Flashpoint
Flashpoint
I’ve been emersed in a large woodworking project for the past two months, and I don’t know about you but when I’m in the middle of a project I have one rule; When I finish with a tool, I don’t stop work and put it back in its storage place. I just lay it aside on the workbench and keep concentrating on the job. Consequently, about mid-project, I’m forced to stop and clean up the whole shop before I can proceed.
Last Sunday brought about the convergence of two complimentary events. I cleaned up my shop, collecting a ton of wood scraps in the process. At the same time, the weather cooled to the point I could fire up the chiminea on our patio.
Most of the wood scraps consisted of outer layers of white oak, oxidized from years on the drying rack. I knew they would burn well, so about mid-afternoon, I threw a scoop of fresh sawdust into the chiminea and built a mini teepee of kindling atop it. A single application of our grill lighter set the whole scene ablaze and sped that wood’s oxidation process up a million-fold. I added bigger and bigger scraps until I had a really good fire going.
That’s when I noticed the brisk breeze was blowing red-hot embers into my flowerbed and onto my roof. I uncoiled the garden hose and wet down all the dry leaves. While I was at it, I sprayed an ample amount of water up onto the roof to saturate any leaves collected in the rain gutter.
Then, with the fire burning down, I broke my cardinal rule; I went back into the house, taking the grill lighter with me and putting it back in the kitchen junk drawer lest my wife curse me the next time she goes looking for it.
A few hours later, I decided to rekindle the chiminea. By blowing on the gray ashes, I uncovered what appeared to be an ample bed of still-hot embers. Harkening back to my cub scout manual, I inserted a few thin slivers of dry, splintered wood into the embers. I even lightly dusted the whole mess with a handful of sawdust.
Disappointingly, the strips of wood and sprinkles of sawdust just turned black without ever catching fire. I built another teepee of kindling atop the embers and fanned the whole mess with a leftover scrap of plywood. Nothing. Then, I reached for the grill lighter which should have been lying on the patio table where I left it. Rule two: never break rule one.
Just as I was about to give up and travel begrudgingly back into the house to retrieve that stupid lighter, the little teepee crossed the magic temperature threshold and burst into flames. I added wood, and in no time, the chiminea looked like a jet engine, shooting flames three feet into the air.
It occurs to me that our culture is quickly closing in on that flashpoint and the dumbasses blowing on the embers are no longer just politicians. The holier-than-thou political virus seems to have spread to educators, students, and otherwise-normal people. And the primary symptom seems to be that our fragile emotions have become our moral anchor.
My question is, “Are you fanning the embers or turning on the water hose?”
Let’s talk. I’d really like to hear what you have to say, and it might even give me something to write about. Email me at guy@lawsoncomm.com.
I’ll buy you coffee and we can compare notes. I promise not to steal your ideas without permission.
The Illusion of Asymetric Insight: The conviction that we know others better than they know us and that we may have insights about them that they lack (but not vice versa), leads us to talk when we would do well to listen, and to be less patient than we ought to when others express the conviction that they are the ones who are being misunderstood or judged unfairly.
― Malcolm Gladwell
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Talking to Strangers
— Malcolm Gladwell
The quote above is from this book in which Gladwell reveals the fallacies we’ve been sold about relating to strangers and why we’re headed for trouble if we don’t see through those lies to begin breaking down the whole adversarial cancer that is rapidly eating our culture. He also provides the good news of a workable solution.
A meeting of great minds who think alike
