Unexamined

 

broken warp thread being needle woven in

after mending

Just because something breaks doesn't mean it isn't useful.  Things can be mended.  They won't be perfect, but they can still be functional.

I spend a lot of time thinking.  Too much time, some would say.  When I found weaving, I fell into a craft where thinking about things was a benefit, not detrimental.  (I am sure there are other crafts where this is so, just that weaving resonated with me.)

When I was younger I heard about the Socrates quote "an unexamined life is not worth living".  I won't say I agree with the statement - entirely.  But I have found over the years that examining what is happening in my life, in my studio, has pretty much always led to improvements.

This morning, out of idle curiosity (and a large dose of procrastination) I googled the phrase, in part because I could not remember who it was attributed to.  And then found a bunch of people stoutly defending the right to *not* examine one's life.  In fact they took rather the other side of the question.

Personally I don't much care if people examine their lives or not.  We have 'free will' (apparently god given) and we can choose to not look at what is happening in the world closely and close our eyes to the state the world is currently in.  

What I have found is that the sooner I grapple with things going 'wrong' the sooner I can work to 'fix' the problem.

We have just spent 3+ years dealing with an existential threat that a far too large percentage of the population decided was a fantasy.  They closed their eyes to the death toll and ignored pleas to wear a mask, stay home, don't travel, don't catch and if you do catch it, don't spread it.  Instead a rather alarming number of people decided that they were impervious or they simply didn't need to follow basic cautions in the face of a global pandemic.  

Right now a rather alarming percentage of the world is literally on fire.  People are being urged to wear at least an N95 against the wildfire smoke, which does huge damage to lungs.  And a certain tv station, who pushes conspiracy theories and rage farms, has taken to mocking those people who *are* wearing masks.

Their callous disregard for the health of their listeners is something to behold.  

Rather than encourage their 'base' to think critically, they criticize.  Instead of pointing out the actual dangers, they point to boogie men.  They point here, there and everywhere but at the actual causes for things like a global pandemic, wildfires that are unprecedented, not just in North America but on every continent - except Antarctica.  

I keep weaving.  I keep trying to teach weaving.  I think about Mad Max and the fact that weaving will be one of the survival skills we need when the whole equatorial area is hostile to human (and other) life.  And where the populations of that area of the globe will wind up and how that will impact all of us.  I think about Nero mythically fiddling while Rome burned.

And I keep weaving.  I keep putting my creative energy out into the world.  I keep encouraging people to learn how to weave, but mostly to think critically about what they are doing.

Not everyone needs to live an examined life.   But there have to be some who do think about causes and solutions.  And when civilizations collapse, have the knowledge to survive.