It would be nice if one day these words didn’t need to be said anywhere, to anyone.  

Only 3 minutes of your life to be captivated, enlightened, amused and provoked by the brilliant Nathan Gibbs.  For anyone who loves colour of all kinds, crayon or otherwise, this is for you.

“Crayola Monologues (2003) uses the crayon as a human metaphor for exploring color and identity in the United States. This animated video features crayons expressing how color hierarchies have shaped their lives. These crayons live in a world much like our own, complete with prejudice, class boundaries, social hierarchies and those who fall between the lines. Crayola Monologues also reveals the politics behind Crayola label changes, and gives a voice to the previously unheard perspective of crayons.”

I think life, the best part of it anyway, is about what you find when you’re not looking.  I was looking for the colour Prussian blue.  The why does not matter, what is interesting is what I found.  I found this awesome crayon, the sort of colour I would buy a whole box of crayons for just to get this one, when I was younger.  What a glorious, heavenly colour!  But wait, the political correctoes have been in and taken away just a bit of the colour, the colour of its name and it’s now called midnight blue.  Sigh….

It’s not all dire blandness I’m delighted to say because clicking on a link I was taken to the Crayola Monologues, a brilliant short film (3mins) by Nathan Gibbs.  He uses crayons as a metaphor for exploring colour and identity in the United States.  I am posting the video but if you are impatient and cannot wait, just click on the link.  Look what I found when I wasn’t looking!

Today in a bid for freedom from responsibility and circumstance, I detoured to the charity store.  I really love the charity store; not because proceeds made go to worthy causes (that’s good of course), nor because things are relatively inexpensive (also good) but primarily because of the quirky, bizarre, wonderful variety of goods one can find there.  You think I’m going to tell you about just such a purchase and I’m sorry to disappoint you.  I did find two very good books that promise to be interesting reads - one is called, “Mockingbird, A Portrait of Harper Lee,” and the other is titled, “Sway, The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behaviour.”  Of the second book, I was drawn to it for these words on the back, “A fascinating journey into the hidden psychological forces that cause us to act irrationally in our personal and professional lives.”  Being one who has acted at times in a way others find irrational, I am gratified to discover there may be answers.  Actually, I like being irrational now and again, it keeps others on their toes and certainly makes life interesting.  As for the first book, I am intrigued by the life of the reclusive Harper Lee, famous for her novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”  As with all first novels, it’s heavily biographical and her Father was said to be a considerable influence in her formation of the Atticus character.  Lee’s Father was an editor, lawyer and also a senator and she studied law likewise, abandoning her studies just six months before qualifiying.  Instead she went to New York to pursue a writing career, working with Truman Capote as a research assistant on his notorious book, “In Cold Blood.”  A friend offered to support her with her writing and she created the first draft of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” to be her only book.  She did get part way through another book, “The Long Goodbye,” but never finished it.  Asked much later in life why she didn’t write any more, she gave the following response, “Two reasons: one, I wouldn’t go through the pressure and publicity I went through with “To Kill a Mockingbird” for any amount of money.  Second, I have said what I wanted to say and I will not say it again.”  Now I’ve said what I’ve wanted to say too.

(Additional information from Wikipedia and “Mockingbird,” by Charles J Shields)  

As wars drag on and global conflicts proliferate, I can’t help but think of what we are capable of doing to each other.  There is nothing I can say that is not already known about our potential to obliterate our perceived enemies.  In the blink of an eye they would no longer be our problem.  Assuredly, we would not be blinking anything, as we also would cease to exist.  I’ve been thinking about the greatest weapon of all.  It’s growing more powerful while many keep their eyes tightly closed.  It is a threat so profound we can’t measure it, and yet it’s capable of the annihilation of every species. 

That weapon is fear.  Fear has the capacity to separate us from our common humanity and to warp our thinking into terms of “them and us.”  It whispers in our ears and condones actions that, under any other terms, would be unjustifiable.  It masquerades as ignorance and its disguises are many.  Individuals, groups and governments use this weapon to support their own ends; when fear is deployed, these ends are usually not for the good of the people, any people.   We now benefit from an unprecedented quantity and variety of information at our fingertips.  This has served to better inform us but conversely has enabled those that will, to deliberately misinform. Poisonous fear can now be spread in seconds and widely for maximum devastation.  With so many guises and such opportunity for cancerous spread, we need to understand the heart of it. 

