Re-branding of the Self

Chapter seventeen of Ralph Ellison‘s 1952 novel Invisible Man includes a literary device related to the Saul to Paul conversion: “‘You start Saul, and end up Paul,’ my grandfather had often said. ‘When you’re a young gun, you Saul, but let life whip your head a bit and you starts to trying to be Paul – though you still Saul around on the side.'”

From the standpoint of going across the cultures, and becoming a great influencer, I turn to St Paul once again…”…faith, hope and love. The Greatest of these is Love”….”without Love, you’re nothing”.

We live in a society that is obsessed with being right, being politically correct, socially proper and prosperous.

We look down on the outcast, the marginalized and underprivileged.

Don’t blame you. We’re all conformists. To the current “blow of the wind”. After all, it’s the Machine Age. Gotta prove we’re not a robot.

When robot remembers. When we forget. Where we have been, what we have been through and who were at our aid.

In the age of AI, there will be justice via data, transparency, precision and tons of processing speed.

Train, plane and automobile will arrive without further delay. People will write and hopefully speak their minds. No rooms for error, for grift, for corruption. All transparent (we wish).

Medicine will be prescribed with accuracy. Media will tailor-fit to our likeness (we told them to, in so many Likes of the past).

That’s left relationship and love to be pondered. Sadness and boredom. Loneliness and suicidal thoughts.

Doubt, betrayal and trust. All the stuff that made us human in our short life span. We barely make friends, then to see them went off to war, to far away places to avoid war, and sadly, died in war.

We’re a society of electricity and electric shocks, administered to healthy and unhealthy adults alike. We think we’re free but we’re not. Repetition, repetition and repetition. Same old. Like the anthem played to lead-in propaganda broadcast. Sense of urgency. Of utter importance for viewers eye-balls (translation: ad billing).

So much for lies, lies, lies. Yet we allow. Make room for more “dreams” (lots of zeros after the number). Reality is too painful (just take time, look in the mirror – the magnifying one).

Growing old. Some were never young to begin with. We had a classmate who got married in 10th grade. We were all quiet, not knowing how to greet his newly wed, since she was some years our senior.

Now we actually grow old in age. I wonder if that friend is married still to his first match-made wife.

Reality is often painful. By definition. Hence, dream, dream, dream. Big and small. Mega Millions and MAGA millions. Will we someday be bigger, better and more becoming than today.

Just wait, watch and dream on. Meanwhile, just add more zeros behind the string of numbers. Before we realize, zero times millions are equal to zero still. That’s how math works. That’s how we all turn out to be, nano particles, with no luggage on that final journey. Might be on the road to somewhere or nowhere. But we might at some point, consider a re-branding of the Self. An U-turn.

Invisible Man is better than inhuman man.

As I grow older, I move closer to being Paul than Saul. Less faith and hope and more Love.

After all, the greatest of those three is Love. Charity, compassion for the downtrodden, downcast and damned. We used to laugh, we used to cry….I need you. Even when society seems to move more toward being right, correct, and proper. It ain’t cool to even mention Love in the age of Greed and Corruption. Of law and lawlessness. What happens to being good, loving and forgiving.

I got it when the machine can’t “get it”. But you and I. Aren’t we still breathing with each beat of our hearts! So much education and information were catered to the head. And how does it work out for us, so far?