I’ve always liked the following snippet of purple prose.
Before the beginning, after the great war between heaven and hell, God created the Earth and gave dominion over it to the crafty ape he called man… and to each generation was born a Creature of Light and a Creature of Darkness… and great armies clashed by night in the ancient war between good and evil. There was magic then. Nobility. And unimaginable cruelty. And so it was until the day that a false sun exploded over Trinity, and man forever traded away wonder for reason. -- Season One opening narration from the HBO series Carnivàle
I don’t buy into the “god” part, heaven and hell, or the idea that after the bomb humanity embraced reason. But the seemingly forever war of Good vs. Evil … resonates.
For the last week I’ve tried to jettison some words from my day-to-day vocabulary. Old habits die hard but the mind experiment is interesting. Try it yourself. For one week don’t use these words:
Democrat, Republican, Liberal, Conservative, Right Wing, Left Wing, or any other label like Left of Center, Center, or Right of Center. Get rid of all quasi-political descriptors. Because they don’t really work anymore. They’re not very accurate or applicable. If I needed you to take care of my dog you’d need to know if I was talking about a Great Dane or a Chihuahua. “Just saying “dog” isn’t good enough. These days our political labels don’t really tell us anything. And while we’re at it let’s get rid of all the “-ists” and “-isms.” Socialism/Socialist, Communism/Communist, Capitalism/Capitalist, and Fascism/Fascist, are so emotionally charged some of us can’t think straight when they’re plopped into a conversation.
Now that we’ve got those words out of the way … let’s perform another mind experiment. Let’s design A New Society. Not an over-reaching Utopia … just a place where you’d like to live. What would make up the basic foundation of such a place? Where to start?