Downside up

To get the title for this article, I took "upside down" and turned it backwards. I imagine you saw that and wondered, then took a second look to see what I was getting at. This is what I am getting at: what we see gets filtered and deconstructed and reconstructed to fit our preconceptions. We view the world from inside out. A second look and a third will get us closer to the truth, but we can never be sure things are what they seem to be. Nothing new here. You already knew that, didn't you?

ca 1959 Port Elgin

Perhaps like me, you have reclined beside your love on the beach, face to face but just for fun inverted so that chin is confused with forehead in your lover's gaze. With that perspective, what was beautiful turns ridiculous. Ordinary conversation becomes a comedic dialogue between puppets. A kiss ends in spluttering absurdity as you look at a bobbing larynx rather than the misty eyes of your beloved. A second look is useful. With a second look or a third you may see more than a pretty face downside up, one with whom you could share a lifetime of laughter and tears.

On the other hand, with a second look we may find
our wisdom turned to folly,
our virtue tarnished,
our best laid plans gone awry.

With a second look, we see what the ancestors missed:
their solution to the "native problem" revealed as genocide,
their trickle-down economics exposed as piracy by the privileged,
their agricultural revolution turning Eden to desert,
the children of God as cancer of the biosphere.

We know more than the ancestors because we have learned from unmasking their delusions, but we remain deluded that we understand what we are doing. Our grandchildren will know better and will judge us. We should take a second look, and a third, and see things as they are from outside in.