Imagine

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spk_0 This is Scott Carrier sitting on my front porch in Salt Lake City.

spk_0 Last time I said I was going to go look for some creativity or inspiration.

spk_0 And so I went fishing for a week up in my favorite mountains and it worked.

spk_0 I forgot all about the problems of the world, felt like a new man, happy to be alive.

spk_0 But then I came back down from the mountains and Charlie Kirk was shot at the university

spk_0 where I used to work from the top of the building where I had an office I almost never went to.

spk_0 Back then, over a decade ago, lots of students at this school were carrying guns in their backpacks.

spk_0 I asked one, why do you bring a gun to class?

spk_0 And he said to fight evil. And I said in school, we learned how to fight evil with words, not guns.

spk_0 He said nothing, but the look on his face was like he wanted to shoot me like I was evil.

spk_0 Charlie Kirk thought he was teaching students how to fight evil with words.

spk_0 That was his purpose in speaking at the university.

spk_0 But a student from another school thought Kirk was spreading hatred that Kirk was evil and needed

spk_0 to be killed. It's all very confusing and kind of scary. Now the flags around town are fine

spk_0 at half-masked and people are saying Kirk is a Christian martyr like Joan of Arc and the Democrats

spk_0 and liberals are evil. I know I should be out talking to people about what's happening to our country,

spk_0 but I also know I don't want to hear what they'll say, not yet anyway.

spk_0 So I'm going to play this piece by Charles Bowden that seems to sum up what's happening now,

spk_0 even though he wrote it 30 years ago in a book called Blood Orchid. He called it a response or a riff

spk_0 on Imagine the song by John Lennon. Imagine the problem is not physical.

spk_0 Imagine the problem has never been physical, that it is not biodiversity, it is not the ozone layer,

spk_0 it is not the greenhouse effect, the whales, the old-growth forests, the loss of jobs, the crack

spk_0 and the ghetto, the abortions, the tongue and the mouth, the disease is stalking everywhere as

spk_0 love goes on, unconcerned. Imagine the problem is not some syndrome of our society,

spk_0 not something that can be solved by commissions or laws or redistribution of what we call wealth.

spk_0 Imagine that it goes deeper right to the core of what we call our civilization,

spk_0 and that no one outside of ourselves can affect real change, that our civilization,

spk_0 our governments are sick, and that we are mentally ill and spiritually dead,

spk_0 and that all our issues and crises are symptoms of this deeper sickness.

spk_0 Imagine the problem is not physical, and no amount of driving, no amount of road will help deal

spk_0 with the problem. Imagine that the problem is not that we are powerless or that we are victims,

spk_0 but that we have lost the fire and belief and courage to act. We hear whispers of the future,

spk_0 but we slap our hands against our ears, we catch glimpses, but we turn our faces swiftly aside.

spk_0 The whistle is always blowing, there is no denying was before my eyes. We all know the future,

spk_0 we only must say it and face it. Imagine the problem is that we cannot imagine a future

spk_0 where we possess less but are more. Imagine the problem is a future that terrifies us,

spk_0 because we lose our machines, but gain our feet and pounding hearts. Then what is to be done?

spk_0 That was the late Charles Bowden reading from his book Blood Orchid. There's a link to the book

spk_0 on our website, homebrave.com. Thanks very much for listening, thanks for donating,

spk_0 and thanks to Lisa Miller, Erica Heilman, and Alice Leora Briggs. I'm going to try to stay calm

spk_0 and write out this wave of insanity.

Imagine

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