As Ukraine heats up again to invoke the usual boring promised threat of bullshit conflict and destruction, here are two perspectives, one from Above, the other from Below, that may help to shine new lights on the situation.
Obviously, from above, all this fighting on Earth over territory looks silly.
ABOVE: No politics in space: ISS example of what Russia, US can achieve working together
And from Below, whatever we can do to creatively reframe the usual templates for stupid and wasteful, and dangerous, and intensely hurtful and wounding and murderous conflict, let’s go there. Here’s one example:
BELOW: How to Beat a Russian Occupation with Flash Mobs
A third idea, one which blends Above and Below, would be for all of us, world wide, to start wearing our baby pictures! I know it sounds silly. But the “Baby Picture Project” could be our ticket to a transformed world!
Here’s how it works. Let’s everybody start wearing buttons showing our baby pictures. Not just any baby picture, but the one photo that you find of yourself back when you were still innocent and pure and full of wisdom; the one photo you most treasure, because it shows the real you back before 3D cultural programming took over. Before language, probably. Before religion, certainly. How old were you when you were still yourself? 18 months? 3 years?
Imagine if all the big wigs sitting around so-called “peace tables” for negotiations were wearing their baby picture buttons! These early photos rip off the masks of power and position, revealing/exposing the exquisite vulnerability and beauty of our essential selves. Here’s mine . . . Oops! Can’t find it. Okay, here’s another, a particularly iconic photo for us World War II babies, taken just prior to Dad leaving for the South Pacific as a field surgeon in the USAF. Mom was already pregnant with Marnie. I was about to be abandoned by both. No blame.
And here we are, years later, Marnie’s next to me, on my right. (Eventually, there would be eight children.) We had just moved from Rochester Minnesota to Twin Falls Idaho, where Dad opened his first practice as an Internist. I may look bright and alert here, but I was already done for, entranced. Sunk deep into Catholic guilt cum German obedience. Didn’t wake up until I was 26 years old, when I almost died.
Okay, enough about me. How about rooting around for baby pictures of your own? The ones you treasure for some reason or another. Make a button of the most precious one. Dare to wear it.
Aaah. I just found mine.
Actually, I haven’t dared to wear my button outside yet, except once, to the grocery store, where the button inspired an extended conversation with the grocery checker. That was a few years ago. I can’t remember what we said, specifically, maybe it was just too far afield from normal? I do know that these baby pictures are incredibly powerful, and that once we dare to reveal ourselves in this way to others in public, it will instantly change the conversation and completely shift the way the world works.
But geez, it’s scary, getting started. . .
Maybe begin with baby picture parties, where we all gather with our old albums and go through them together? Each of us finding the one that is iconic for us, and showing it to all the others gathered, confessing why this is the most precious one? Why this is the one you’re going to put on your button?
If you have other ideas about how to get started, let me know. And if you do make a baby picture button and start wearing it, please let me know that, too! Imagine the stories we could tell, once we begin. IMAGINE.
