If Dim Is King, Send Me to Pandora

If “Dim Is King,” Send Me to Pandora

Billy recently sent me a wonderful piece of commentary by Will Durst entitled “Dim Is King.” In this right-on, witty one-pager, Mr. Durst points out that, “People used to be embarrassed to be stupid. Now they’re walking around…wearing their density like a badge of authenticity.” Oh, Will, you are truly a kindred spirit.

Why has it become not just acceptable, but almost required to butcher the English language in an attempt to prove that you’re not an intellectual elitist or, worse, trying to “sound White?” How can we have allowed our capacity for human relationship to be denigrated and reduced to the few non-words allowed by Twitter? In what warped universe did it seem reasonable and proper for Right Wingnuts to keep their children HOME FROM SCHOOL so they wouldn’t hear the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES tell them why they should stay IN and ENGAGED in school? As Will said, “Screw health care. [Which it seems likely that Congress is doing anyway] How ‘bout some legislation making smug, truculent ignorance a crime?” Oh, but then there would be a significant number of Congresspeople serving time!

Reading Durst’s commentary came on the heels of one of the most inspiring, hope-generating, spirit-renewing experiences I’ve ever had in a movie theatre – my weekend viewing of “Avatar.” I’m sure James Cameron, not the hundreds of creative geniuses around him, will receive numerous awards and endless credit for making this masterpiece, but I suspect he had no idea what he was really “creating.” I also suspect that the majority of people going to see it will be going to see the violent, macho, America-wins-at-all-costs destruction of the Na-Vi people and their planet Pandora. But what gives me hope is imagining the number of people who will walk out of the theatre, if not changed, at least thinking. The movie was an emotional roller coaster ride for me, but the one moment that brought a torrent of tears was when the hero explained his countrymen to the Na-Vi, “You don’t understand! They’re not like you! They killed their Mother.”

As someone who eagerly awaits the return of the Earth-based Mother religions that were decimated by the Christian invasion, and also as a woman living with the realities of life in 2010, that bit of Truth hit my heart like a Na-Vi arrow. Yes, we are killing our Mother. But we also seem to be killing ourselves, our human potential, by embracing the same adherence to stupidity that Will Durst so apply identified. It’s stupid to drive cars that get 10 miles to the gallon, if even that; it’s stupid to manufacture products in a way that pollutes our air and our water; it’s stupid to use Styrofoam; it’s stupid to speak or write as if you were too dim or too lazy to pass the third grade; and it’s exquisitely stupid to have sex with someone you barely know without using a condom.

What has to happen before we WAKE UP? Before we stop searching for “cultural” excuses to blame our stupidity on? Before we stop killing our children in schoolyards? Before we stop thinking money is the be all and end all of living? Before we force our Mother’s last gasp and, with it, our own?

Sometimes it’s hard to see past the myriad of things that are wrong to even one thing that’s right. But in my own little corner of this fucked-up world, I celebrate Nature’s dance (yes, even this arctic cold), I glory in long, true conversations, I thrill to the unbridled potential of a blank page waiting for me to fill it up, and I am fiercely proud of striving NOT to be stupid! We all have our dim moments, and must embrace even the dimmest as part of the human condition, but none of us have to settle for them being all there is.

How I long for the day when we will all know the true meaning of, “I see you.”