Gun control. Hang on, hang on! Give this just a moment. Let's use that as an example, as well as address it, just for the moment.
I'm a writer. I write myself into impossible situations in fiction, or my characters anyway. Then I write my (their) way out of it so at first, my reader thinks my character is lost. Then, not lost, but in a fun way. Hopefully.
When I build into those situations both as the author and character God, I try to write cleverly. Whenever I can't, when I'm just as lost as my character (happens all the time, that's the fun of it!), I first have to realize, I'm lost. I consider all the rational, logical, even illogical ways out of the situation or scene, or picadillo. Once I find I have no solution, it's like there's a click, and I realize where I am. Stuck.
That's when it occurs to me to look 180 degrees about in order to see where to go. It's jarring at times. It's counter-intuitive. It's at times humorous. Or feels insane. But then, I ruminate about how to make whatever it is that rises to the surface, to work. Not forcing it, but jostling it about in my mind as mental attachments are formed and then, solutions begin to spark into life. Exercise at times aides that along. Also, removing oneself from the problem. Rest, entertainment (but be careful, that can also be a trap).
So often, that realignment to 180 degrees, becomes the actual and best solution. At times, the only solution.
I first discovered that in my life. With heavy contrast comes obvious elements previously unseen in the situation. Counter-intuitive, like I said. It's not always intuitive. So you have to break out of that mindset you are locked into.
That's what I've meant about conservatives and Republicans of late. They seem to have difficulty with situations that require counter-intuitive solutions or, ways of viewing things. They can'/t see the forest for the trees you might say, so much of the time.
I've shared this 180-degree concept with people over my lifetime and they've been surprised at first how often it works to their benefit in giving them insights or perhaps, outsights. It's a technique for thinking out of the box. Or realizing there was never a box to begin with. Now that's thinking outside of the box.
When I look at guns, the gun situation in this country, gun control, mass shootings, where we are at now...the obvious solution, for a child...is arming everything and everyone. It is an ill-informed, juvenile consideration,.
It is where the, "Only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun" solution comes from. But it sounds like the solution of a five-year-old. Or, the NRA, or the Republican party. Of conservative gun owners and those who cannot see clearly any other solution. Because it's not obvious. It's lost among all the other chatter in the situation.
It's low contrast, obscured because of a reverent almost religious attachment to the US Constitution. Which is not a God. And once you consider the destructive dynamics of a God consideration, outside the blanket goodness attributed by theists to deity worship, one begins to see what is truly there.
Welcome to my world!
Remember a long time ago? Further up the page here when I mentioned getting out of tough creative solutions to fictional problems? Yes, those were the good old times, weren't they? The good old days of a moment ago. Before all this insanity in the world was boxing us about the head and brain, mind and morality. Yet, we really must continue on....
So, to summarize, IF you turn about 180 degrees you can frequently clearly see potential solutions.
And in this case, that is...the reform of gun control laws. Or going further in turning up the contrast levels, a rethinking of the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution. I know, I know, all that and the rest.
If you cannot see that, well...that's how the NRA and the extreme conservative Republican party and how so disingenuously they ard the travesty in the oval office, Donald Trump, have all continued to trick and con us all. To subvert reality to their own ends and not ours.
The solution isn't usually all that hard. It's just hard for some to see. But once it's been seen, you really cannot unsee it. That's the problem with atheists, you see. I went through that myself. I was raised strict Catholic. Old school, old country, old Slovak Catholic. Then I came to understand I was only half that. The other half was Irish by way of my father's family. I realized I was more Irish Catholic. That broke with the old strict traditional Slovak Catholic I had been all my young life. This was about the beginning of high school for me.
There were some other issues that helped me along, which aren't relevant here today about this. But you get the picture. I started looking around. In reading science fiction all my life, brilliants thinkers had given me a methodology to see when you are blinded by your reality and not THE reality. After a decade or so of theistic and philosophical, then college and studies in anthropology, sociology, and a degree in psychology, it all became clear.
Then I had to shake off the remaining vestiges of a lifetime of fear invoked by religious dogma and finally one day, after being a devoted theist, an adamant agnostic, a staunch atheist, I found the reality that wasn't in that box built by humanity and found one that was always there in form, a part, and parcel of the universe itself.
That is when one has to act.
That has been nearly impossible.
But times are now a changing yet again and those who are conning us are on the way out. Demographics are changing starting to fit a reality we have lived for some time now. We just have to open our eyes, our minds, and take in what is there and where we are headed. We can get in front of that train and get run over, or we can help it along and gain the love and respect of all those feeling abused because we refuse to see them or...to respect them. In ways they know, they deserve.
We will all one day, our descendants will one day, all look back at now and marvel at how really damned stupid we were and for so very long.
Really, it just takes courage.
And being honest about what is and what isn't, If only or even for a moment as we study it, we can see what is there without us in the picture. Then put us back in and see how we truly fit into what is and what has been. And what we haven't been able to see. For whatever reason.
Whatever it takes. And if that is looking about oneself 180 degrees, or counter-intuitively, so be it. Or if you have another way, one THAT WORKS, great! Use it. But do...use it!
Because we have to stop not seeing what is there and start seeing what others can clearly see while we refuse or simply cannot see it. Or see it all.
Especially when the solutions were there, staring us all right in the face.
