Snowflakes Unite

I recently found myself entangled in an altogether surreal Facebook interaction that quickly resembled Br'er Rabbit's experience with the Tar Baby.  The more the comments went back and forth, the more inextricably and frustratingly entangled we became.  It was touchy; it was conflictual.  Then, as so often happens, absent better arguments or elucidating insight, the interaction descended into name-calling.  My conversation partner, with all the derision that can be dripped onto and through a typed word, referred to me and various other correspondents in the string as "Snowflakes."

Snowflakes?  I didn't quite know what to make of the label.  Name-calling, regardless of its particular textual and circumstantial formulation, is always a despicably low and amateurish form of human discourse; a flailing of desperation seized upon in lieu of substance.  But "snowflakes"?  Obviously intended as a political pejorative - a putdown of some inscrutable intent - for the life of me I couldn't make sense of the reference.  How fossilized does one's imagination need to be, I wondered - how diminished of wonder and fascination and appreciative observation - to turn one of nature's most evocative and metaphorically rich phenomena into a derogatory epithet intended to belittle and dismiss?  Subsequent Googling clarified that the term has been co-opted by one chorus of the political dysfunction to demean those with whom they disagree as fragile ephemera who go about life with a perpetually vulnerable and inflated sense of their own uniqueness.

Understanding the "put down" only made me sadder.  How has it come to be that those very qualities are viewed as negatives?  Fragility.  Uniqueness.  Vulnerability.  How has it come to be that unbridled, unchanneled strength is adjudged an unmitigated "good"?  In this culture, and increasingly around the world, we thumb our snowflakes into soggy oblivion, and use the resulting moisture to wipe away any residue of those with whom we disagree.  Could it be that this metaphorical descent helps explain the dismissive toxicity in which we now find ourselves deteriorating?

I recall that the word "Christian" was originally intended as a label of derision by those enemies of Jesus and those who opted to follow him; a put down that was eventually embraced and adopted by those very ones it was intended to demean.  I've decided to follow the example of those early Christians and embrace as a label of honor this epithet intended as a slam.  I can't think of any more attractive and aspirational sobriquet than "snowflake".  It is certainly true that I am fragile and therefore vulnerable.  Anyone -- even the most voluble, blustery bully -- is delusional to think otherwise.  It doesn't take very many tiny, malignant cells within us to prove the point.  Likewise, a moment's distraction in an automobile, no matter its size or number of airbags.  Neither concrete nor steel nor stone, we are ephemeral, and the sooner we reclaim that essential truth about ourselves and each other the sooner we may find our way back to a healthier path.

Similarly, it is true that we are unique -- precious, at least in part -- because of it.  No one need take my word for it.  A simple look around will demonstrate the fact of it.  For all of our evident similarities, no one looks or sounds or thinks or behaves quite like me -- or you.  But a careful reading of scripture  -- most scriptures, it turns out -- asserts the existential significance of it.  Surely inheritors and adherents of the Judeo-Christian tradition should have no doubt of our individual and collective preciousness.  It is, according to our understanding of the very voice of God, the essence of who we are.

Holy.
Wondrous.
Unique.
Inestimable.
Irreplaceable.
Divinely adored.

Until we rediscover and reappropriate this essential understanding of ourselves and each other -- until we drift our way into the weighty and powerful bank of fellow snowflakes -- we will simply continue to shoot, ignore, wall out, and annihilate each other.  Somehow, that hardly sounds like a desirable alternative.

So, Snowflakes unite!  As any fallen branch in winter can testify, it is powerful when we do.  We can argue and disagree; we can vehemently counter each others positions and advocate for radically different options, but if it persists that we deny or ignore the fragile and precious uniqueness of each other the metaphor will surely shift.  We will become the broken and fallen branch instead of the snowflakes that overwhelmed it.

Nature, Twisted Into Increasingly Unnatural Shapes

Nature is back in the news this week, although in a way that is decidedly unnatural.  A working group convened by the United Nations has issued a new report on climate change that ratchets up the alarm about the deteriorating state of our environment and the accelerating pace at which it is occurring.  The United Nations is often politically unpopular in this country, which might provoke some to dismiss the report’s findings.  I rather view the UN’s unpopularity as a credential rather than a critique.  Our smug self-righteousness needs needling from time to time.  Our body politic isn’t well-served by the chorus of palace prophets who routinely coddle our leaders and their constituents with what they want to hear. 

The scientists from around the world who authored this climate report are clearly not palace prophets.  They have challenging news to deliver.  Not “news”, really, except in its severity.  The report chronicles in detail the facts we have been hearing for quite some time:  that the climate is changing, chiefly because of human activities, the environment  -- the soils, the air, the temperatures and the weather patterns -- is degrading, and that the implications will be consequential.  We can choose to ignore the facts, but that growling sound we increasingly hear will be our stomachs.  Hungry.  Feeding ourselves will become more and more difficult as a direct result of our behaviors.

We don’t like these kinds of reports, and so we routinely ignore them; burying them beneath a comforting barrage of contrary reassurances from those who profit from the status quo.  They don’t want us to change our ways any more than we do.  Their quarterly reports of return on investment depend upon us doing more of what we are doing, not less; and we simply don’t want the hassle of changing our patterns and reorienting our “way of life.”  Even if it kills us.  So, we keep consuming, extracting, manufacturing, building, eating and relating in ways that are not sustainable, instead of imagining and conceiving and investing in different possibilities. 

In so doing, we imprison ourselves in the facts we don’t want to hear.  Crops that are increasingly difficult to grow; herbicide resistant weeds we are increasingly unable to kill; soil that because of more persistent droughts we are increasingly unable to retain; more frequent and more severe storms that are more and more devastating; food shortages and bread basket conflicts prompting food immigrant refuges we already refuse to tolerate, let alone welcome; political paralysis driving us into another Dark Age; solutions we find inconvenient and therefore ignore. 

When I think of our collective blindness toward climate change and its solutions, I’m reminded of G.K. Chesterton’s famous observation about Christianity - that it has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found hard and therefore not tried.

The authors of the report are quick to point out that it contains more than dire statistics.  It contains hope, in the form or concrete, encouraging and accessible suggestions for changing the trajectory we have set in motion. 

They simply require us to permit ourselves the grace of being redemptively inconvenienced.