236. Eyes Wide Shut, and Energy of the Human Kind

What do you see when you see? What do you hear when you hear? Dur­ing World War II the Aus­tralian mil­i­tary com­mand brought some New Guinea vil­lage chiefs to see the city of Bris­bane. Shock and awe? They went home and excit­edly told their coun­try­men about the dif­fer­ent trees and ani­mals. They had noth­ing to say about the sky­scrap­ers and trains. Well, of course. Now take young adults, whom I have spent a 34 year career teach­ing. They come with var­i­ous poses. a) Some are too self involved to notice any­thing; b) Some live for fash­ion and boy/girl approval; c) Some find the world full of laugh­ter and friend­ship; d) Some notice that the world is full of rivals and liars; e) Some notice that there is injus­tice every­where; f) Some feel that ene­mies and dan­ger can­cel out hope for a bet­ter world … and so it goes. But the really inter­est­ing ques­tion is what they do about all this stuff they notice. The short answer, after a some party hero­ics early on, is mostly … not much. At bot­tom many want a sleepy com­fort zone. True energy of the human kind, to move and shake usual “real­ity”, is a very scarce resource.