January 24, 2017 – Holding on to Humanity

“I’m swimming in pink and red paint as I work on these hydrangeas.”

Listen to this post:

My commitment to show up here at my computer, open up Word and start writing every Tuesday morning has shifted the way I operate the rest of the week.  As I do the rest of my life there is now an observer in me, a part of me that is always on the lookout for what I might explore or even wrestle with on a future Tuesday.  So, while reading the paper on Sunday, my writer-observer noticed a connection between two things I read – one in a restaurant review and the other in a reply to a question about a film.  I saw a link between them as well as to a broader theme that has been burbling in me since the beginning of last year.  Making these connections reinforces for me why Iain McGilchrist is so fervent in making his case for resurrecting and supporting our right brained way of thinking.  I see that he is not exaggerating his claim that the future of our society depends upon it.

Here’s are the pieces I read in the San Francisco Chronicle this past weekend:

The title of Michael Bauer’s review of Motze called it more of a “food lab” than a restaurant.  He had a cup of “bay laurel, roasted to approximate the taste of hot cocoa, topped with a small dollop of kefir.”  He continued: “While it was interesting to discuss how it had a chocolate-like quality, in reality it couldn’t stand up to the real thing.”  The review ending was what really grabbed me:  “In the end, dinner at Motze left me full, but wanting; its food may be forward thinking, but is not particularly uplifting for the spirit.”

Then, in response to a question about a film that used technology to bring back the actor Peter Cushing from the dead, film critic Mick Lasalle said this:  “It’s like killing him all over again … in the sense that it re-enacts the separation the soul from the body.  And it’s an insult on top of that, because the very act of resurrecting his body without his soul suggests that we never had any use for his soul to begin with.  So, I think the practice is creepy, morally sick and obviously the wave of the future.”

These two pieces brought to mind something else that recently came to me – another gift from Krista Tippett:  her interview of Anil Dash on “tech’s moral reckoning.”  Anil Dash is a tech-entrepreneur who was one of the earliest bloggers.  He suggests that we all can contribute to the humane potential of technology:  “We’re still sounding our way through this incorporation of technology into our lives.  And it always does come down to — what are our values?  And what do we care about?  And what are the things we think are meaningful?  And then using that as a filter to understand and control and make decisions around these new technologies.  And that’s part of the reckoning I’d ask everybody who’s not in technology to have, is to raise that flag.”

I’m wondering if there isn’t a clue here in the divide that our society suffers from in this moment.  There is a contingent that thrives on the division between us in its fomenting of hate.  Our new President’s rise to power came in part by his exploiting these intense emotions, but we must not lose sight of the fact that he is spot on when he says there are good people in our country who have been left behind.  The most material and important way they have been left behind is economic – which is big and complex and likely won’t change quickly.  But I see the possibility that there is also a cultural divide that might be related to the extent to which the kind of “forward thinking” I read about in the Sunday paper can be de-humanizing – and is leaving people with the sense that they can no longer relate to this world.  I know it does me.

I’m not suggesting that we go back – I don’t think that it’s even possible, we can’t un-know anything we know.  Conveniences we enjoy are near impossible to turn away from.  And technology has also connected us in potent ways.  It’s all in how we use it.  This brings me back to what I’m learning about the left and right brain ways of thinking.  It might be worth a re-read of the comparison of traits in my post from last year to get a better sense, but basically the left brain has narrow focus, sees discrete parts and is more fixed.  The right brain sees the whole, sees more broadly and is more open.  Can you see how it appears that a lot of people on the more entrenched sides of both divisions are operating in their left-brains?

It is the right brain that is interested in what is new.  Though we don’t think of technology this way, our right brains think “outside the box” and they are what bring us the ideas for technological innovation – that the left brain then sorts out how to make work.  But then these innovations must be applied in a holistic, human-centered way or they end up being like the bay laurel “hot chocolate” or a soulless actor brought partially back from the dead.  Or – even more critically – make it easier to de-humanize someone we only experience through the characters they’ve typed, as they appear in our electronic device.

I heard a song this weekend that has not stopped playing in my head.  I’d heard it before – but it’s stirring in me now because it’s a shining example of the opposite.  Sara Bareilles has taken Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” and creatively breathed fresh, new life in it.  She retains his song’s original spirit as she reveals her own soul in her version.  It’s so worth a listen.  I loved hearing Elton John give her his blessing in another video.  He said:  “I was so blown away by the version of Yellow Brick Road. I’ve never heard anyone sing any one of my songs like that – ever.  I can’t thank you enough for giving your time – and blowing my mind with that version because when someone sings your song, they usually copy you – she made it her own.  That’s brilliant.”

Fresh and new are a given, we are evolving beings, our consciousness is constantly expanding.  We are pushing the envelope of what we mean by gender, and family and community – in what and how we eat, work and communicate.  This is all good and I’m all behind it – it’s foolish and even squanders our energy to fight it.  Where I want to chime in, where I see we need to pay attention, is that we aim to start from and end with our humanity, our shared humanness, that we keep at least a bit of our awareness tuned into the fact that every single one of us has a human soul.  Every one.  And when we forget, to help ourselves remember.

There is a significant, important role for art in this remembering.  If there is a gift in the uncertainty so many of us feel, it is that the conviction to bring forth our souls – to bring forth all in us that supports life, to re-orient every day towards that which we find beautiful.  And then we must resist anything that separates us from life – including misused technology.  There is an invitation here to take our creative selves much more seriously.  I feel it.  Do you?  We must live our love and paint on.

With my love,

Cara