Rather than trying to write something profound today, I’m going to present excerpts from some columns written by very thoughtful and perceptive young people (published in our campus student newspaper earlier this month).
from “Whatever you love, love it loudly,” by Jamie Hawley. University Daily Kansan (UDK), 6 May 2019, p. 6: “This is a column about the apocalypse. It doesn’t have a beginning, because there is no beginning to the end of the world. It has ended for individuals, and groups, and all the life we have driven to extinction. . . . “ . . . When the world ends for most of us, it does not end for those who can pay to save themselves. Part of the pain of living in a world on fire is watching others guzzle water. . . . “. . . Constant terror is mind-numbing, and turning away is how we keep ourselves from breaking down. . . . there is only one way to keep ourselves from slipping beneath the waves: to find the things we love and hold them tight. Let them be our flotation device. [examples she gives: Embroidery. Basketball. Harry Potter. Succulents. Jogging. The Avengers. The color blue. . . . ] “. . . In the apocalypse known as late-stage capitalism, what we love is often taken from us, replaced with a forced loyalty to the job we have to have. . . . “. . . We are allowed to be passionate about whatever it is that makes our lives worth living, even if it’s cringey, or cliché, or something as simple as the way light shines through the leaves on a tree. “. . . loving things visibly and audibly is a way to show others that we haven’t succumbed. By loving each other . . . we give each other strength. We remind each other that we are not alone . . .” She’s an English major at the University of Kansas, BTW. I like the idea of succulents and The Avengers as being antidotes for the Apocalypse. While those pursuits may not be available indefinitely, they are definitely ways to focus the attention on something else. And certainly love is a legitimate reason to carry on in spite of it all. Unfortunately, others will respond differently to actual and perceived threats, particularly in times of heightened anxiety and competition for resources. That’s where the second editorial relates to the previous one: from “’Us’ vs. ‘Them’ mentality causes radical hate,” by Jeffrey Birch. UDK, 9 May 2019, p. 9. “On some level, it’s very simple ‘monkey brain psychology. ‘Bad Thing’ happens, ‘Other’ exists, ‘Other’ confuses and scares ‘Us,” ‘Other’ gets blamed for ‘Bad Thing.’ “It’s a knee jerk reaction that’s easy to push aside if you’re in a stable relatively calm environment. But those impulses get much harder to push aside when people are scared, when they feel threatened, and when they feel like their group is being targeted. It can lead to irrational behavior and this can push people who were already unstable into doing something rash, something terrible.” These articles confirm my hunch that people who are “just starting out in life” have a much keener appreciation of what that life will entail over the next 30-50 years than do we who have lived most or much of ours. Some of them are looking it squarely in the face; and some of those can write.
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |