Musings about Monarchy

I'm going to take a break this week from Saturday Smorgasbord cause I'm rethinking/reworking it a bit. Plus I really want to talk about a book I'm reading right now. It's called The Other Boleyn Girl. I'm sure you've heard about; it's been made into a movie staring two of my favorite actresses, Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson. I haven't seen the movie yet because I have to read the book first. It just seems wrong to watch the movie before reading the book...

But I digress...

I have a love/hate relationship with this book. I love the writing and the description that Philippa Gregory gives is like a yummy desert. It's like she's feeding me the story. And after each helping I'm pleasantly full. But I hate the situations the Boleyn sisters were put in. I understand that it was a symptom of the times and all that but to live and not be able to express your feelings or let anyone know who you truly are is such a horrible thought for me.

Sane & Satisfied is about being honest with yourself and others, even if that honesty is ugly. I could not imagine being forced by my own family to smile while the father of my child sleeps with my sister. Horrible.

I like to compare different eras in history with present day. And it got me thinking about what's changed since Monarchy times and what hasn't. Speaking from an American point of view, we don't have a king and queen. Our women are free to do what they want with their life and pick their own mate. We can speak out against our President and government without the fear of being beheaded in the town square.

But we are still just as much ruled by outward appearances as people were back then. Today we have marketing campaigns and "experts" telling us how we should look and behave. We still have a very small group of people making laws for many. And there are a lot of stories and myths that influence our thoughts and actions and beliefs.

For all the faults of a Monarchy system the people or the peasants at least knew how to take care of themselves. They knew how to keep cattle, horses and other animals alive and well. They knew how to raise a garden. Many of them knew blacksmithing and sewing. And they obviously knew how to cook and bake from scratch. Not many people alive today (at least in America) know how to do all that.

Is that just the way it goes? The more political freedom a people gain the more skills they loose? Because it seems to me that most of us don't think that we can do anything at all. And with all the "bigger, better, faster, cheaper" products we can't stop buying we know less and less every year.

Well that's all the rambling for today. I guess I'll get back to devouring my book...

The Anti-Creative Process (or What Happens During Election Season)

Eistein once said, "A well defined problem is halfway to being solved." In the time leading up to an election the air is filled with problems and all the components that make up a problem. Who did what first, who is at fault, your solution is wrong, you did this, etc. I agree with Einstein but how do you know when you have defined the problem enough, when do you finally realize that it's not the problem we are trying so hard to define but actually the blame we are trying so hard to hide from?

There is importance in figuring out what exactly the problem is before a solution can even be talked about. That is the Preparation stage of the Creative Process. But when you hang out for too long in the Preparation stage, surrounded by problems, complaints, yelling, and blame-throwing you find yourself in limbo, fearing to move forward lest that direction elicits abuse from the other side. Stuck in a never-ending circle of blaming and retreating from blame, we regret to move forward.

You also can't be so focused on the solution that you ignore what the problem is altogether. And for some reason I get the sense that both are happening at the same time. All to often, we "know" what the solution should be and feel that hurling blame at the other party will somehow shed a positive light on us and our "righteous" solution. And I guess, we also get impatient? But this is the Anti-Creative Process, Destruction at its finest.

If the Creative Process is

1. The Drawing Board

2. Incubation

3. Eureka

4. Critique

and 5. Implementation

Then the Anti-Creative Process is:

1. The Problems

2. Skip Incubation

3. The Solutions

4. Go back and forth between Problems and Solutions a few more times

5. Skip any kind of Critique Stage

and 6. Arbitrary implementation

Unfortunately, during these election times it seems as though humans forget that we are creative being. We forget that we have tools and skills necessary to solve our own problems. And we put our faith in a handful of people to solve our problems for us. But this back and forth is solving anything except making us all feel more hopeless about our lives.