THE PORTALS OF TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES
by Jenny Forrester
This dispatch is a ride—I drive the wide sky landscape of Colorado and New Mexico and listen to wide mind thoughts: Yuval Noah Harari’s newest, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, Reza Aslan’s God: A Human History, Katherine Morgan’s The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control.
I take off from Truth or Consequences, playing Dolly Parton’s “World on Fire” from her album Rockstar.
As I drive, I watch birds and see so few I cry. Back in time, some guy and I were standing in a field. He said, “So many birds.” I counted two dozen Canada geese. The guy was suffering from Shifting Baseline Syndrome. During this T or C trip, I saw three dozen Sandhill Cranes once. Another time about four dozen. Bird populations, according to Cornell University, have declined by 30% since 1970—three billion birds gone across every biome. This is shattering to think about. Hard to imagine three billion missing birds, hard to imagine skies darkened by masses of birds as it used to be.
When I left T or C, I felt confident I wouldn’t get a ticket this time because I drive a truck now and have yet to get pulled over. I don’t have statistics on this, but I think my theoretical framework and accompanying data set are sound. There are a lot of trucks in places I drive. I blend—a crucial human social survival strategy.
As I drive, Harari opens my mind to what information is. Truth. Etc.
Sapolsky tells me about cognitive load and brain structures, and I think about how I’ll use this information to talk to people, to write about people, to think about myself and my impact and influence in the various landscapes and biomes I travel.
On the way back home to Colorado from T or C, I told myself no unnecessary stopping so I could get home not long after dark. The headlights on my truck are very bright even on dim. People hate it. I hate it. The dealer said that’s how it is until my headlights age. Seriously. Annoying. I won’t make it home before dark, but I’ll minimize blinding people.
Back home, I’ve got people who love me, very truly. Their politics, though, require me to do a lot of mental gymnastics and conscious compartmentalization. I’ve been a human being for a while now. My body won’t backflip again (at least on purpose), but my mind is more adept than it’s ever been. The MAGA men back home are studying Revelations, arming up, getting fit for fighting the fight they don’t realize they’ve already won a million times over. I’m worried about their fascist tendencies. Their authoritarianism. Their autocracy.
Among my writerly people I often feel less love despite more political alignment. I worry about our splintering, social positioning, and critiques. Bias leads to arguments like “empathy isn’t action,” but it’s more complex. I worry about unhealed trauma and misplaced blame. Our trauma and righteous outrage deserve wiser work than amygdala-driven emotions. I see us using intersectionality as a bludgeon rather than a framework for empathy, as Kimberlé Crenshaw intended. I worry people fit difficulties into unhelpful narratives, distancing from privilege, and that overthinking isn’t creating narratives anyone will want to join. Sapolsky’s book helps.
Gas stations in open spaces vary. There are the ones that are wild-west-like. People masked here and there. Indoors and out. Everyone opens doors, says thanks. I love a tumbleweed across a gravel-pocked pavement. I love a wind that blocks out all other sound.
I think people aren’t taking the AI and biotech revolutions seriously enough. The billionaires are billionairing. My people say it’ll be ok because the youngsters aren’t all using social media, but in this hyper-connected globe, no one can avoid the consequences of misinformation and disinformation even without engaging on social media. I listen to Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism on repeat.
I keep a count of road killed animals. Say, “Poor baby, I’m so sorry” to all of them.
I think about god and losing control and imperfection.
These two facets of my experience—the MAGA and the writers, Republicans and progressive anarchists, and other forms of the same right/left divide—have been ongoing motifs in my writing.
Autumn is glittering in the Colorado mountains–color and shading, light and contrast, moments of awe. Dacher Keltner’s book Awe is gorgeous.
I drive, listen, see, and gather: insight about truth, consequences, and realities—objective, subjective, intersubjective. I piece together a narrative for myself about why I want to be in love with someone bent on destroying me for their purposes, usually carrying a curse—MAGA man and leftist alike. I finagle a narrative that puts the past—mine, the collective, the universe—into some holdable form. I transform, reform, and revolt.
Funnily enough, all this narration leads to a calm, a quiet. A place where I reside in this short, itty-bitty life I’m traveling through—miles of sage, lines of mountain ranges, tiny herds of pronghorn, small flocks of danger-darting birds, and high-flying solo predators.
All the symbols, campaign signs, and billboards fade…
And Dolly sings. I sing along . . .
Jenny Forrester is the author of Narrow River, Wide Sky: A Memoir and Soft Hearted Stories: Seeking Saviors, Cowboy Stylists, and Other Fallacies of Authoritarianism. She’s the editor of Mountain Bluebird Magazine. Jennyforrester.com.
