The battle of winter and summer

Recently, my daughter and I have been watching a Netflix series called "Tales from Arcadia: Trollhunters" by Guillermo del Toro.  It's fascinating, full of mixtures of different fairy tales and folklore.  I even saw the name Baba Yiga tossed in there which tickled my funny bone since my wife is Russian and I heard lots about Baba Yiga over the years.  Learning a new story for a kid always involves reenactment of the story, and since I'm the only one around who is able to play with her, I get to reenact it with her.  As always is the case, the story involves our own personal twists.  My daughter has been enthralled by the movie Frozen and probably was influenced by this in making the decision that instead of being in command of the sun, she would be in command of the ice.  And naturally, I had to be in command of the opposite of ice, which was fire.

This choice of opposites quickly reminded me of the Norse Muspell and Niflheim.  The void between these two places was called Gunnungagap and it was here, where the battle between ice and fire gave birth to life.  Having lived in Northeastern Minnesota for nearly two thirds of my adult life, I'm quite familiar with this battle between hot and cold.  The battle results in the formation of abundant water and the quick destruction of roads.

Today, this all took on a greater meaning for me.  All of existence is conflict.  It is the story of the world every where we look.  The cycle of the seasons is a battle between summer and winter, which corresponds with a battle between the light and the dark.  A twenty-four hour period is a battle between the light and the dark, the strength of which corresponds with the season and our location upon the earth. 

We exist.  And if we are to exist, we must come to an appreciation of this conflict, and use it to our advantage.  Many things do so.  The winter months are a time of rest for many.  Trees lose their leaves, store energy in their roots and wait.  These cold days of rest provide the opportunity for apple trees to produce apples for example, requiring a number of hours of temperatures below 45 degrees Fahrenheit just so they can produce apples.  Bears take the opportunity to rest, and give birth. 

On a daily basis, many use the hours of light and dark to benefit their needs.  In more temperate climates, hours of light are used to create while hours of dark are used to rest.  In hot climates, the hours of dusk and dawn are often used to create while the darkest and most light hours are used for rest. 

While plants spend much of the spring and summer months growing, a great many take this abundance of energy to consume plants for their energy needs.  And so down the line does the taking advantage go.  Some really take advantage of these opportunities by storing energy for later use.  Some great examples of this are the many rodents who store seeds for the winter months.  And those who produce alcohol..

This battle is both infinitely small, and infinitely large.  We can see the battle under petri dishes, and we can see it over scales of time.  Civilizations come and go because of this conflict.  Their period of relative light, or darkness, is countered by the opposite period.  And if the civilization in question hasn't learned to recognize that there are periods of growth countered with periods of rest, then they have doomed themselves.  In the great words from the motto of the Stark family in Game of Thrones: "Winter is coming."

American Civil War 2.0: The Media

Ironically enough, Russia Today beat me to the punch. One of the biggest reasons we could come to civil war in the USA is if people become so divided that they no longer are able to talk. During the election campaign in 2016, we heard plenty of stories of people unable to have Thanksgiving with their families because of the division present even then. It's been two, going on three years since then and one place you never stop hearing about how unfair it was, or just constantly taking jabs at Trump is through the media.

Nearly every time I turn on NPR in the car, look at news on the web, or check the major media outlets I am almost instantly bombarded with some news about how Trump is the worst president ever and how he is passing some legislation which is going to ruin our lives. The facts speak for themselves. More people are working. We haven't gotten involved in any military conflicts overseas. Overdoses seem to be going down. He, President Trump, is doing some much needed good. Some much needed good that neither a typical Republican nor Democratic nominee could have or would have. He does counter the good with a lot of stupidity, or narcissism. Not to necessarily defend him, but that is the American way.

The main, and important thing to realize, is we are being pitted against each other. The media especially is preying on people's emotions. Typical emotional response is either fight or flight. With things getting broken down into binary fashion, people are forgetting there is a middle ground. This is the commons. It's where common sense comes from. It is where compromise exists. As individuals within this country, we need to defend that ability and that option to meet on a common ground. A huge part of that defense means building up some resilience to the information wars we are exposed to. We'll delve into that next week!

American Civil War: 2.0

The first American Civil War happened because the nation was forced into making decisions which divided them. The same thing is happening right now. There are calls from both Democrats and Republicans that you are either for or against. You are for gun rights, or against gun rights. You are for hate, or against hate. You are for life, or against life. You are for the nation, or against the nation. Making all these binary choices fragments our society. It moves people closer to a binary choice of I am for this side, or against this side. And that is how strife erupts.

Let's take for example the American Civil War. T.R. Fehrenbach writes in Lone Star:A History of Texas and The Texans in chapter 18 Secession that the political crisis brewing in America at the time was based on social and economic reasons. “The real enemy of the North was Southern political power, insisting upon the strictest construction of the Constitution in a defense of states' rights that hindered and hamstrung industrialism and infuriated Eastern bankers, railroad magnates, and manufacturers. The true enemy of the South was industrialism itself, which threatened its agriculture with a worse colonialism..” He further writes “the two sections, doing what came naturally, had built two quite different societies”. Here a prime example of deep social divide existing based largely on lifestyles is described. It's hard not to see that current in modern grievances with a group of people demanding free, or affordable, higher education and healthcare. They often are the same group demanding that hatred and intolerance is growing in the country and that it is the result of instigation by the President Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence, and all of their red MAGA cap wearing supporters, which are “all redneck white males”.

T.R. Fehrenbach continues that “With genuine economic and political grievances against each other, the Northern states and the South found their flashpoint in the question of Negro slavery. The Negro question made the states' rights question so crucial and violent. The South insisted upon states' rights to maintain the status quo, which the North was increasingly determined to alter.” Those economic and political grievances are mounting. The disparity between have's and have nots is growing. Many have nots feel they have no political voice. Legislation is being brought up to make changes to how the Electoral College works.  A recent NPR article about the Popular Vote Movement contains the quote from Seth Masket that "the status quo is unacceptable," he said. "This might not be the best way of changing it, but it's at least a way of forcing some change and forcing some discussion of it." Lines are being drawn. People are demanding change, often demanding it being changed immediately.

Does that mean Civil War is inevitable? There is still opportunity for people to discuss and bridge the divide. It will take willing ears and a lot of compromise. But the opportunity for a flashpoint exists, one which could firmly cement lines and division. We'll discuss next week how to identify these pitfalls and how to develop some resilience against reacting in a way with the flashpoints which could lead to further division.