Fear is a coping mechanism designed to protect us from danger.  Unfortunately, the most insecure know exactly how to take advantage of this.  A good example can be seen in school playing areas, with the ubiquitous playground bully.  The bully’s stock in trade is fear.  They use aggression and verbal attacks, amongst other things, to frighten and intimidate their victim.  Then they quell any support the victim might have had by inspiring the same fear in others.  Bullies are never strong but are often powerful.  Their power is in their ability to manipulate and communicate fear.  Once fear is activated, people cease to think rationally, to think at all.  Bullies are essentially actors, actors of aggressive drama and they are both masking and acting out their deepest insecurities.  Some coping mechanisms are more destructive than productive at times.

On a personal or global scale, it’s much the same.  We fear what is different; we fear change and loss of control.  We are light years ahead of our roots in terms of the multitude of weaponry we have created.  In other ways though, we have not developed beyond our primitive beginnings.  We still greet change, that which we don’t understand, and any threat to our power with defensiveness and aggression.  Despite apparent advances we have not learned how to live with each other peacefully.  We do not feel united by our common humanity and fear divides us.

As a coping mechanism, fear can take many forms.  It can be seen hiding behind reason, cloaked in supposed good intentions and frequently, spoken through the voice of authority.  One of its most insidious forms is found in political correctness. Beware the dictate that sets anyone apart as deserving deferential treatment in language or in form - it’s tokenism. Ultimately, not only is it not helpful but also, it is likely to foment resentment.  I think we’ve gone a little mad in trying not to offend.  A child said to me recently when I was offered a choice of jelly beans and commented that, “I prefer the black ones,” “that’s racist!”  We’re all tied up in knots and this is what political correctness does.  This is not how you dispel fear or reduce prejudice but rather how you breed more of the same.

In relation to trying to decrease fear and prejudice, tokenism is one of the guises of political correctness that conceals fear.  I remember when my children were doing a segment in school one day about world religions.  It seemed like progress to some.  They came home after with a few new words, some pictures they’d coloured in and that was the end of that.  The government backed education system could now tick their diverse faith education boxes.  Equally, when the same government hired their quota of people of colour, perhaps that felt like progress.  Superficial correctness may seem like giant steps in our evolution, but as long as our understanding is but a token and while our focus is on ticking boxes, we’re not really equitable.

It’s not easy to be equitable when you’re afraid.  It seems there is nothing any one person can do except to watch the impending disaster.  Maybe that’s not all though.  If the masquerade of ignorance is pulled off fear, it will have nowhere to hide.  Ignorance cannot survive if you are well and broadly informed, engaging both a healthy scepticism and a suspension of presumption in your information gathering.  It is also easier to be truly equitable when you realise how similar we are.  This realisation is only possible if you open up your life to someone who is different than you, someone who might even represent what you think you fear.  With two simple actions undertaken by enough people, it is conceivable to make change.   They are the one way the greatest weapon of all can be disarmed. 

tokenism:  the practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to do a particular thing, esp. by recruiting a small number of people from underrepresented groups in order to give the appearance of sexual or racial equality within a workforce.   

ⓒ S. Marian, Jan. 30, 2012  

“…it is conceivable to make change…the one way the greatest weapon of all can be disarmed.”

~ S. Marian

(“Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream,”  written in 1950 by Ed McCurdy, performed by the Corries)

“…realisation is only possible if you open up your life to someone who is different than you, someone who might even represent what you think you fear.”  

~ S. Marian

While looking for images appropriate to the subject of the piece, “The Greatest Weapon of Them All” (please read), one man continually showed his face, his words always perfectly saying what I struggled to express.

 Fear has the capacity to separate us from our common humanity and to warp our thinking into terms of “them and us.”

~ S. Marian

(If you like this photo and these words, please take a few minutes to read the piece related to this image, “The Greatest Weapon of Them All.”)

