I have a bad cold and I went on the Internet to see about medicine compatibility. It started me thinking about how much information is available to us and at how much information we need to believe, and to act on, every day of our lives. This is especially true for issues that will require the cooperation of vast numbers of people, including major changes in their behavior and their choices. One of these is Global Warming, but there are many, many others.
A week or so ago I saw a new version of The Wizard of Oz, called Tin Man, a mini-series over three nights. I was entertained—although I have to admit that with science fiction or fantasy my threshold for enjoyment is pretty low. One of the things that interested me was the way that in the girl in Tin Man, who was named “DG”, finding herself in a strange and magical world, still accepted advice and information from a wide variety of dubious characters on her way to the inevitable happy ending. Like DG, we’re surrounded by dangers, but unlike her we don’t have a script to follow to make sure everything comes out okay. And the dubious characters around us aren’t as easy to identify as they were in the mini-series.
A lot of what we learn comes from words written on pages, spoken words on radio or with images on television or movies, or words acted out by people following a screenplay on a “stage” deliberately set with selected props to create a certain response from us. Sometimes the designed effect is for us to react to the truth, but sometimes it is for us to be misled. When we see or hear organized information, we are habituated from birth to react in set ways to certain artificial patterns, to artificial cues. Television, the movies, children’s books, all start us out with patterns of information that we add to the more random interactions of real life.
For instance, we often expect endings that tidy-up loose ends. We think that in a relatively short time a necessary end will occur. We think when people do deliberate wrong in a good cause they are heroes—think NYPD Blue, any private detective story, etc. Even the shows that trick us into rooting for the wrong character (like No Way Out) are viewed as fun when we gasp and laugh as we learn we were fooled. We don’t see them as carrying an underlying truth that is a warning about how easily our emotions are engaged.
When what we learn comes to us in a form that is as deliberately crafted for an effect as the fiction that we read or see—just as I’m deliberately choosing my words as I write this post—there is a danger in this deliberate-ness. We enjoy being misled in the theater or in a novel, but it can be dangerous and even catastrophic in real life.
There is often a powerful difference between, on one side, the specific behavior and possessions chosen by an individual, and, on the other, the presentation that that individual deliberately creates to convey information to others. (Here is a fundamental home of basic hypocrisy and of lying.) An example of this are the ways Al Gore and many other celebrities use privileged, large amounts of fossil-fuel energy in their lives, compared with the way they skillfully form their Global Warming communication to preach for low fossil-fuel energy usage. And just like in the movies and on TV, many people excuse it because they believe Al Gore and the others are doing what they do for a good cause.
Our quest for finding true and useful information, for discovering solutions and answers in life has much in common with that of the original story of Frank Baum’s Dorothy, seeking the Wizard in Oz. We, too, seek out experts, and rely on them, often finding later that when we follow them things have gotten worse. Could it be that our current methods of seeking the Good are based on a deceptive view of the Good, and even some times a deliberately deceptive view of the Good? Dorothy was sent to achieve a certain goal—having been assured by the expert Wizard of Oz that once she obtained the witch’s broomstick she would win her trip home. This was a deception: the quest for the broomstick had nothing to do with her ability to gain the Good she sought, to gain her goal of a return to Kansas. Dorothy was lucky—she won her freedom—but only after she discovered the Wizard’s deception, only after she recognized that neither the Wizard nor the broomstick was a magic talisman with the power to grant her wish. She was amazed to find that she had always had the ability to achieve her goal. Her friends—the Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man—found that they had always been capable of what they had searched for all along—it just took some recognition by their own minds and hearts of their own capacities.
The search for the broomstick had shown them all that they had hidden strengths and skills. (In this, I have always enjoyed this movie.) The author had deliberately written it that way. Dorothy went after the broomstick without any guarantee that it would work to get her home. There is nothing intrinsic about a broomstick—even a witch’s broomstick, which in fairy tales has all sorts of powers—nothing that made it obvious that it had the power to do what she wanted. She trusted the word of the “expert” Wizard. How much of the information we are given by “experts” is designed to induce behavior for motives we aren’t aware of. How many “broomsticks” are we all chasing?
It turned out that Dorothy’s actions freed a lot of people from a tyranny—but there was nothing intrinsic in the story that could have given her that belief before she did it. Moreover, the only reason it ended that way was because the author, Baum, wrote it that way. It could just as easily ended that the broomstick itself gave the Wizard the power to enslave a lot of people, instead. We need to increase our knowledge to reduce the number and impact of unforeseen consequences.
In life, there are always unforeseen consequences. Baseball and football are played on the appropriate fields, and are played according to specific rules, but life isn’t, and we mustn’t change our behavior to fit rules and meet goals that are actually lies. We don’t want to live in a ruined economy, we don’t want to see large sections of our sovereignty transferred to UN or other world bodies, or to find ourselves in a prison or “re-education” camp, or in a concentration camp, or in a grave, because we didn’t have clear and reliable reasons for what we believed and the decisions we made based on those beliefs.
Unlike fictional characters like DG and Dorothy, we need to ask a lot more questions and search for a lot more information about the key issues that surround us. And when experts preach that there is a crisis, and insist on one behavior while living a far different one, we need to be able to recognize that we may be being asked to chase a broomstick.
