"Unless you are happy to entrust the future of life to the mercy of quarterly revenue reports, you need a clear idea what life is all about."

The quote above is found in the introduction to "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" - Yuval Noah Harari's latest book. If this were a required essay question, (which in a sense it is), "What is life all about" may elicit many similar and grouped responses, but at its core the generalized answers would consist of (in this moment) 7,666,971,887 varying interpretations so full of depth and nuance that the most intrepid explorer, faced with this allegorical maze of narrow corridors in changing arctic to equatorial conditions, could never map even his or her own interior. And of those most intrepid explorers that embark upon this journey, some never return. I believe it is good to explore and poke around at some depth, but as passageways begin to narrow and climates move toward extremes, perhaps it is best to climb back to the surface to live another day. And for those of us who are at the surface and who are claustrophobic, I believe we would be just as well substituting "the hokey-pokey" for "life" in the quote above.

And perhaps they are more synonymous than our high-minded human brains would like to admit: active, communal participation is at least a place to start. But active, communal participation in and of itself is not as marketable and thus is not as profitable as is an autonomous, independent celebration of "Me" even though this marketing of "Me" that ultimately results in its own unrecognized communal participation is created to delude and deceive and keep us busy with high-minded self-importance so we are unable to actually do the hokey-pokey. I vote for the hokey-pokey.

As it is today, many individuals would refuse to "put their right elbow in" and many others would rather cut off their left arm than to "shake it all about." This is sad. We should strive for an honest and sincere ambidexterity. Yes, we will still own our leanings, and some small degree of duplicitous political correctness will invariably creep in, but the effort must be made.

I should shake my weak wing with wild abandon and put my whole self in, but instead, today, we feel compelled to choose sides and unfortunately the choices seem to be limited to us and them and the distance between us and them seems to be widening. Yet when I look closely, I see some circularity. In some specific aspects of this spectrum the far right and the far left are closer than they realize. And as the more moderate elements (as they sit today) continue to move and circle further left and further right, there may come a day in the not-so-distant future when, by flattening the segment we occupy, we have once again become moderate.

I do not claim to understand all the subtle intricacies of our political spectrum, and I am not a fan of generalizations or labels, but for the sake of argument if we label today's far right as nationalistic conservative traditionalism bordering on fundamentalism and favoring capitalism, and if we label today's far left as social democracy favoring capitalism, and if we acknowledge that some aspects of traditionalism overlap with some aspects of the nether regions of social democracy, then we can visualize these two extremes circling to meet each other where ultimately, (with the flattening mentioned above), the left becomes straight-up liberalism, the right becomes straight-up conservatism and the center becomes a form of social democracy. I believe this the most likely scenario because I believe today's younger generations influenced by today's culture will more likely move social democracy to center stage pushing dying pockets of nationalism and fundamentalism further right toward inconsequentiality; and this belief is supported by research and polls.

Regardless of the polls, there are those who will disagree with my conclusion of a most likely scenario, but a significant majority of those who would disagree will be insignificant in 40 years and many will no longer be casting votes in 20 years.

And, "That's the Jingle Bell...
That's the Jingle Bell...
That's the Jingle Bell Rock!"

Shake your weak wing with wild abandon and put your whole self in!