The colonizers of the new world left England to get away from the festering sores of social injustice. They could not hope to change the government while they remained there, it had long ago taken on a life of its own. It must have been agonizingly painful to leave their homeland and head for the unknown. Yet the early colonizers knew that improving the quality of life could only come with change. Some change is for the good and some produces monsters.
The activity involved bouncing a basketball among a group of people. The object was to count the number of bounces. The group was so focused on counting that they failed to notice when a person dressed in a gorilla suit joined the group, and then left several bounces later. After the activity, no one remembered seeing the gorilla. They were focused on watching the ball. When you can’t see a monster, you don’t realize it’s there.
The early colonial leaders feared mass uprising. Instead of teaching people to participate as productive citizens in a free democracy, they laid the foundation for a society of consumers. Focused on the need to work to be able to purchase everything, we produce no resources of our own. But, if you can’t see the monster, you don’t realize it’s there.
People who can’t solve problems can be controlled. Early colonial leaders isolated people socially and set the groups against one another. Poor White farmers struggled to survive on frontier farms against the raids of Native American who had been driven forcibly from their land; people were rewarded for returning runaway Black slaves to their owners; women had no rights. Our education system has evolved to guarantee that we will not learn problem solving. We don’t recognize the risk of eating processed foods, taking prescription drugs, and accumulating “stuff”.
The American Dream – how did we miss that gorilla?
Cheers,
Gus
