Shared by a colleague a few days ago, and been on my mind since. Not sure if I fully buy the first part… but the Right definitely do, and – given that – it feels important that the rest of us make sure that the ground of ideas is kept fertile and well-sown with good things.
They may show nothing for a long time… but we need to be ready for when that moment comes.
Guess this is part of what hope looks like right now. A seed never looks ‘worth it’ at the time…
I end the final section of the final chapter of my book Other with the title ‘Living Symbolically in a Many-Bodied World’. (Funny how that book – published in 2011 – seems to get more and more prescient… the Three Body Problem before it was cool 😛 )
My point there – which I’ve been thinking about more and more – is that the temptation to give up is enormous. How can any of us effect any change? What’s the point in not taking cheap flights when Musk is doing Space X? What’s the point in recycling when oil companies are pumping more and more barrels?
The point is that the symbolic life prepares the ground so that it is ready when change – which can happen quite suddenly – is catalysed. Without that invisible preparation, the opportunities cannot be taken.
Moreover, to live symbolically is to live ‘as if’ these things were worth it, which is to then do a work of inspiration. That doesn’t mean ‘dazzling people with our brilliance,’ it means allowing the spirit of a thing to move from one to the other. It is to lead sacrificially, in the hope and optimism that one never knows where the spirit might move. What Rosa Parks did was symbolic. It changed nothing… and get transformed everything.
The relevant extract I’ve embedded here.
Extract From Other – Living Symbolically by kester.brewin on Scribd
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