Robert Landsberg

 

Robert Landsberg.  

I was thinking about him this morning.  

How he was photographing St Helens when it erupted.  He continued taking pictures, and then realized he was going be overtaken by the pyroclastic flow.

So he rewound his film, put it in his backpack, and then covered the backpack with his body, protecting the film from the volcanos onslaught.

The film was recovered, and was an invaluable tool for volcanologists.

I’m thinking about him because of the overwhelming shame and frustration people are feeling because they can’t, or won’t take actual action against what is happening.

Believe me, this is not to judge.  There are many things that have conditioned us to only speak out, an action in itself.  But that can be so easily lost in this overwhelm of voices speaking at once.  And even then, only the popular ones- hell, I have one follower (hey Daniel).

There’s also the fact that the political system was set up to deal with this issue- our representatives would do what they needed to in order to fight, to maybe create short term discomfort in order to ensure long term stability of our nation.  However, power and money and the fetishizing of intellectual dominance are causing our representatives to stop themselves from rocking the boat- after all, they have their own money and power to think of.  And, of course, they know better than anyone else how this game is to be played.

Finally, shame.  Shame causes inaction, because we push it away by projecting it onto others who were feel are more accountable than us, or we can be overwhelmed by it, certain that we are too useless, or too small of a voice to be able to make a difference.

We are Robert Landsburg, realizing this destructive force is going to overtake us (or has overtaken us already).  What would we save?  What do we see in ourselves that is worth saving?

And why, do I ask myself while giving this comparison, am I seriously overlooking how it falls apart?

We are not alone staring at the destruction.  We are all around each other, trained to distrust each other, even hate each other, because then we can’t gather together to save ourselves.  Our strength is in our numbers, and even if we don’t agree on a lot, we can find many essential things that we do agree on, and what will be destroyed.

Second, the destruction does not have to be all consuming.  Natural disasters can destroy everything, and nothing can stop it.  This is not a natural disaster.  Because of that, we don’t have to passively fall on our own swords, waiting for us to be overcome.  Unlike Robert, we can keep going, and not be destroyed by our own false hopelessness.

Finally, most importantly.

Robert was not an amateur.  He was retired from the Navy, and had been a professional photographer for about ten years- winning several awards.  His creative pursuit- albeit a tragedy- allowed greater study and inroads into bettering understanding.

At this point, we need to engage creatives and our own creativity to come up with ways to act.  Mind you, we do not need to reinvent the wheel, but we need to shake things up, so we feel less useless in this time and situation.

And as an addendum- we need to look and be inspired by things that we tend to ignore in the world.  Such as the perseverance in the Serbians to protest the corruption in their government.  Just one, very strong example.  

And, as always- there are so many fires.  Just pick a few to focus on.  They want you to focus on all of them, and get overwhelmed.  

We are not the children of Atlas

We get to choose the weights we carry.