I'm picking up here on last week's discussion, in which I introduced the concept of scripts beyond the playwright's script. These are not, strictly speaking, written scripts, but actions we observe and copy. Ceremonies we live by. Phrases we catch and pass on like germs. Attitudes we get good at projecting—all just by living and watching and being the social beings that we are, and all stored away in a sort of inner mental script library, to be dug out again and again as needed, as circumstances demand.
A script in this sense is not a difficult concept to groove to, once you get the idea, and of course I'm hardly claiming it's original to me, or even that it's unmatched as a metaphor (the concept of algorithms is maybe a good parallel). But if you're still puzzling over what I mean, a few examples might help. Last week I referred to the Disgruntled Patient script. Everyone knows that routine—the words, the look, the attitude; put them together and you have what I'm calling a script. And anyone who has been in a job interview knows the need, in that situation, for a script. As does every contestant in a beauty pageant.
This week I'm interested in scripts for society at large: cultural scripts, economic scripts, political scripts, all of which channel our behavior at the macro level. Take, on the brighter side of experience, the non-violent protest script, created by folks like Gandhi and King, and honed to perfection under all sorts of difficult conditions. It's a powerful script indeed, and one that's almost literal: with mapped-out routes for marches, snappy slogans to shout, props to hold and carry, understood limits to behavior. And it really is worth reflecting on the organized, invented nature of a protest or protest march. In my book, the non-violent protest (especially in the context of civil disobedience) is one of the great inventions of the last three or four centuries, right up there with the scientific method and organic agriculture. I mean it. It's hard to over-value something so instrumental to so many good outcomes! Indian independence, de-segregation in the United States, the end of communism in eastern Europe. May the list go on!
At the same time we mustn't get sidetracked by praise, because scripts always have their downsides too—downsides tied, in fact, directly to their strengths. Note for instance that one of the qualities that makes the performance of any script successful is what you might call its automaticity, that is, the almost memorized nature of it. The ability of the performers to stick to the script without really having to think too hard. Again, in the context say of the street protest, this automaticity is useful and good. It keeps people safe precisely because if you're following the script, yelling the slogan, lifting the sign, speaking your mind, you don't stop to ask, “Should I throw this rock?” or “What if I just wailed on that policeman?” You just follow the script and hopefully things will be okay.
Unfortunately, the same automaticity, especially in the performance of scripts that are not framed by a beginning or an end, often serves to prevent our ever questioning the value of the script or the assumptions that helped to write it. It may even cause us to confuse a mere script with a demonstration of objective truth.
Take what I call the “Economic Growth is the Cat's Pajamas” script. It's a pretty common script around the world, and has been for a long time in my country. It encourages people to get off their couches and shop. To travel long distances with jets. To replace their gadgets yearly. To start new businesses and to hire new help. To look for work with confidence. To invest in the stock market and real estate and in a college education. To take out loans to buy new houses.To feel cheerful and optimistic when the economic reports indicate what the economists and the government define for us as growth, and also to feel depressed when, by the same definitions and measures, the economy shrinks.
Here's the secret though—one to be whispered discretely from every rooftop: "Economic Growth is the Cat's Pajamas" is a script, culturally learned and defined. It's a set of directions and slogans and responses and assumptions that are all so ingrained in us, so memorized and smooth with use, that we forget it's just a script, written with certain assumptions in mind—assumptions that can be questioned, and probably should be. But that cannot be questioned until we step outside of the script ourselves!
Now, here in my country, we're only beginning to ask whether economic growth is compatible with the ecological health of the planet, or whether it really encourages human happiness, or lends meaning to existence, or whether it can even continue indefinitely (it can't, of course, for reasons economic, mathematical, thermodynamic, and ecological!). Even these question though are only being asked at the radical fringe, while in many other places in the world—say India, China, Brazil—well, my understanding is that the popularity of the Pajamas in question is still very much on the upswing. Soon enough, the script may be so globally known, so well digested and assimilated into so many cultures, that most citizens of the world probably won't see it as a script at all, but as the objective truth of things as they really are. Everyone will be wearing the cat's pajamas. Or almost everyone.
This is not a happy situation. In my opinion. The Earth can't take much more of the same beating we're giving it, in order to have this growth. And Earth happens to be the island where we live. Our beautiful island in space. Our only home. Continue to follow this script, and the story has an end all right. Just not a happy one. Indeed a very bleak and ugly one.
For what it's worth, I don't expect the citizens of the world to start questioning "Economic Growth is the Cat's Pajamas" anytime soon. Eventually yes, but only as one of the effects of a long drawn out decline in prosperity, accompanied by the occasional spectacle of a market crash or two, not to mention the melting of many icebergs. I wish that we could start asking the necessary questions and changing our lives before all those unpleasant things occurred. But it seems to me that it's just not a human habit to think ahead and make sacrifices now, so that a good story (in a beautiful setting) can go on.
Or is that a fair evaluation of what humans are capable of? You dear reader, will help decide.
HB
(Next Post Monday, December the 15th)
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