GOOD RAMBLES AND 12 RULES OF SURVIVAL
We took a ramble and checked out the Chicago Design Museum yesterday at the Block 37 mall. It was a cool display of dozens of 24" x 36" graphics inspired by great ideas, vertically cabled in rows you could walk through, and potentially purchase one. Very cool. I also like that the museum is in a mall. That's smart.
After that we found the Museum of
Contemporary Photography at Columbia College, and that was also good stuff.
Today my plan is to track down Reckless Records, The Writer's Museum, and the Gene Siskell Film Center.
I think people of good will are necessarily heartsick right now. It has been a slow-motion slide into human rights violations that we used to stand against on the world stage. Numbness is to be expected. Rage is to be expected. Grief is to be expected.
I have been thinking about Lawrence Gonzalez' 12 rules of survival from Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why.
I think these apply to taking right action in a failing democracy, in the spirit of common humanity, as well as personal survival situations.
1. Perceive and Believe. Don't fall into the deadly trap of denial or of immobilizing fear. Admit it: You're really in trouble and you're going to have to get yourself out.
2. Stay Calm – Use Your Anger In the initial crisis, survivors are not ruled by fear; instead, they make use of it. Their fear often feels like (and turns into) anger, which motivates them and makes them feel sharper.
3. Think, Analyze, and Plan. Survivors quickly organize, set up routines, and institute discipline.
4. Take Correct, Decisive Action. Survivors are willing to take risks to save themselves and others. But they are simultaneously bold and cautious in what they will do. They handle what is within their power to deal with from moment to moment, hour to hour, day to day.
5. Celebrate your success. Survivors take great joy from even their smallest successes. This helps keep motivation high and prevents a lethal plunge into hopelessness. Viktor Frankl put it this way: “Don't aim at success–the more you aim at it and make it a target,the more you are going to miss it.”
7. Enjoy the Survival Journey. It may seem counterintuitive, but even in the worst circumstances, survivors find something to enjoy, some way to play and laugh. Survival can be tedious, and waiting itself is an art.
8. See the Beauty. Survivors are attuned to the wonder of their world, especially in the face of mortal danger. The appreciation of beauty, the feeling of awe, opens the senses to the environment. (When you see something beautiful, your pupils actually dilate.) When Saint-Exupery's plane went down in the Lybian Desert, he was certain that he was doomed, but he carried on in this spirit: “Here we are, condemned to death, and still the certainty of dying cannot compare with the pleasure I am feeling. The joy I take from this half an orange which I am holding in my hand is one of the greatest joys I have ever known.” At no time did he stop to bemoan his fate, or if he did, it was only to laugh at himself.
9. Believe That You Will Succeed. It is at this point, following what I call “the vision,” that the survivor's will to live becomes firmly fixed.
10. Surrender. Yes you might die. In fact, you wil die–we all do. But perhaps it doesn't have to be today. Don't let it worry you.
11. Do Whatever Is Necessary
12. Never Give Up If you're still alive, there is always one more thing that you can do.
It's easy to focus on the coming midterms and imagine the world's most powerful toilet flushing the Bannon-Miller-DeVos wing of the Republican Party, with a double flush for floaters in 2018. It's not so easy to focus on how many agree with the policies and how many more racist haters and ideological naifs are under recruit, using powerful media tools that Orwell never dreamed of.