Timequake
I just finished re-reading Kurt Vonnegut's brilliant book Timequake, in which the universe--suffering from its own existential crisis of whether or not to continue expanding--sets the clock back ten years, thus forcing everyone to relive the last decade as slaves to the events of their own histories. In other words, they had no free will, no power to change anything that had happened the first time around, trapped as an observer in their own bodies as they powerlessly made the same mistakes in the same ways, trapped on third-person autopilot.
When free will returned, the people were stunned and didn't know how to continue. People didn't realize that now they had to continue walking and so stumbled. They didn't realize they had to actually continue driving their vehicle, so they crashed. They had been on automatic pilot for so long that they couldn't recognize the moment it stopped. Chaos in the world was growing at an alarming rate, and people didn't realize they were again able to make their own decisions without knowing what would happen next.
Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut's mirror and greatest literary creation, was among the first to realize the return of free will and in an unusually heroic move set out to help others awake from their paralysis. At first his cry of "Wake up! For God's sake, wake up, wake up! Free will! Free will!" fell on deaf ears. The message didn't sink in.
Realizing there were lives to save, he tried something else. It worked. The message sunk in immediately, and people snapped out from their stupors and began thinking again. What he told people was this: "You were sick, but now you're well, and there's work to do."
This morning I am reflecting upon the last eight years, awash in the glow of the sun peaking out through the Rocky Mountains directly to my west, awash in the glow of change and moved by the promise of it, and for the first time in a long time I feel the warmth of hope. It almost doesn't matter if Obama lives up to that promise or fails utterly, because right now the people are energized in a way I've never seen them, and that kind of feeling is transformative in ways that politics can't even approach.
Yes, it's been a long eight years, my friends, but now you're well, and there's work to do.
When free will returned, the people were stunned and didn't know how to continue. People didn't realize that now they had to continue walking and so stumbled. They didn't realize they had to actually continue driving their vehicle, so they crashed. They had been on automatic pilot for so long that they couldn't recognize the moment it stopped. Chaos in the world was growing at an alarming rate, and people didn't realize they were again able to make their own decisions without knowing what would happen next.
Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut's mirror and greatest literary creation, was among the first to realize the return of free will and in an unusually heroic move set out to help others awake from their paralysis. At first his cry of "Wake up! For God's sake, wake up, wake up! Free will! Free will!" fell on deaf ears. The message didn't sink in.
Realizing there were lives to save, he tried something else. It worked. The message sunk in immediately, and people snapped out from their stupors and began thinking again. What he told people was this: "You were sick, but now you're well, and there's work to do."
This morning I am reflecting upon the last eight years, awash in the glow of the sun peaking out through the Rocky Mountains directly to my west, awash in the glow of change and moved by the promise of it, and for the first time in a long time I feel the warmth of hope. It almost doesn't matter if Obama lives up to that promise or fails utterly, because right now the people are energized in a way I've never seen them, and that kind of feeling is transformative in ways that politics can't even approach.
Yes, it's been a long eight years, my friends, but now you're well, and there's work to do.