What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire

(For those of you who are just joining us, you may want to backtrack a bit and catch up. You can click the “Who’s Todd?” link on the lower left of any “Tim’s Blog” page to read about our first meeting, and you can read through the archives to get the full story.)

Todd came back last night after I’d gone to bed. He posted a sticky about 2 AM. Not finding me instantly available, apparently, he posted another. And another. When I awoke, there were a few dozen stickies on my desktop. I sat down to read them. They all said the same thing: wake up dude

The phone started ringing.

I got up and stumbled downstairs to answer the damn thing. Get this: It was Todd. Beneath the hissing and crackling that blasted from the earpiece, the words were unmistakable: wake up dude

Unwilling to yell over the din, I stumbled back upstairs and started typing. “You’re back, eh, Todd? Where’ve you been? And when did you learn to use the phone?”

The stickies started popping: man I was trapped I couldnt get out how long have I been gone your calendar says its the 14th now is that true it seemed like I was gone for months I couldnt get out and those damned little yellow guys I just wanted to -

I started typing to slow him down. “Todd. Take a breath and let me ask some questions. You’ve been gone a couple of weeks now. What do you mean you were trapped?”

I was looking for those articles about the correlation between trauma and healing and environmental awareness like you said I was just googling you know riding the wires I should start my own search engine like ask todd or something anyways I was on this psychology site and there was this link and I dove in and all of a sudden Im on this cartoon desert island with these two little happy face guys singing that damn song over and over again and dancing and –

“What song, Todd?”

dont worry be happy dude dont fucking worry it was I mean over and over and over

“Yeah. I’ve seen that. It’s a little flash animation with the Bobby McFerrin song.” (At Todd’s request, I will not put a link here to any of the sites that play that animation. He’s afraid somebody else will get stuck there. You are, of course, free to seek these out for yourself. Just know that you’ve been warned.)

I ran around I yelled I tried to get them to listen to me they wouldnt stop singing the sun would rise and the sun would set and they just kept singing I punched them I threw sand in their faces I climbed the tree and threw cocoanuts down on their heads but nothing worked I kept asking them how do I get out of here how how but they didnt stop theyd look at me they knew I was there but they just kept on whistling and singing it was madness

Todd stopped to take a breath. I had no idea what had happened. How does a net-surfing phantom get trapped in a computer animation? Some sort of logic loop or firewall? An encryption device of some kind? Who knows? Todd’s a ghost. He can zip through anything, go anywhere. Sure, lines of energy are easiest for him, but it’s not like that’s the only places he can go. He sure got around with that chicken.

I typed another question: “What was the site where you found that link, Todd?”

I dont know I dont remember some psychology thing some lady with a website about positive thinking and creative visualization and all that theres a million sites like that I was just following key words and this essay this lady had written about how we need to stop focusing on all the bad things in the world and hold hope rather than fear and despair I ended up on her site and boom Im sucked in

“How did you escape?”

I killed myself again dude I went crazy I jumped in the ocean and drowned myself the funny thing is it was just as scary and painful as I imagine it would have been if I actually had a body and I drowned in the real ocean not sure why that is I just blacked out and ended up back here in your laptop

While I won’t pretend to understand exactly what had happened, one thing was clear: Todd had been trapped by a Cheermonger. I told him so.

whats a cheermonger

“It’s a word I started using back while I was researching the doc. People fling the word “fearmonger” around all the time. Sometimes it would land on me, and that didn’t feel good. As if I’m doing something wrong by speaking about what I see and how I feel when I look at the world. I needed the word “cheermonger” to help think and talk about the huge cultural impulse I see at work in the world, to not look, to not feel, to not grieve, to not do the deep emotional work required of us when we look squarely at the reality of the situation. There are people in the world deeply committed to positive thinking at all costs, no matter the reality of the situation.”

and you dont think that thats a good idea right

“No, of course not.”

so tell me about cheermongers

I stopped for a bit to think about that. I’ve been processing this for a long time. Where to begin? I remembered an email I got some time ago and found a starting point. “One of the things we’re most confused about, we who were born into captivity in the culture of civilization, is fear. Having marinated in fear for so long, having felt the controlling power of fear in our own lives, we react to all fear as bad, as something to be avoided, as somehow beneath us as civilized and thoughtful human beings. People say ‘I don’t want to live in fear’, as a friend said to me a few months ago.”

“What we forget is that fear is a primal bodily reaction to our environment, and as such evolved for very good reasons. Fear comes in handy when the tiger appears in the grass, when the lightening strikes nearby. Fear spurs us to action. It makes us uncomfortable so that we’ll do something in response to the environmental stimulus.”

like all of the people who are now concerned about climate change and are trying to figure out something to do to stop it they saw al gores movie and it scared the shit out of them and now theyre paying attention

“Right. I run into people that are so excited that Americans seem to be finally waking up to the global warming situation. ‘Isn’t it great, how An Inconvenient Truth has shifted things?’ Now, whether any meaningful shift has occurred or not, the fact remains that what effect it has had has largely been due to its being, as the poster said ‘by far the most terrifying film you will ever see’. Some of those same people will turn around and tell me that fear is bad, that I am fear mongering, and that they don’t want to live in fear. Many Americans regard it as one of their basic entitlements: we don’t have to live in fear. Our addiction to comfort runs so deep that we think we can just toss out a primal biological response. It’s sort of like “we don’t want to live in bodies.” The scary thing is, there are people working on that one too.”

so why do people cheermonger

That’s a good question for next time. Back soon.

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 14th, 2007 at 3:15 pm and is filed under Tim's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.