part 1: of flies and men
Merlyn C. Faris III
Living in the Midwest is not necessarily for everyone. There are numerous reasons that keep people from making this wonderful place their forever home; but possibly chief amongst them is the weather. Here, we get to experience the glory of all of the seasons, and sometimes experience them within the same week. Our summers are hot, I mean hot, and so humid you want to go to a sauna for some relief. The spring and autumn are some of the most beautiful seasons you will experience in the world, that is when you’re not contemplating how big your ark should be and wondering how you put a basement in one due to all the rain and tornadoes. Then there is winter. The beautiful picturesque snowfall, the quiet calm hallmark like scene of a red barn, pine tree, soft blanket of snow, and smoke billowing from the chimney. Couple that with driving in a blizzard that makes you feel like you’re going lightspeed in the Millennium Falcon and a bitter cold so severe the penguins and polar bear at the local zoo complain to management saying “Nope! We didn’t sign up for this!” Then add to all of that the fact that the wind never seems to stop. Almost everyone that lives here knows this, deeply, as they have chosen to live here and most likely have for some time now. That’s why this next part baffles me…anytime the news announces a pending storm the people lose their minds. It doesn’t matter if the news source announces a cold snap and snowfall in January, or a thunderstorm with high winds and potential for a tornado in May, people lose their minds. It doesn’t matter if only one station is projecting the horror and has been wrong more often than not, people lose their minds. It doesn’t matter that they have food at home, that they probably will see little if any difference in their tomorrow statistically speaking, only see the outdoors for the 30 seconds it takes to get from the door to their car, and they have had roughly a year to wrap their minds around and prepare for this moment...people lose their minds. They take to social media with their pictures, tears, and fears. They rush to the local grocery store and clear the shelves in preparation for said event. Because if society is set to collapse, the power grid is destroyed, or a tornado has taken my entire home at least I am going to have French toast and canned beets. So, as I sit here contemplating things, after days of paranoia over a 12 in. snow storm that never came and weeks of virtue signaling by businesses that have forgotten where they geographically are located and what the primary reasons for business are, I can’t help but notice a few things and ruminate on them a bit.
Fear is porn to us. It’s addictive. Highly addictive. Both draw people in, in a very basic carnal fashion. It doesn’t take much for some people; a hint, a whisper, a subtle illusion to more. For others it takes repeated exposure to something far more blatant, in-your-face, and theatrical. In the end you are hooked and slave to your fixation and the solicitors thereof. The purveyors of both, fear and porn, draw you in and get you hooked using fundamental psychological principles in elaborate fashion. They are brilliant, puppet masters. They do it well, and thanks to modern technology they do this unbelievably well on various platforms repeated in exponential fashion. It literally re-wires our brain. It changes us from the inside out and it doesn’t matter if we know it’s fake and merely entertainment for extreme profits, it doesn’t matter how grotesque we seem to find it or those distributing it; we are captivated, addicted to it, and can’t help but take that hit.
This fear porn comes from a plethora of sources. It depends on which camp you come from as to which sources you claim propagate it; but truth be told, it knows no party or network. Listen to or read just about any news source and almost every headline drips with fear. Do a simple web search of “news today” and you will see title after title using grandiose language, heavy with negative connotations, with no other purpose than pimping fear. Match that with the mind blowing capability of these platforms to know us better than we know ourselves and how they can cater the search results and news feeds specifically to our appetites...our addiction's specific fetish. We then create an echo chamber for ourselves, because like all addictions this one requires bigger hits more often. We surround ourselves with podcasts, groups, politicians, books, and people to feed our need for fear. We are constantly checking our weather app and, like a hawk, watching the news to catch the weatherman every 8 minutes ( just to see if it’s 2-4” or 3-5” now). Like our obsession with the weather, so it is that we worship our political celebrities' constant flow of fear riddled rhetoric. Reality doesn’t matter anyway. The narrative will unfold like the game of telephone played when we were kids; 2” will be exaggerated to 16” by the end of the day, and “flu like symptoms” will grow to mean something else. Why? Because we chose sounds like “-cron” at the end (which sound much more menacing) and because Speaker Pelosi’s eyebrows looked frightened when she said it. Maybe your flavor is more a cry of “thieves in the night”, “being a generation away from dystopia”, or the like. It makes no difference, the sources are grotesque, and the point remains: fear is America’s porn and we’re addicted.
I don’t know much about bees or flies. I know bees are found around the most beautiful things of life, make honey, and honey is delicious. Bees are industrious and hardworking. They are vastly organized and plan for the future. And an interesting thought to ponder: “what do bees fear?” I can’t say I’ve put much thought into it before, but bees are busy planners, peaceful, hardworking, armed, and live in community with one another, and I can’t ever say I’ve seen a bee afraid. Flies are a different thing though. They’re busy but what do they do? They congregate but are they in community? Do they have organization? Do they have any plans or preparations or do they merely live in the moment? Do they have any sort of defense or do they only live their lives in retreat? Do they produce anything? The saying goes “you catch more flies with honey” but I don't know if that's true. Flies congregate around things that are grotesque. They find these piles of rottenness, maybe because they’re easy to find, I don’t know. Sometimes it seems the more foul the source, the more flies you find. These putrid platforms attract the flies and seemingly give them meaning and aid in their multiplication.
You see, we aren’t too different from bees and flies. We have a choice of preparation, how we organize our community, if we will be armed and peaceful, our productivity, and so on. But a huge choice is where we spend our efforts, time, and focus. What is providing us with our sustenance? We complain about the news and social media but are addicted to them. We need them, salivate for them, and return to them like flies to dung; no matter how detestable they are. If we tasted them for what they are we’d retch and never return again; which makes me wonder, do you think flies actually like the taste of poo, or can they just not help themselves? Are they addicted too?
Either way, I’m going to peacefully sip my hot chocolate next to the fireplace while the snow falls and wind howls outside; and thank God that I’m not a “Lord of the flies”.
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