Another Chance to Get it Right

I made it to another morning. So far so good and we'll see what I make of the rest of the day. My mind keeps going back to the Tempel Grandin phrase, that Nature is Cruel, but We Don't Have to Be. So why is it that so many people choose to be cruel? We can say things like, it makes them feel powerful, it subjugates others and imposes their will. But there are other ways to feel powerful and imposing your will also includes separating yourself from those you control.

Presumably, as you separate from one group you join another, and there must then be a struggle within that group, and so on, and so on. This is so if you believe the movies of Jimmy Cagney and Edward G. Robinson.

Therefore, ultimately, to choose cruelty is to choose to be solitary. In reality, that ultimate position is not always sought. I can't imagine 100,000 SS and Gestapo members lying in bed at night dreaming of displacing Hitler and becoming number one.

Well, that kind of knocks down that idea that it all ends in the number one position. So just being in the controlling group is enough. Does it always fall apart? Does the subjugation of one group by another ultimately fail in the end? Maybe not. We tell stories in which it always does. That freedom and democracy will always win in the end. That's probably self-serving propaganda from my upbringing.

I suspect there are many places in the world where there is a long-standing situation of one group keeping another group down. Including the relationship of black America to white America. But there are probably places where it has gone on much, much longer.

Of course, in most places, it is no longer a choice made by individuals. It is inherited and taught as a way of life. It is accepted as a natural position. Well, if that's the case then it is like nature. So maybe Grandin's phrase has to do solely with our culture and animal husbandry. Not humanity in general.

Because people don't just wake up one day and decide to change, unfortunately, or not. Most people do not just read a book and decide that the moral basis of their life is wrong and they must and will change it. It happens, but not often.

There's a lot there to think about. I don't know what part this will play in making a story today but there's only one way to find out. It's strange how far away from writing I feel when I spend a day not making a story. It creates a fear in me that it won't be there when I call on it again. That might make a good subject for a story. But it would be better to think of something to take the place of the writing. Another type of endeavor or skill. I'm sure I only feel this way because I have no formal basis for the knowledge. If I had taken a few semesters of  classes on literature and composition, I would feel as though I had a firm footing in this.

Let's just get on with it, shall we?

More later,