My trickle up theory...
social, economic and political
As great as widespread communication has been for our era, from telephones to television to internet, connecting us to people miles away in a wider world than our own smaller one...eventually we begin to discover that the wider world is just a bigger version of our smaller one.
Similarly, social, economic and political national trends really are just larger manifestations of what is happening all around the country in cities and states. It's human nature that behavior of all sorts trickles up, although sometimes it appears that it comes from a wider source. Fashion is like that.
Popular trends are an example of this. Somewhere, in some place, some people start doing something or saying something and some how it becomes a meme and goes mainstream. Although it appears to have started on a large scale and trickled down, actually the opposite has happened.
This might be your best post ever...take the dumbest thing ever (lacking a clue what that is, substitute that "where's the beef?" deal from the '80s) and it's just obvious that great things and terrible things all start locally and spread from there to wherever they spread to.
ReplyDeleteI'm sad to say I never thought of it quite that way before, not because of the bad a single person can foist upon the world but because when you consider it, every little thing you do matters. Or could, anyway.
Actually I'm less sad than I am hopeful; it's a pretty sturdy path and the good things will find their ways through...and to hell with the bad stuff.
Not a good response, but you have me thinking.
Interesting...thanks for the compliment on this. I think these things and often wonder if I should post them. You've given me affirmation that I should.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I express moments of doubt, overall I'm more hopeful also than sad. I tend to think that what we do, even on a small scale, does have a ripple effect even if we don't know it. It's like where I work, where I just transferred over to a new location. There's a weird dynamic going on because of a couple of people (out of 5) and I'm not buying into the dysfunction and the others are noticing it and commenting on it, changing the way they react to it also.
oops...that's a blog post huh?