{"id":49519,"title":"We are the movers and shakers","description":"I\u2019ve just changed my site tagline - we are no longer simply dancers here. We are the movers and shakers, who are not content to sit by and wait for things to get better. While \u201cmovers and shakers\u201d is certainly an apt phrase to describe raqs sharqi artists and many other dancers, it connotes people who influence and shape the world.","content":"

Today I learned the origin of the term \u201cmovers and shakers.\u201d It\u2019s from an 1873 poem simply called \u201cOde,\u201d from the collection \u201cMusic and Moonlight\u201d by Arthur O\u2019Shaughnessy.<\/p>

We are the music makers,<\/span>
\u00a0 And we are the dreamers of dreams,<\/span>
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,<\/span>
\u00a0 And sitting by desolate streams;\u2014<\/span>
World-losers and world-forsakers, \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>
\u00a0 On whom the pale moon gleams:<\/span>
Yet we are the movers and shakers<\/span>
\u00a0 Of the world for ever, it seems.<\/span><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>

\"TheThe overall meaning of the full poem<\/u><\/a> is that artists of all kinds help to envision new worlds, and to move us towards them. Does that sound like too much of a flex? Maybe if you imagine yourself as only one, mostly powerless person. If that\u2019s the case, then why do authoritarians always crack down on the intellectuals, innovators, freaks, and outsiders of all kinds? We threaten the status quo, just by existing and doing what we do<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>

One of my favorite authors, and indeed one of my favorite thinkers of any kind, had some pointed observations about the role of artists in dreaming up the future. Ursula K. Le Guin wrote in her introduction<\/u><\/a> to The Left Hand of Darkness:<\/p>

Strictly extrapolative works of science fiction generally arrive about where the <\/span><\/em>Club of Rome<\/u><\/span><\/em><\/a> arrives: somewhere between the gradual extinction of human liberty and the total extinction of terrestrial life. <\/span>Almost anything carried to its logical extreme becomes depressing, if not carcinogenic.<\/em><\/p>

<\/p>

Fortunately, though extrapolation is an element in science fiction, it isn\u2019t the name of the game by any means. It is far too rationalist and simplistic to satisfy the imaginative mind, whether the writer\u2019s or the reader\u2019s. Variables are the spice of life.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>

This book is not extrapolative. If you like you can read it, and a lot of other science fiction, as a thought-experiment. [\u2026] The purpose of a thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrodinger\u2019s and other physicists, is not to predict the future\u2014indeed Schrodinger\u2019s most famous thought-experiment goes to show that the \u2018future,\u2019 on the quantum level, cannot be predicted\u2014but to describe reality, the present world. Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.<\/span><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>

I, too, have often been caught in the lure of gloomily predicting the future, which can easily lead to killing any motivation to act NOW. What I\u2019m encouraging you to do is RESIST. Not just your external circumstances, but the voice that says nothing you do matters. You matter, and so does your art. If nothing else, do it to shake off the intrusive thoughts, and move forward to make life a little better for those in your sphere of influence. Thoughts define our experience, and soon enough, reality around us.<\/p>

\"zxap8wsrcxpfzlqmhupguafxuybly6k3ptqlbl5lvcww3cu5.png.png?w=1140&v=2\"Gold star if you made it this far! Here\u2019s a little more of me moving<\/u><\/a> and shaking<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>

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