As wars drag on and global conflicts proliferate, I can’t help but think of what we are capable of doing to each other.  There is nothing I can say that is not already known about our potential to obliterate our perceived enemies.  In the blink of an eye they would no longer be our problem.  Assuredly, we would not be blinking anything, as we also would cease to exist.  I’ve been thinking about the greatest weapon of all.  It’s growing more powerful while many keep their eyes tightly closed.  It is a threat so profound we can’t measure it, and yet it’s capable of the annihilation of every species. 

That weapon is fear.  Fear has the capacity to separate us from our common humanity and to warp our thinking into terms of “them and us.”  It whispers in our ears and condones actions that, under any other terms, would be unjustifiable.  It masquerades as ignorance and its disguises are many.  Individuals, groups and governments use this weapon to support their own ends; when fear is deployed, these ends are usually not for the good of the people, any people.   We now benefit from an unprecedented quantity and variety of information at our fingertips.  This has served to better inform us but conversely has enabled those that will, to deliberately misinform. Poisonous fear can now be spread in seconds and widely for maximum devastation.  With so many guises and such opportunity for cancerous spread, we need to understand the heart of it. 

Fear is a coping mechanism designed to protect us from danger.  Unfortunately, the most insecure know exactly how to take advantage of this.  A good example can be seen in school playing areas, with the ubiquitous playground bully.  The bully’s stock in trade is fear.  They use aggression and verbal attacks, amongst other things, to frighten and intimidate their victim.  Then they quell any support the victim might have had by inspiring the same fear in others.  Bullies are never strong but are often powerful.  Their power is in their ability to manipulate and communicate fear.  Once fear is activated, people cease to think rationally, to think at all.  Bullies are essentially actors, actors of aggressive drama and they are both masking and acting out their deepest insecurities.  Some coping mechanisms are more destructive than productive at times.

On a personal or global scale, it’s much the same.  We fear what is different; we fear change and loss of control.  We are light years ahead of our roots in terms of the multitude of weaponry we have created.  In other ways though, we have not developed beyond our primitive beginnings.  We still greet change, that which we don’t understand, and any threat to our power with defensiveness and aggression.  Despite apparent advances we have not learned how to live with each other peacefully.  We do not feel united by our common humanity and fear divides us.

As a coping mechanism, fear can take many forms.  It can be seen hiding behind reason, cloaked in supposed good intentions and frequently, spoken through the voice of authority.  One of its most insidious forms is found in political correctness. Beware the dictate that sets anyone apart as deserving deferential treatment in language or in form - it’s tokenism. Ultimately, not only is it not helpful but also, it is likely to foment resentment.  I think we’ve gone a little mad in trying not to offend.  A child said to me recently when I was offered a choice of jelly beans and commented that, “I prefer the black ones,” “that’s racist!”  We’re all tied up in knots and this is what political correctness does.  This is not how you dispel fear or reduce prejudice but rather how you breed more of the same.

In relation to trying to decrease fear and prejudice, tokenism is one of the guises of political correctness that conceals fear.  I remember when my children were doing a segment in school one day about world religions.  It seemed like progress to some.  They came home after with a few new words, some pictures they’d coloured in and that was the end of that.  The government backed education system could now tick their diverse faith education boxes.  Equally, when the same government hired their quota of people of colour, perhaps that felt like progress.  Superficial correctness may seem like giant steps in our evolution, but as long as our understanding is but a token and while our focus is on ticking boxes, we’re not really equitable.

It’s not easy to be equitable when you’re afraid.  It seems there is nothing any one person can do except to watch the impending disaster.  Maybe that’s not all though.  If the masquerade of ignorance is pulled off fear, it will have nowhere to hide.  Ignorance cannot survive if you are well and broadly informed, engaging both a healthy scepticism and a suspension of presumption in your information gathering.  It is also easier to be truly equitable when you realise how similar we are.  This realisation is only possible if you open up your life to someone who is different than you, someone who might even represent what you think you fear.  With two simple actions undertaken by enough people, it is conceivable to make change.   They are the one way the greatest weapon of all can be disarmed. 

tokenism:  the practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to do a particular thing, esp. by recruiting a small number of people from underrepresented groups in order to give the appearance of sexual or racial equality within a workforce.   

ⓒ S. Marian, Jan. 30, 2012