The gulf between the end of everything and our everyday knowledge of it is purposeful and is at least as evil as the weapons themselves. Another cogent piece screaming for a wider audience.
"But when I write about what I see as the actual greatest threat to our world, it’s like yelling into the wind. People don’t want to hear it. My words get swallowed up by a big black hole in the ground and their energy just kind of fizzles."
Thanks Caitlin, I enjoy your work. However, the profundity of this thought exercise is not resonating for me and I don't think it should for anyone else. I would argue the thousands of Americans who live each morning normally and then die in a gun crime later that day - with the same type of tragic obliviousness you describe - makes this thought experiment not so meaningful. Waking up, laughing, getting pissed, texting, then getting killed is something real people actually experience in vast numbers and assigning this type of existential dread to the governmental boogie man is not productive. It's been explored in lots of fiction before anyway. I think the premise here is that our priorities are all wrong - we trust evil people and waste time demonizing each other. But the utility of "being woke" (and I don't mind using a term that triggers people) is that abstract problems are not as important as tangible, everyday ones. I don't think this piece advances the health of our society.
The dissonance of your thoughts is betrayed by your use of the word Americans. It's quite clear from your literary boreholing, that your allegiances lie with exceptionalisn, not inclusion and mutual respect. A very weak response, bordering on lame. The brains of some individuals are just wired differently. The concepts, suggestions, and implications of her short story don't resonate through framing timbers, that much is clear.
What? I'm connecting the themes here to her other work. The idea is that people are distracted from real threats (government liars) because they're preoccupied with trivial concerns (being woke) and attacking each other. I think it's actually the opposite. It has nothing to do with exceptionalism.
The idea seems to be more that we are in danger of destroying much more than just ourselves. If the implications of such misplaced power and trust were understood by all,maybe we'd change. If the consequences of such inattention were limited only to the American people? I mean only humans? Then the gamble might be more acceptable to some. The problem here is that most of the devastation would be in other places, and by that I mean the global catastrophes that would follow a nuclear war. In other words? The discussion about nuclear annihilation is, right now at least, almost fully correlated to an American fixation on global hegemony. The question is not one of survival as Americans, free to overdose, rob, and kill. Not is it a question one of being "protected" from those things. The question may be literally about our survival as a species, and the survival of many other species, especially those most magnificent, which would undoubtedly be in the gravest danger of extinction after a nuclear event.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors are dwindling, but I'd wager that the few who remain would disagree that the problems they've faced for 76+ years are in any way "abstract."
The gulf between the end of everything and our everyday knowledge of it is purposeful and is at least as evil as the weapons themselves. Another cogent piece screaming for a wider audience.
"But when I write about what I see as the actual greatest threat to our world, it’s like yelling into the wind. People don’t want to hear it. My words get swallowed up by a big black hole in the ground and their energy just kind of fizzles."
Welcome to the club!
I want to interview you Caitlin, please?https://www.facebook.com/105359437832674/videos/2276765039132758
You are a fantastic writer. Intelligent and witty as always. Thanks for the great newsletter.
Thanks Caitlin, I enjoy your work. However, the profundity of this thought exercise is not resonating for me and I don't think it should for anyone else. I would argue the thousands of Americans who live each morning normally and then die in a gun crime later that day - with the same type of tragic obliviousness you describe - makes this thought experiment not so meaningful. Waking up, laughing, getting pissed, texting, then getting killed is something real people actually experience in vast numbers and assigning this type of existential dread to the governmental boogie man is not productive. It's been explored in lots of fiction before anyway. I think the premise here is that our priorities are all wrong - we trust evil people and waste time demonizing each other. But the utility of "being woke" (and I don't mind using a term that triggers people) is that abstract problems are not as important as tangible, everyday ones. I don't think this piece advances the health of our society.
Caitlin is as ever spot on! Wakey! Wakey!
https://www.c7f.navy.mil/Media/News/Display/Article/1732757/american-british-navies-sail-together-in-south-china-sea/
The dissonance of your thoughts is betrayed by your use of the word Americans. It's quite clear from your literary boreholing, that your allegiances lie with exceptionalisn, not inclusion and mutual respect. A very weak response, bordering on lame. The brains of some individuals are just wired differently. The concepts, suggestions, and implications of her short story don't resonate through framing timbers, that much is clear.
What? I'm connecting the themes here to her other work. The idea is that people are distracted from real threats (government liars) because they're preoccupied with trivial concerns (being woke) and attacking each other. I think it's actually the opposite. It has nothing to do with exceptionalism.
The idea seems to be more that we are in danger of destroying much more than just ourselves. If the implications of such misplaced power and trust were understood by all,maybe we'd change. If the consequences of such inattention were limited only to the American people? I mean only humans? Then the gamble might be more acceptable to some. The problem here is that most of the devastation would be in other places, and by that I mean the global catastrophes that would follow a nuclear war. In other words? The discussion about nuclear annihilation is, right now at least, almost fully correlated to an American fixation on global hegemony. The question is not one of survival as Americans, free to overdose, rob, and kill. Not is it a question one of being "protected" from those things. The question may be literally about our survival as a species, and the survival of many other species, especially those most magnificent, which would undoubtedly be in the gravest danger of extinction after a nuclear event.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors are dwindling, but I'd wager that the few who remain would disagree that the problems they've faced for 76+ years are in any way "abstract."
It’s not resonating for YOU, so you ‘don’t think it should for anyone else’.
Like, wow.