I read a book a couple years ago. The Right Mistake by Walter Mosley. I finally bought a copy in the last few days. To some, Mosley is seen as a mystery writer. I know about those books but I've never given em much of a look. The books I read by Mosley tend to be hard to classify. He's written books about issues of the day, at least one book about writing, some science fiction and books that fall somewhere between mystery, thriller, social commentary and character study. The Right Mistake is one of the latter.
It's about a character named Socrates Fortlow. An Ex Con who's spent more of his life in jail than out. And it's possible that all that time away was necessary to make him the man we find here. While many parents hope their son or daughter will be a mozart who's brilliance shows itself early and fully formed, it just might be the case that some lives don't find their direction and purpose til the eleventh hour and might very well be the better for it. Such would seem to be the case with Socrates.
This isnt the first book Mosley has written about Socrates Fortlow. It's definitely the one that had the most impact on me though. I won't detail the whole story for you. I'll just say that even after a lifetime in prison Socrates still has one wildly dangerous act left in him. He starts a conversation. And we're not talking about a purely symbolic danger here either. At least not from the point of view of the local police. No they get quite worried about his words and the people he chooses to say them to.
Which brings me to my primary point. Words. They can be dressed up noise that strut and fret their time on the stage and are soon forgotten. Or they can be massive and meaningful and change those that hear them forever.
Speaking just for myself, I know that when an idea comes to me fully formed from the distant back room in my subconscious or from source outside my head, I am changed. I confront old situations in new ways because the world is new in at least some small way. Possibilities present themselves that I had never recognized before.
So the world is new for me but so many people live their entire lives in that same old one. Because the world has become a machine that large numbers of us only exist to serve. You hear people talking about how the economy is doing. When that mysterious thing we call the economy is only a massive number of people making things that other people will buy and buying things that other people make. And this is vital. It must continue.
Or so we are told.
This is just one of many big ideas that needs to be part of a serious conversation about where this world goes from here. The future is happening every day and there has to be something better down the road that just buying stuff and selling stuff and struggling every day to mantain your place in this imaginary social contruct that we call the economy. Maybe once upon a time it was the best system available. Maybe it was the best we could do but no system should outlive its usefulness and this one most certainly has. The cracks are showing. The ink is fading from our monopoly money. The rules aren't real. This was all just a fiction meant to move people forward until our real purpose on this earth could be revealed. We've had enemies real and imagined, spontaneously occuring or when needed built to order.
It's been said that "If God did not exist, Man would have had to create him" or something like that. The same can be said for enemies. Great empires need great enemies. When they fail to arise on their own, we'll give em a nudge.
We, not just as a country or continent...but as a world have the chance to start the dangerous conversation that can bring about that new world. The one we only glimpse during times of crisis and watch receed from view as the world returns to "normal".
The hardest part for anyone who accomplishes great things is all that they have to leave behind.There's a better world waiting to be realized. We just have to stop settling for the comfort of the one we've got.
