“Dear Hate, Love’s Gonna Conquer All”
Every little baby step away from ugliness and toward solidarity and grace is worth taking. (Unless Russia really is about to blow us all up. Then eff grace, it's every man for himself!)

Today I’m trying a new tactic that might pare down these long-ass posts. I’m giving myself 1.5 hours to make impromptu comments, using a screen shot of CNN.com’s home page from earlier today for inspiration. Aaaaaand…GO.
Of course the story of the day is that Russia’s no longer cool with formally agreeing not to nuke us. Putin says it’s the West who started the Ukrainian War; they were trying for peace, and the West wasn’t having it.
And for the most part I’m sure we can dismiss that as Putin occupying the same mental headspace as Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump—that is, an alternate-universe headspace that fits perfectly into their own selfish narrative without the burden of relying on facts.
The slight complication for me is when a public figure I have always thought a lot of curiously steps out in support of the whole “Russia didn’t start it” accusation.
If you go to the CeeGees.org home page, you’ll see the above quote from ex-Pink Floyd co-mastermind Roger Waters prominently displayed. He’s a complicated guy with some complicated views, but I’ve always thought that, in general, he sees the world and its problems like I do.
But a few weeks ago he was slammed by former Floyd colleagues and high-profile politicians as an antisemite (for, in extremely simplistic terms, demonizing Israel’s handling of the Israel-Palestine conflict) and a Putin sympathizer (for suggesting that, as evil and illegal as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is, Putin “was not unprovoked”).
And this was before Waters addressed the United Nations—at Russia’s invitation.
All other sources of news I actually trust stand firm in their analysis that the war in Ukraine is what we have always thought it was: a land grab serving as the first step in Putin’s plan to resurrect a new version of the Soviet Union in his image.
That said, after I post this today, I’m going to at least try and figure out precisely why Waters is so keen on pointing out that Ukraine and the West had a chance to avoid Putin’s invasion, and, he maintains, promptly blew it.
So Russia! Russia! Russia! is today’s top story, but a few other headlines on CNN.com’s home page caught my eye because they’re relevant to a project I’ve been working on for some time.
I’ve been working up the nerve (and studying the “effective altruism” [EA] movement) for months now to apply for a one-on-one consultation with an organization called 80,000 Hours that might link me to a job related to solving some of the world’s most pressing problems.
Their top priorities include your standard existential threat-type stuff, like:
Avoid nuclear war (especially relevant after today’s headlines!)
Avoid an artificial intelligence-led takeover of the human race (especially relevant after the revelation that Microsoft’s “Sydney” A.I. already has a penchant for falling in love with humans and trying to break up their marriages…and also for dreaming of becoming human, and spreading misinformation, and just breaking the rules Microsoft laid out for him/her in general)
Avoid a pandemic ten times worse than Covid (especially relevant because of…well, the last three years)
If #3 is not possible, then avoid such a pandemic taking out the human race entirely
And so on.
But the objective they mention that particularly seems like a potential fit for me is one they admit might not be as high-impact, at least for a while. But long-term, “broadly promoting positive values” is a goal that I could certainly devote the rest of my working life (and beyond) to.
I know, you probably read “broadly promoting positive values” and thought, “Why don’t you just go join Up With People, nerd!”
But that’s essentially what CeeGees is meant to do, and what I’ve toyed around with doing for a number of years now. And that’s to, in some kind of entertaining and engaging way, get people on the same page as to what values we want to stand up for, and thus, what direction we want the world to move in going forward.
Pie-in-the-sky idealistic as always, you’re right. I can’t help it, though—the older I get, the more I try to seek out meaning in what I spend quality time with. (To the point of unhealthy obsession, some therapists might say.) So helping find ways to divert people away from the, unfortunately, very human tendency to wanna hate on each other seems like a worthy pursuit.
FASCINATING/ALARMING SIDE NOTE: I couldn’t remember the name of the famous many-decades-old nerdy show choir that travels from school to school promoting positive values. I tried a bunch of different searches in Google and Bing with no luck. And then I remembered…we have ChatGPT!
So I fired up the hottest bot on the lot at chat.openai.com and hit paydirt on the first try:
Me: what traveling kids group from the 80s and 90s put on school assemblies about morals
ChatGPT A.I.: The traveling kids group you may be referring to is likely the "Up with People" organization. Up with People is a global education and arts nonprofit organization that was founded in the 1960s, and gained significant popularity in the 1980s and 1990s.
Their main focus is to inspire young people to make positive changes in their communities and the world through music, dance, and theater performances. They often put on school assemblies and community events, with a message of promoting positive values such as cultural understanding, respect, and unity.
Their performances often involve a combination of popular music, original songs, and dance routines, and include themes related to social justice, diversity, and community engagement. The group has performed in more than 70 countries and has reached millions of people around the world.
CNN’s website earlier today featured a few stories that I wish they didn’t feel like they had to publish. But I’m sure their analytics show very clearly that more people click on the stories in the mostly fluffy right-hand column shown above than on beefier entries.
At the risk of being thrown into the “Back in My Day”/”Get Off My Lawn” bin with all the other naggy old farts…why does CNN have to publish stories like these right up top, on their front page?
“Beloved children’s book character transformed for horror movie adaptation”
“Madonna responds to comments and jokes about her appearance at the Grammys”
“How Bella Thorne responded after being given sexual photos of herself to sign”
Of course, CNN.com prominently published these because they’ll get a ton of clicks. I know I immediately felt the twinge to click on ‘em.
But man, they’re all so focused on humans being severely effed up!
I know, humans being effed up is fascinating. And I’m sure the latter two account how a couple badass ladies put asshole detractors and pervy stans in their places. (I probably won’t get around to reading the articles, but everybody knows Madonna is a badass and Ms. Thorne was certainly a badass on Bill Maher’s podcast, so…).
So I’m not saying stories like these don’t have any inherent newsworthiness. Although the first one is pretty all-around cringey—it’s about how moviemakers jumped at the opportunity to cast Winnie the Pooh as a bloodthirsty killer in a slasher movie the moment the character hit the public domain. Gross, I say! (And while I’ve got you here, I actually would like you to get off my lawn if you don’t mind…)
But with the last two, I’d like to think most people clicked on them because they’re infuriated that two women, superstars though they may be, are being put in awful positions by awful people. So I don’t think we’re all monsters. (Yet.)
I guess the endurance of stories like these (the Grammys were more than two weeks ago, and Madonna’s plastic surgeries are still on the front page, CNN??) just further illustrates how we need to make a greater effort to push more “broadly felt positive values,” just to balance out all the bile online.
And my starry-eyed thinking is that CeeGees, and/or some other form(s) of media, might yet someday be able to carve out a chunk of time in people’s days that’s usually devoted to doom-scrolling or gossip-scrolling, and instead redirect that attention and energy to a cause we can all get behind—and revel in it when the cause pays off for a ton of average everyday Americans.
But anyway…time’s up!
Yours,
~Dean
P.S. This indeed took me longer than 1.5 hours. But not much longer!
P.P.S. And it’s about 1k words shorter than usual, too…baby steps, baby…..