Ampersand Gazette #33
Welcome to the Ampersand Gazette, a metaphysical take on the news of the day. If you know others like us, who want to create a world that includes and works for everyone, please feel free to share this newsletter. The sign-up is here. And now, on with the latest …
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Part I
“armed with a quiver of false equivalencies …”
from an Opinion Essay in The New York Times by Charles M. Blow
“Trump May Face Prosecution. America Faces a Test.”
March 23, 2023
If you’ve followed my work for any length of time at all, you already know that this world, this planet, is based on a principle called polarity.
The O.E.D. defines it as the state of having two opposite or contradictory tendencies, opinions, or aspects. Polarity is evident in everything we encounter, even if we’re not aware of it. If you’re rummaging through the spice cupboard for pepper, you’re not looking for salt.
The old-time metaphysicians, those I return to again and again for the clarity of their vision and the simplicity of their wisdom, refer to this not as the Law of Polarity. Instead, they call it The Complementarity of Opposites.
I have a fondness for this way of stating it because it not only encompasses a statement of fact—there are opposites, no matter our opinions about them—but also because it tells us, in a subtle way, what to do about them. I’ll get to that.
What Mr. Blow references, though, these “false equivalencies,” is the deliberate misuse of the principle of polarity. Like this: If drag queens read stories to children, children are in danger, ergo, Drag Queens = Danger.
Um, what? This is the practice that we are forced to witness day after day in the political circus that has become our government and its elected members.
If white women aren’t forced to have more children, persons other than white ones will be replacing us.
Again, um, what? Fewer White Babies = Replacement. No, just no.
The thing that has me the most concerned about these false equivalencies actually has little to do with them per se, and a lot more to do with our maladaptive reading habits. Few of us are really reading any more. The computer “feeds” have taught us to skim, to scan. And skim/scan fast.
Fast skimming is great for some things. I use it. But not for deep thought. Deep thought requires time and attention and a willingness to read something and say to yourself, Wait, is that true? Are those really opposites?
Usually when I do it, I realize that I’ve just been fed yet another false equivalency. And you know as well as I do that when you start with the wrong premise … you invariably end up in the wrong place.
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Part II
The theologian Henri J.M. Nouwen memorably compared the interplay of closeness and distance in relationships to dancing: Sometimes we hold each other tightly, and sometimes we move away “and let the space between us become an area where we can freely move.”
From “The Ethicist” columnist Kwame Anthony Appiah
“My Fundamentalist Parent Won’t Accept My Marriage. Should I Cut Ties?”
March 25, 2023
Go back to the metaphysical elders for a moment, Beloved. They express this as The Complementarity of Opposites, and that is their diagnosis. One of the major tasks of each of us here is to begin to see, feel, and live that complementarity over and above seeing, feeling, and living the opposites.
When we stick with false equivalencies, and do not question them, we’re stuck in the opposites.
We must make the time, take the time, use our time to think through these false idols. It’s so easy to get up in arms about whatever pushes our buttons, but the next time that happens to you, stop. Think for a moment.
What is the complimentary that would balance out, heal, soothe, ease whatever opposite has your knickers in a twist? Be with that for a moment.
I stand on the shoulders of metaphysical giants to be sure, but our metaphysics today, just as was the case for our elders, is only as valuable as we make use of it in our daily lives. Ampersand living, the idea that we need to be living in a both/and world, rather than an either/or one, is the result of learning to live this complimentary for more than sixty years. Sometimes well, ofttimes poorly, but always, always the attempt.
Isn’t it time you joined me? It’s the only way to build a world that works for everyone, and that world is the only one that is destined to thrive.
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In 2009, Kevin Kelly, the white-bearded futurist and co-founder of Wired, was searching his brain for a word that did not yet exist. “Either we’re headed for a dystopia or we’re headed for a utopia. Neither of those seemed to be feasible, or even desirable.”
So Mr. Kelly coined a term to describe a third option, meant to represent the reality in which he believed we already lived: protopia.
