Last week it was my wife. This week, Pow! post inspiration comes from my elder son Aidan.
He and I were walking to my office last week and passed by a gaggle of assorted candidate campaign posters (we're going through a Federal election today in Canada) cluttering up the lampposts and street lights at the corner of St. Laurent and Sherbrooke. Just about every one of them was defaced in one way or another (for example, see below).
This is nothing new; goofy crap like this goes on everywhere there's an election (perhaps not in North Korea, but I digress...) but frankly, I've never seen it so consistently prevalent.
"There are a number of reasons I wouldn't go into politics, and perhaps this is a little narcissistic," I told Aidan, "but I don't know if I could stand the thought of my face and name being systematically vandalized like that."
"Well," he replied, "it depends on who's system does the vandalizing."
Then he explained.
"If I were a politician, I would pre-graffiti all my posters. They wouldn't all say 'This Guy's Great!' or be totally positive; I'd mix up some insults along with the propaganda. But I'd take the marker out of their hands and put it in mine."
Brilliant. Subversive. Hysterical. And very post-modern.
Go figure that it comes from my offspring...
Scartching the surface, the idea is more profound than at first glance.
It's a cliche, but these days, in the hyper-linked, social-networkized world we live in, everybody can comment on everything everywhere. There's no more sand in which to hide your head; ostriches are slaughtered. Don't respond to the torrent of rumours, comments, truths, rants and/or questions about you and you're simultaneously a lame duck and a sitting duck.
So what did I learn this week?
I discovered a version of The Golden Rule, updated for our times:
"Do unto yourself
before others
do unto you."
And next week, I await inspiration from my son Hayes to complete the family circle ;)
--------------------------------------------
(P.S. The image above comes from a Montreal Gazette initiaive, an online repository of defaced election signs. Check it out here.)