On Being the First
Life Lessons, Truthiness Comments (1)
“I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.” -Abraham Lincoln
We are living in a renaissance, where everything that we know is changing and will change; in an era where all the old ivory towers are being assailed, no, lambasted with the fervor of the fires of our unconquerable soul. The problem is being the first to step outside those acceptable norms we’ve protected ourselves with as a society.For those people who are the first, only scorn and ridicule await them. Remember:
- The Hippies? deried as slackers and failures for their free thinking ways, they are still somewhat dismissed and defamed, yet, look at what they have given us in creativity and music and art.
- The First openly gay person on TV? Ellen, now it’s everywhere, from Will and Grace to The L Word, to Broke Back Mountain.
- First Cloned Animal? Now cloning is practically a dime a dozen. We even clone parts of animals, not even the whole animal.
- The first female sports caster. Remember that didn’t go so well with the Locker room incident. Yet no one bats an eye now when a woman interviews someone in a locker room.
Being first in America about a controversial issue always hurts, stripping the topic of the protective emotions around it and laying it raw. In America, the first always bear the brunt of everything people dislike or want to dislike, but after, no one seems to care, or the line has been crossed.Right now, we stand at the cusp of another first. A political situation that has attracted attention from all the world over and now we are once again standing naked in the eyes of history.
Sphere: Related ContentOceansOfThought @ March 18, 2008
This doesn’t really pertain to today’s post, though I suppose not completely irrelevant, but rather your “About” paragraph on the right side of the general page.
The last line of your paragraph reminds me of something near the end of Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451:
“The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are…Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.
You’re afraid of making mistakes. Don’t be. Mistakes can be profited by.”
on a similar but not entirely related topic, why do you note Pi earlier in the same paragraph?