Tags:
• Al Gore
• Dorothy
• Frank Baum
• Global Warming
• Hypocrisy
• Tin Man
• Wizard of Oz
# Posted by Minta Marie Morze on December 26, 2007 9:10 AM | Permalink
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I have a bad cold and I went on the Internet to see about medicine compatibility. It started me thinking about how much information is available to us and at how much information we need to believe, and to act on, every day of our lives. This is especially true for issues that will require the cooperation of vast numbers of people, including major changes in their behavior and their choices. One of these is Global Warming, but there are many, many others.
A week or so ago I saw a new version of The Wizard of Oz, called Tin Man, a mini-series over three nights. I was entertained—although I have to admit that with science fiction or fantasy my threshold for enjoyment is pretty low. One of the things that interested me was the way that in the girl in Tin Man, who was named “DG”, finding herself in a strange and magical world, still accepted advice and information from a wide variety of dubious characters on her way to the inevitable happy ending. Like DG, we’re surrounded by dangers, but unlike her we don’t have a script to follow to make sure everything comes out okay. And the dubious characters around us aren’t as easy to identify as they were in the mini-series.
A lot of what we learn comes from words written on pages, spoken words on radio or with images on television or movies, or words acted out by people following a screenplay on a “stage” deliberately set with selected props to create a certain response from us. Sometimes the designed effect is for us to react to the truth, but sometimes it is for us to be misled. When we see or hear organized information, we are habituated from birth to react in set ways to certain artificial patterns, to artificial cues. Television, the movies, children’s books, all start us out with patterns of information that we add to the more random interactions of real life.
For instance, we often expect endings that tidy-up loose ends. We think that in a relatively short time a necessary end will occur. We think when people do deliberate wrong in a good cause they are heroes—think NYPD Blue, any private detective story, etc. Even the shows that trick us into rooting for the wrong character (like No Way Out) are viewed as fun when we gasp and laugh as we learn we were fooled. We don’t see them as carrying an underlying truth that is a warning about how easily our emotions are engaged.
When what we learn comes to us in a form that is as deliberately crafted for an effect as the fiction that we read or see—just as I’m deliberately choosing my words as I write this post—there is a danger in this deliberate-ness. We enjoy being misled in the theater or in a novel, but it can be dangerous and even catastrophic in real life.
There is often a powerful difference between, on one side, the specific behavior and possessions chosen by an individual, and, on the other, the presentation that that individual deliberately creates to convey information to others. (Here is a fundamental home of basic hypocrisy and of lying.) An example of this are the ways Al Gore and many other celebrities use privileged, large amounts of fossil-fuel energy in their lives, compared with the way they skillfully form their Global Warming communication to preach for low fossil-fuel energy usage. And just like in the movies and on TV, many people excuse it because they believe Al Gore and the others are doing what they do for a good cause.
Our quest for finding true and useful information, for discovering solutions and answers in life has much in common with that of the original story of Frank Baum’s Dorothy, seeking the Wizard in Oz. We, too, seek out experts, and rely on them, often finding later that when we follow them things have gotten worse. Could it be that our current methods of seeking the Good are based on a deceptive view of the Good, and even some times a deliberately deceptive view of the Good? Dorothy was sent to achieve a certain goal—having been assured by the expert Wizard of Oz that once she obtained the witch’s broomstick she would win her trip home. This was a deception: the quest for the broomstick had nothing to do with her ability to gain the Good she sought, to gain her goal of a return to Kansas. Dorothy was lucky—she won her freedom—but only after she discovered the Wizard’s deception, only after she recognized that neither the Wizard nor the broomstick was a magic talisman with the power to grant her wish. She was amazed to find that she had always had the ability to achieve her goal. Her friends—the Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man—found that they had always been capable of what they had searched for all along—it just took some recognition by their own minds and hearts of their own capacities.
The search for the broomstick had shown them all that they had hidden strengths and skills. (In this, I have always enjoyed this movie.) The author had deliberately written it that way. Dorothy went after the broomstick without any guarantee that it would work to get her home. There is nothing intrinsic about a broomstick—even a witch’s broomstick, which in fairy tales has all sorts of powers—nothing that made it obvious that it had the power to do what she wanted. She trusted the word of the “expert” Wizard. How much of the information we are given by “experts” is designed to induce behavior for motives we aren’t aware of. How many “broomsticks” are we all chasing?
It turned out that Dorothy’s actions freed a lot of people from a tyranny—but there was nothing intrinsic in the story that could have given her that belief before she did it. Moreover, the only reason it ended that way was because the author, Baum, wrote it that way. It could just as easily ended that the broomstick itself gave the Wizard the power to enslave a lot of people, instead. We need to increase our knowledge to reduce the number and impact of unforeseen consequences.
In life, there are always unforeseen consequences. Baseball and football are played on the appropriate fields, and are played according to specific rules, but life isn’t, and we mustn’t change our behavior to fit rules and meet goals that are actually lies. We don’t want to live in a ruined economy, we don’t want to see large sections of our sovereignty transferred to UN or other world bodies, or to find ourselves in a prison or “re-education” camp, or in a concentration camp, or in a grave, because we didn’t have clear and reliable reasons for what we believed and the decisions we made based on those beliefs.
Unlike fictional characters like DG and Dorothy, we need to ask a lot more questions and search for a lot more information about the key issues that surround us. And when experts preach that there is a crisis, and insist on one behavior while living a far different one, we need to be able to recognize that we may be being asked to chase a broomstick.
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