It’s been nearly a year since I first distilled down what I’ve come to think of as “Connections Theory”. I’ve expounded on the subject in many different ways, sometimes without using the same words, as a way of thinking this out in public. Many of you have responded with insightful comments and a few questions on the side – what is that guy going on about? I’d like to nail this down into a simple, direct statement.
Monthly Archives: July 2010
Suspension of Disbelief
Everyone has the experience at some time. You’ve read a book or seen a movie that you absolutely loved, and you want to tell the world about your new obsession. You might even know someone that you’d love to share this new world with. So you start telling them about the intricate details of the plot and characters and after rambling on and on … and then you see their eyes slowly glaze over. What went wrong? Often it’s that you had suspended your disbelief in something that sounds too absurd to tell easily. It makes sense to you, but the retelling leaves you sounding a bit crazy.
This doesn’t just happen with fiction. A disconnected world requires a lot of suspension of disbelief.
Rage Against Rage?
The situations have been coming on strong for years, but they seem to be peaking. Everywhere you visit on the internet, and sometimes even in public, we all run into someone who can take any subject and make it into a kind of right-wing rant:
“Sure is hot today!”
“That’s not evidence of global warming!”
It wasn’t long ago that characters and attitudes like this were the domain of the other side – those who were against The System, The Man, The Establishment, They. Has everything flipped, or is this all one big phenomenon?
Obligations
In the ecstasy of the moments after the winning goal of the world cup, Andres Iniesta was outside of himself. Yelling, screaming, mad with adrenaline and victory, he stripped off his shirt in a popular gesture. But Iniesta had another shirt underneath that read Dani Jarque siempre con nosotros – Dani Jarque is always with us, a tribute to a teammate who died suddenly of a heart attack a year ago. Ecstasy meeting tragedy became a triumph. That’s the nature of our obligation to those who have gone on before us, a calling not just to the departed but to our better selves – and a deeper appreciation of the moments we have.
All Politics is Local
Do you remember the good old days? Yeah, there never were any good old days. Everything has always been a struggle, leadership has never really been what the legends tell us, and people have always been just people. Yet in narrow little areas it’s sometimes possible to look back and find that maybe we didn’t know just how good we had it. I was going to write a piece called “Where have all the good Republicans gone?” but somehow Tip O’Neill’s book “All Politics is Local” was calling to me instead. No, I’m not going to dump on Republicans here. We all bad.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 