The concept refers to a society that, rather than solving all its problems (as in a utopia) or falling into dire dysfunction (as in a dystopia), makes incremental progress over a long period of time.
(The root of the word has many derivations, Mr. Kelly said. “Pro as in progress. As in progression. As in prototype, early. As in pro versus con, meaning yes versus no. Pro as in professional. All the positives of pro going forward.”)
Others have, quite naturally, picked up his banner and furthered it, among them sustainability consultants, environmental activists, and creative media directors.
“One referred to a quote from the author bell hooks: ‘To be truly visionary, we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality.’”
from a column called THE BRIGHT SIDE in The New York Times
Forget Utopia. Ignore Dystopia. Embrace Protopia!
March 14, 2023
Camelot is on its way back to Broadway. Aaron Sorkin has rewritten its unwieldy book. We’ll see how that turns out, but I mention it because everyone’s Camelot will be different. Oh, not the musical. The utopia.
Personally, I like Mr. Kelly’s take on both u- and dys- versions of -topia. Who needs either?
Instead, why not angle for protopia? The word isn’t even in the O. E. D., but good old Google defines it as, a state that is better today than yesterday, although it might be only a little better. Protopia is much harder to visualize. Because a protopia contains as many new problems as new benefits.
Here’s my stab at a definition: A species working with one another for the good of all and our planet. This is the Complementarity of Opposites in action, Beloved.
The cool thing is … if we’ll all spend a little time every day dreaming our own utopias, and taking small steps toward creating what we envision—even taking out the recycling—eventually, by the nature of growth, and consciousness, we’ll live ourselves right into that combined reality.
And if I end up with my office in the spacious turret of a pink Queen Anne Victorian house, so much the better.
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And in publishing news …
Oklahoma! Hex, the first book in The Mex Mysteries, is #32 in Metaphysical Fiction at Amazon.com!!! Oh, my heavens was I excited! It, like Attending Physician, is a perma-free book. If you love sassy high femmes, Broadway, a little bit of romance, and a little more supernatural, this series of 10—yes, 10!—mystery novels is for you. Find Book 1 here.
Here’s the blurb for those of you who have inquiring minds that want to know …
The latest revival of Oklahoma! is in a “turrible” fix when “pore” Jud is dead onstage in the middle of the first act.
Mexicali Rose—Mex to her friends—loves, loves, loves the musical theatre and feels much the same about her profession—intuitive investigating—so when the lead producer of Oklahoma! calls to request her help, Mex is hot on the case.
Her impeccable in at the theatre is the production stage manager, Veronica D’Alcantara, and even Mex, she who completely lacks gaydar, feels Veronica’s attentive eyes on her person. She teams up with her favorite NYPD sergeant, Michael Ryan Kelley, and pulls back the curtain to discover unlikely connections amongst the cast and crew.
Her pursuit of the truth takes her deep into the Bronx and on a flight to the southernmost tip of the Americas as she confronts a web of evil that crosses the globe.
Will the trip reveal a bright golden haze on the meadow, will the farmers and the cowmen learn to be friends, or will it be all ’er nothin’ for this high femme, intuitive investigator?
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I’m over 135,000 words in Jasmine Increscent, Book 2 of The Subversive Lovelies, and writing up a storm, usually more than three thousand words a day. That sounds so impressive, doesn’t it? It’s really only about six single-spaced pages.
Anyway, when I tune in for my daily work guidance, I have this marked sense of urgency about this book. Some blessing is hooked to it, and I won’t know what it is till it happens!
Still, I’m following Her instructions to the letter because things have an amazing way of working out when I do. It’s fun to feel this impelled to tell a story.
I’m guessing there’ll be another 90,000 words or so, and that I’ll finish it by our wedding anniversary, May 1st. How perfect. There’s a wedding in the book …
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“In short there’s really not, a more congenial spot, for happ’ly ever aftering than here in Camelot,” to coin a phrase. Even if you don’t exactly live in your version of utopia yet, Beloved, keep going. You will. And in the meantime, let’s keep at the protopia task, and be ampersand, S.