Keep Calm & Drink A Beer?

There are some scenarios that necessitate rage.

In a world where machines--corporate or otherwise--dictate what's considered common value, sometimes rage is an appropriate response.

Speaking of appropriateness...

"Keep Calm, and Carry On" was a phrase originally used to counter the collective anxiety and mass hysteria that might otherwise have made the English (who were being threatened with bombs by Nazis) freak-the-fuck-out.

From Wikipedia:

"The poster was intended to raise the morale of the British public, threatened with widely predicted mass air attacks on major cities.^[1]"

It's since been re-visioned in a variety of contexts to communicate the same essential message--attend not to your anxieties, but to the past-times, distractions, busyness of life that ease the sober tensions and discomforts you'd otherwise find difficult to ignore.

Speaking of discomfort...


What is the appropriate response when a monolithic conglomerate asks you to literally "drink the kool-aid"?

Should we should remain uncomfortable?

"[...] the issue with AB-InBev is what it has done in the past to squeeze its competitors – purchasing materials suppliers, for example, to choke off a competitor’s supply – and what it will continue to do in the future – staggeringly discounted keg prices of its purchased craft brands to regain and retain tap handle space, thus squeezing out independents."


Should we ignore past transgressions, or deny inevitable future conflicts of interest?

"Federal authorities allege that Anheuser-Busch InBev's $20.1 billion takeover of Grupo Modelo, announced in June, would 'substantially lessen competition in the market for beer in the United States as a whole' and result in consumers "paying more for beer and having fewer new products from which to choose," according to the Justice Department."

Should we attend to our stomach pains?

Should we silence or repress outrage? Or should we instead acknowledge our collective discontent as a necessary, and productive expression that moves us toward requisite change?

Speaking of change...

One might conclude (without knowing the boundaries beyond our blue planet) that we live at the center of the universe. At one time, this was commonly accepted as truth.

We now know the belly button is not actually the source of gravitational pull, and that the universe is instead expansive and unknown. That it expands in an elastic and predictable way (equal & opposite) and will eventually rebound toward the center...

And in the universe of beer, the rebound appears to be moving in a new direction.

............ 

What happens when we throw ourselves *toward* fear is a funny thing. Pain is inevitable, but we also urgently and creatively adapt to our circumstances.

When you get on a bike for the first time, gravity is both the antagonist and the agent of continued motion. The thing which pulls you toward the pavement *and* the thing that pulls you forward in graceful motion. Some of us (most of us) learn to ride that momentum toward unfamiliar destinations. To steer that moving, dynamic body of energy down roads of our choosing.

I encourage you to run toward the fear. To refrain from distractions. To see the antagonist not just as the impediment to change, but an opportunity for creative adaptation. To seize the opportunity to get up in that saddle and fly. Just fly.