Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 30 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing
Life Arts    H4'ed 12/5/22

Alternative Narrative 2 (spoiler: It's hopeful.)

By       (Page 1 of 2 pages)   No comments
Message Gary Lindorff
Become a Fan
  (5 fans)

"Early in 1949, Dottie Colson wrote to the National Health Council in New York City for advice on how to start a "real health movement" in her hometown. Colson believed that use of the pesticide DDT in her rural community outside of Claxton, Georgia, was causing grave harm, and that she and her neighbors had a right to be spared its effects." ( DDT Disbelievers: Health and the New Economic Poisons in Georgia after World War II.)

(Elena Conis / Beyond Silent Spring: An Alternate History of DDT:) ". . . So when Dorothy Colson saw planes spraying DDT over land adjacent to her family farm, it was easy for her to connect the pesticide to the problems that suddenly wouldn't let up. In the years just after the war Colson launched a dogged investigation into DDT, writing to state agencies, manufacturers, and organizations far and wide. The literature she amassed on the pesticide indicated that it might be harmful to humans . . . but . . . the more experts she questioned, the more she was told that DDT had above all saved countless lives around the globe, all while never harming a person."

So her narrative was trumped by the narrative that DDT was ridding the world of typhus and malaria and protecting American soldiers from illness in the battlefield, which it was (albeit, popular narratives don't need to be true), but there would be a prodigious price to pay. There was a very dark side to DDT. The thing is, and DDT benefited from this, people have a hard time weighing two truths. DDT had to be either good or bad. It took Rachel Carson, almost 15 years later, with the publication of Silent Spring, to change the public perception of DDT. (It was bad after-all. Darn!!)

The collective psyche only has room for one narrative at a time. I learned this for myself, not protesting DDT, but the nuclear arms build-up, researching which taught me that no nuclear technology is sane or safe because there is no safe way to dispose of or store radioactive waste. (Duh.) I joined the Freeze Movement to freeze the nuclear arsenal at current levels (this was 1982). It was an uphill battle to get even a few signatures on our petitions. Because? You guessed it. Those Soviets! Can't trust 'um! Nothing is going to save our butts but developing bigger and more bombs. That was the popular narrative that people were embracing. The bomb was good, and may be just a little bad. It was bad in the Russians' hands, just not in ours. It was, in other words (imbecilically) complicated . . . I guess.

But this little opinion piece is not about that narrative. It is about something a little more subtle. The idea of one narrative trumping another narrative is what I want to pursue here.

Detente, balance of power, restraint in using weapons of mass destruction, such as germ warfare, weaponized chemicals and nuclear weapons,seem to have spared us from the worst of ourselves, but what is really going on?

There are two other narrative explanations for why we are still here. I'm going to call them Alternative Narrative 1 (A.N. 1) and Alternative Narrative Two (A.N. 2). And neither one has anything to do with the balance of power or restraint on the part of the Super powers. And neither one is popular.

A.N. 1 is: We are just lucky. That's it. Lucky! If we were all gamblers that narrative would hold much more weight, but most of us are not gamblers at heart. Gamblers believe in luck as some kind of supernatural grace that you can attract to yourself simply by believing in it. Sometimes I admit that I go there, telling myself, governments haven't started a nuclear war yet or blown up the world, because of our (or just my) dumb luck.

A. N.2 is not based on superstition or even cause and effect. A.N. 2 says that nothing that we are doing or not doing is saving us from a fate of annihilation. What is saving us is the remnant of faith (that has survived the (historically recent) death of god, gods and religion), and A.N. 2 says, there is more to life and more to us, than we have been able to realize in a world that has sold out to (fill in the blank) even as we have exhausted ourselves in our struggle to stay on the side of right, while pin-balling from war to war, and even though peace has never been much more than a kind of intermission, when our side is not in the mood to make war. It is never winning wars that keeps us existing, much less diplomacy. A. N. 2 says: We continue to exist because we are important to the planet.

Hmm?

That's the stuff of science fiction, right? That the universe sort of likes having us around? If you spin this out it creates the arc of powerful love stories, stories that turn on the notion that nothing that the hero or heroine did or said made the other person fall in love with them. It was destiny! Their meeting was "meant" to be (or not). We recognize this when we see it, but we don't (or at least let me suggest that we don't) see how destiny works in our own lives. That is why we are suckers for films and fiction where destiny is front and center, in our face.

According to A. N.2, we are really characters are pawns of a larger story. There really is a mysterious and inscrutable reason for our being here and, ultimately, it is a love story. We have to be here until we fall in love with each other and the planet!.

I keep thinking of the story of the human race this way, like a kind of epic love story between the human race and the planet, where the lovers almost get together and then tragically miss each other by a hair, like getting caught up in the surge of crowds at an airport or being distracted by some trivial event just when the special person passes mere feet away. (That is like us in the 1970s when the environmental movement started to gain momentum. It was like two lovers just becoming aware of each other from a distance, only to suddenly be swept apart by powerful forces like in "Doctor Zhivago".)

I believe in A. N. 2, as you might have guessed, and I have for most of my adult life. But it's hard and very frustrating because the love keeps being sabotaged by people who buy into the popular narrative, just like in the days of DDT. DDT is good! We didn't learn that it was bad until we had poisoned much of our environment.

A. N.2 doesn't require proof of research and a best selling book 20 years after the fact. When A. N. 2 becomes the popular narrative, we will just sort of wake up, collectively, like from a bad dream, and look around and our hearts will begin to expand. We simply won't be surrounded by enemies any more, but friends, neighbors, peers and people that we would like to meet and get to know better.

Watch for A. N. 2 It might be here sooner than you think.

Next Page  1  |  2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

Well Said 1   Touching 1   Inspiring 1  
Rate It | View Ratings

Gary Lindorff Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Gary Lindorff is a poet, writer, blogger and author of several nonfiction books, a collection of poetry, "Children to the Mountain" and a memoir, "Finding Myself in Time: Facing the Music" Over the last few years he has begun calling (more...)
 

Related Topic(s): Hope, Add Tags
Add to My Group(s)
Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Writers Guidelines

 
Contact AuthorContact Author Contact EditorContact Editor Author PageView Authors' Articles
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.
Daily Weekly     OpEd News Newsletter
Name
Email
   (Opens new browser window)
 

Most Popular Articles by this Author:     (View All Most Popular Articles by this Author)

Eating Healthy is Do-able / Eating healthily on the fly (plus thoughts on hypoglycemia)

Waking from the dream of causality

More soul-retrieval: Trees in the silo

We must be more than prophets -- a prose poem

Your conscience

Truth was everywhere

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Tell A Friend