REFER TO GREY: Contemplations by Robert Greigos © 2007-2024

Last year we had Chinese going berserk, stabbing school children in their heads with a knife. This year we have a massacre in Norway and riots in the streets of London. Faced with seeming insurmountable frustration, some strike out. Others quietly and anonymously drift into despair, like the self-professed Crow Indian disturbingly rendered above. Still others fantasize there is nothing out of the ordinary going on and continue, as much as possible, to party. It is, most certainly, a time of trial for each and every member of our species. However, only a relative few still cling to the belief that an inclusive solution is possible. The rest have apparently concluded it's time to cull the herd: let chips, or bodies, fall where they may. We can, they say, afford little else.

Have we reached a moment in our history where compassion, care for our fellows, has become maladaptive? I wonder.

Culture is a set of ideas that marries us to our social and physical environment. Fail to learn those ideas and one flounders. Learn a set of ideas that doesn't keep up with inevitable change and one's entire cultural community may flounder.

The question needs asking: to what extent can minds made up be changed? If you didn't learn how to learn way back in grade school, and you don't trust new ideas, have trouble imagining their utility, what choice is there but to segregate you from the group and leave you to your fate?

Fight? You say you'll fight, fight to preserve what you know is right? No problem, no problem at all, those in the vanguard are saying. We'll go around, step over, or flat out walk right over you. Your so called "right" has become a one way ticket to oblivion. Take it. Use it. Be happy you've gotten as far as you have.

Hate us or pity us, they insist. Your truth is no longer our truth. We hereby choose a different poison to swallow. Enlightenment has revealed a brand new path. The past will be used as needed. But it does not, nor will not confine us. We are moving on.

Thus, the next generation blunders forward, toward new successes, new disasters. In the meantime, can anything at all be made of what is being left behind? Is it totally wasted sentiment, an extravagance we can no longer afford, to consider offering a helping hand to souls whose ideas just do not work for them anymore?

I wonder.