Bartleby Willard: We have to save the world and everybody and democracy and stop all the troubles.

Amble Whistletown: With a wisdom meme!

BW: Exactly!

AW: Come on, God, it’ll be fun!

BW: Yeah! What could go wrong!

AW: Answer is: Nothing! The wisdom meme will have wisdom built into it, so the more you understand it the kinder you become, and the less you understand it, the more you seek only to understand it, not to wield it.

BW: Yes! Foolproof!

AW: Which is important, under the circumstances.

BW: I know we can do it.

AW: We’re gonna do it!

BW: Yup.

AW: Mmm hmmm

BW: Just, um, need a little … more wisdom …

AW: Yes. Maybe just wait here a little bit for a few more drops of wisdom to fall onto the project and …

BW: And, yeah, fertilize it. Get things flowing.

AW: Probably happening soon, I’d imagine.

BW: We have to stop the evil, Amble.

AW: I know! We have to. It’s not gonna stop itself.

BW: Well, it will.

AW: Right, once we have the wisdom meme. Evil will peter out.

BW: Fizzle right out.

AW: The details of it are the tricky part.

BW: Yes: How does it work exactly?

AW: An idea simultaneously so delicious and so wholesome — both irresistible and infinitely loving.

BW: A few words. A phrase. A sentence or two.

AW: How hard can it be?

BW: I love you; you love me; we’re a happy family.

AW: That was on a syndicated television program for years, and still we fuss and fight like hyenas.

BW: With the mangy, care-worn hides and yellowed, slime-dripping fangs.

AW: Big angry yellow eyes and uneven loping strides.

BW: You’re right. Why didn’t it work? Why wasn’t it enough to admit on nationally syndicated television that we all love one another and together comprise a happy family? Why wouldn’t that be enough wisdom to start the fire in all our bellies — the fire by, for, and through the Love that chooses everyone?

AW: Something went wrong.

BW: They even ended up canceling the show, I think.

AW: Lasted a while, though.

BW: Yeah, but the wisdom meme is supposed to enlighten us all as individuals and collectively, so that we can build more beautiful systems and together focus on neat, fun collaboration instead of he said she said and it’s mine no it’s mine. It’s not enough to just serve as the motto for a successful and surprisingly long-lasting — so boring! Admittedly, I was never a child when I tried to get through an episode — children’s television program.

AW: And there’s no better wisdom meme than the classic love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and your neighbor as yourself. But I, for just one of countless examples, have affirmed that wisdom meme a bunch of times for years and years, and still I falter, I fail to consistently live in and through and for the Love that chooses everyone.

BW: If you ever even do.

AW: If I ever even do live in and through and for the Love that chooses everyone.

BW: Maybe we need to focus on admitting how beholden we are to systems and circumstances and how others treat us. Maybe we need to focus on finding the right balance between admitting we are both free to choose the better and liable to being jostled about by the people, places, organizations, systems, ideas, and everything else around us.

AW: What are we to do? We need a wisdom meme that works, but we won’t come up with better ones than Barney and Jesus did. And their memes clearly didn’t work. At least, not fast and sure enough.

BW: Although, to be fair: Barney’s wisdom meme has only been out there a few decades.

AW: Jesus’s has had thousands of years to fix everything.

BW: And hasn’t. Has not made us all wise and loving, anchoring us all in the common Good, that we might all better flow joyfully together towards the common good.

AW: What are we missing?

BW: What are we missing?

AW: This is important!

BW: So important!

AW: We can’t fuck this up.

BW: I feel like we are, though.

AW: What are we missing?????

Narrator: You know how nice it is to be able to go to a mall and not get blown up? To have a career and a family and not watch them killed? It’s so nice to not be maimed and squished down and imprisoned. We need to give that to everyone. And to let everyone get to share their opinions about the government without having to go to jail or lose their job or get killed. This stuff. This is the stuff that I’ve been taking for granted, but it’s not a given. We need to make it real for everybody. It was fun. Being a kid in a place that was safe. And you just had to go to school and practice and nobody was trying to kill you or oppress you or anything. It was so nice. How do we stop the evil? How do we all move all together towards the better and away from the worse? How do we actually help? How?

Conversants: BW/AW
Copyright: AM Watson