getting paid at all. Is the risk worth the salvage?

Here's a manifesto against deconstruction. Are we excused from being the better person because of petty disassociations from reality? If we do not offer shade on a sunny day, or protection from the rain in the gloaming -- who will? It is up to us, not them, to provide a comforting morality that is not just debased or actually superior, but merely, equal.

The Office lives among us. The lesson that television show teaches us is to know what questions to ask, and how we should choose to answer inquiries about character, motivation, fame and reticulation. We may not be funny, but we can always choose to be better. 

Now you know! Here are ten things that can help make your life better -- from shaving razors, to mineral water, to The Blues! 

A culture is always actively seeking re-definition. Things change. We are not what we were meant to become. The same is true for our stories. Where once "Tar Baby" may have been a childhood term of endearment in a folklore story from 1881, today, "Tar Baby" means entirely something else; and it is our duty to each other to learn the why of the difference when context changes.

"I support everybody because I say so." -- Everybody on the Internet. We live in a virtual world where talk tends to have more compunction power than the act of actually doing something. Listen to this call to change to move forward and to leave blood and bones split on the street.

The Hollow Men killed George Floyd. In 1925, poet T. S. Eliot wrote to expose, and to and warn us, against the invisible intentions of -- "The Hollow Men" -- and we, the people, have yet to heed his words; and so we are left behind with hunger, and anger, and illness festering in the stillborn breech between the visible and the hollow.

We have given up original thought for translation by computer. Where once we used to think progressively on our own, we now relinquish our independent thought process -- out of a warrant for a misplaced convenience -- to a mechanical process we do not control. Neural networks do not become us, they merely imitate the worst of us, and amplify our faults, temptations, and digressions in full view of the Panopticon.

Democracy demands comity from those who lead us. If, and when, that kindness falls, everyone in the community is at risk of being forsaken and forbidden from free thought. The winners in any context are required by morality and higher purpose to abide by, and support, the dreams of the losers -- if not, the entire world collapses into a distant, but purposeful, cruelty. 

Discovering new worlds begins in the constructed word. We descend into darkness together, to discover the light hiding below what we know. The secret to surviving a world afire is knowing how to extinguish threats to liberty, and freedom, with reading comprehension and a sharp thought.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn understood Art can fight violence. What happens when violence becomes an Art? What happens next when a nation is cleaved into The City and The Valley by purposeful, political, rage, and there's no way to negotiate the differences in the home? Violence then becomes the remedy in the crevasse, and not a tenterhook for reconciliation. 

Some eat all evidence of the living. Hunger, hubris and wanting to be fulfilled are all notes of advocacy for those among us who are able to successfully erase a carcass -- or a corpse! -- before our disbelieving eyes. They eat to be fulfilled. They swallow to erase. They digest to rewrite history. The result of the cleansed plate is a palate of soul destroying musk. 

We are made to magnificently fail. In the ever going onward march from humility to humanity, we search for signposts that we are on the right path. The Artist and the Poet both share in the re-stitching of our souls, and so we look to them to divine the precious secrets to surviving a perilous life of sorrow.

We are only the skin and steel of what we used to be while alive. Today, we are stuck in the Uncanny Valley, put here by a virus, kept here by a pattern of disinformation, and by the threats of low information fools who only wish to keep us down, and locked away, in the name of a democracy that no longer exists.

We are only as good as what cannot be proven. Have you heard about the military biolab next to the Wuhan wet market? Did you know FEMA is stealing from Blue States to poison Purple States? What do you think about ER doctors being fired for telling the truth about what's really happening with ventilators? These are the not-so-evident self-truths that plague us today.

Now is the time to grieve for what will be lost. As the pandemic bears down upon us, we are left to wonder not about what we have already lost, but what will forever be forgotten into the future. We want what we cannot have. We yearn for what can never be recovered. We will have to learn again how to live in the moment, and how to appreciate these shared moments in real time.

We are reaping the whirlwind. The pandemic is upon us and we are flying, seedless, into the horizon with no foundation to root us. Schools are closed. The Palisade is staked. Every step we take is ground zero. We meet a new friend and saw off our arm. Are we there yet? Oh, yes, we are there yet.

How do we handle a perfectly designed killing machine? The Covid-19 Coronavirus appears to be a unique delivery system intentionally constructed for killing people. How does something so intrinsically effective sustain into being beyond the natural world? How many valves are left for us to turn down? How quickly will "social distancing" become "social retribution?" These are some of the vital questions we ask today of the virus that now rules us.