“Locking” and “loading” refer to steps in preparing a machine gun to be fired: You first “lock” the bolt or safety and then “load” an ammunition cartridge or magazine. Figuratively, to be “locked and loaded” is to be fully prepared for aggressive action.
As parents and grandparents, we are always looking for ways to keep our kids out of danger’s way and to avoid aggressive action. There are two messages I would love to be able to convey to my grandchildren that might keep them as safe as possible. They are not the dangers that might immediately come to mind, certainly not the ones implied by the military command. The first is to be careful not to lock into any fixed idea. The second is to be careful what you load up with.
Danger #1: Locking into a fixed idea could mean clinging to a blind belief in a particular ideology or religion in spite of all the evidence dispelling the myths. It could mean letting any event define who you are. It could mean allowing any number of influencers to limit who you are. It could mean giving into societies’ attempts to shrink you, numb you, reduce you, and have you shut down. It could mean conforming obsessively to imposed rules. It could mean fitting into the box that people want to put you in. It could mean internalizing the labels that “friends” or “professionals” put on you. There are so many ways to lock ourselves up or allow others to close off possibilities—all the way from the Taliban oppression of women to social media addiction. So, I would love to be able to convey messages that will help my grandkids avoid locking into any idea, belief, label, or conspiracy theory that could limit their potential.
To me, the keys for unlocking our personal prisons are to open up, expand our horizons, and refuse to be reduced to a label, condition, or limited expectation. The combination of willful ignorance and our temptation to reduce everything to the simplest explanation can make that lock difficult to open. Only our desire to explore, expand, understand and grow can help us break free.
Danger #2: There is also the danger of loading up on the wrong ingredients for growth. Loading up could be physical, emotional, intellectual, or spiritual. Simplistically, one might load up on fats and sugars instead of vegetables and fruits. Emotionally, one might load up on anger and hate instead of love and compassion. Intellectually, one might load up on social media nonsense instead of a science based worldview. Spiritually, one might load up religious myths instead of mindful meditation.
Given the bombardment of tailored and targeted advertising these days, it’s easy to load up on lots of things that limit our growth. My grandkids have to deal with the constant lure of video games, the subtle or not-so-subtle seductions of Instagram, and the on-going trolling threats on Facebook. So much to deal with and so little experience for processing what’s happening the world. My wish is to simply convey the message that they are more empowered by choice than defined by individual conditions or cultural conditioning. They have the power to decide what they lock into and what they load up with.
The reason I want to convey these messages to my grandchildren is because of what I’m observing in the larger world context in which they will have to live, learn, and work. These dangers apply to all of us trying to navigate the horrors that we encounter every day. In short, what I’m seeing in the broader society is the trend toward locking into fixed beliefs and loading up with reckless rhetoric. In a recent article in the NYT, Michelle Goldberg discusses how shock jocks like Tucker Carlson are shamelessly rewriting history to support their own agenda. She writes,
“This clever rhetorical formulation, familiar to various strands of right-wing propaganda, flatters listeners for their willingness to reject all they’ve learned from mainstream experts, making them feel brave and savvy for imbibing absurdities.”
Whew! That’s one hell of a statement. Crawl into it for a moment: clever rhetoric that flatters listeners for rejecting science-based evidence and enables them to feel savvy about swallowing lies. Clever indeed. By destroying the filters of rigorous standards and scientific methods, it’s much easier to pour lies into the ears of eager believers, reinforcing their opinion that everything is broken, needs to be destroyed, and that they belong to a righteous cause. Is it any mystery why institutional trust has declined so precipitously?
The most recent school shooting horror in Georgia, the 22nd mass killing of 4 or more people in the US in 2024, is just another symptom of what happens when angry and alienated people lock in their beliefs and load their weapons.
It seems to me that we are being assaulted by over-lying about underlying causes. In the wake of a flood of lies on social media, we are suffering from a dearth of deep inquiry to get to the truth.
So what do we do about it? I recently listened to a New Yorker interview with David Sedaris in which he read George Saunders “Love Letter to his Grandchildren.” Saunders is the best-selling author of 12 books, including Lincoln in the Bardo. He is a brilliant writer and admirer of one of my favorite authors, David Foster Wallace.
I thought the interview was brilliant—not only Saunder’s writing of the essay but also Sedaris’s reading of the letter. For me, Saunder’s letter raised several existential questions: Should we focus on doing or being? Should we exercise courage in confronting lies, or caution? Should we be resolved to somehow make a difference or resigned to whatever happens? Should we hold onto the illusion that we can actually persuade someone to change their mind? Are we a land of laws or of beliefs that have been codified? Should we simply treasure the moments of joy we experience or try to impact others to lead more meaningful and substantive lives? How much of our activism is really just virtue signaling? How do we deal with the poisonous bullets that pundits, politicians and podcasters are loading into their follower’s psyches preparing them for aggressive action.
None of these questions has a simple answer. I wish I had better answers, but I don’t. I do believe, however, that in order to come up with satisfying solutions to these existential issues, we need to avoid the dangers of locking in and loading up. We need to stay open to new information and the possibility that reason may reign again someday.
Which all brings me back to my grandkids, who have to grow up in this world. While I can’t protect them from the insidious evils of social media, I can encourage them to broaden their interests and strengthen their thinking. I can listen carefully to their feelings about the world and let them know I hear their hopes and fears and see their struggles. I can encourage them to stay open and expand their horizons. I can challenge them to dig deeply for evidence supporting their views.
I wish my kids and grandkids and all the children of the world could avoid the manifest dangers of locking in and loading up. While that may be an unrealistic fantasy, I have to hang onto the hope that generational change may generate the changes we need to live, learn, and love in peace. May it be so.
*For an in-depth conversation about the mental corruption fueling the “locked and loaded” phenomenon we are currently experiencing, listen to the Atlantic podcasts on Autocracy in America.
Also published on Medium.
Well done my friend-thank you!