The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is stretch. The second thing is to ward off the adorably relentless paws of Peaches who, the moment she detects signs of awakening, is keen to, first of all, eat because she is starving and has never eaten in her entire life, and second, to have an adventure. It’s not a bad way to wake up at all.
These actions are largely automatic and instinctual. After that, my first conscious act is to spend a few moments telling God the things I’m grateful for. It’s a long list which requires that the conversation continue throughout the day. Gratitude is like oil in your gears and gas in your tank. Try it and see how your day unfolds.
While I was making coffee this morning, my thoughts turned to the electric mesh fence around Tracey’s raised beds that I can see in the backyard through the kitchen window. I just replaced the battery in the solar charger. The manufacturer wants me to buy a 6-volt battery, and to coerce me into following that recommendation instead of using the cheaper and more readily available 12-volt batteries, made the battery connectors proprietary.
This is nothing that a pair of needle-nose pliers or a new connector can’t overcome, and a 12-volt battery works perfectly well with the voltage regulator in the charger, which is exactly like the ones used by the more consumer-friendly manufacturers that give you a choice up front. The 12-volt battery I replaced, salvaged from an old UPS that gave its life protecting my computer from lightning, lasted 2 years. The 6-volt replacement will probably last 5.
The first sip of coffee is always the best, but as I gazed out the window enjoying a fine view of the bed of lettuce growing and glowing after the recent rains, the thought intruded of how much of the energy of research and advancement is diverted into increasing profits by making things cheaper rather than increasing sales by making things better.
Trimming an old fence line yesterday, I unearthed a length of electric fence wire my grandfather used. I don’t know how many years it stood in service or how many decades it was buried in the ground, but even rusted over it was almost as rigid as a finishing nail. When I compare it to the flimsy product that eventually replaced it, I think of my grandfather who once snaked chestnut logs down the steep slopes of the mountain behind a mule and compare him to, as my friend Marty likes to say, “the soft tattooed man at the coffee clutch” expressing his opinions on his phone.
Opinions are also fences. If you try to change or someone challenges your opinion, you can get a shock of cognitive dissonance – you can become defensive, angry, or the herd will punish you for departing from the established path. There are people who have barely spoken to me since the election.
Another way to think of it is the Overton Window, which is a useful concept in political science for understanding the range of ideas and opinions that delimit, or “fence in” a society. It describes the range of ideas and policies that are considered acceptable or mainstream at a given time. It describes how ideas that are once unthinkable can, over time, become widely acceptable.
The position of that window is in a constant state of flux, pulled in different directions by politics and propaganda and a host of personal agendas, but chiefly by those seeking profit and those who want to control the unruliness of the herd which they fear.
Consider: An X-class solar flare is passing us by today in a near miss. A direct hit can disrupt communication, down satellites, and destroy power grids with a body blow to civilization itself. The President is on a diplomatic and business tour that can potentially tip the scale of war and peace and bring hundreds of billions of dollars flowing into the US.
Meanwhile, the topic that most Americans consider to be the biggest news story is the fate of a celebrity rapper charged with sex trafficking. Can you see the fence yet?
Most of us will never see the fence, or realize that there is more to see outside the one window where our attention is directed. If we could see it, we might begin to think of what might be on the other side.
Outside The Box 