YOPP!

I once owned “Horton Hears a Who” as a child (VHS, baby!) It was a short at the beginning of the full length movie, “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.” As an adult, I can still remember most of the words and song lyrics.   I can also now deduct more meaning from the message of the film.  Hope you enjoy my interpretation as of late.  Amazing how everything around you can begin to change when you look at it through new eyes.

In this tale, the voice of ONE made a difference in minds of many.  A single uttering of “YOPP!” opened the minds of the outside culture.  A culture so thick in believing that the world they lived in did not need to change.  A culture who were blindly comfortable with the way things are.  They believed that this way was the ONLY way…that anyone who tried to change the status quo beliefs of their system should be shunned, deemed insane and be forced to abide and submit…or else face persecution and mental torture.  Sound familiar?

I am currently becoming fond of a group of individuals who see our society through the eyes of Horton.  Different.  Clearly. They see a problem with the structure of things.  They feel the need to share with those around them that there is more to see, if you can only open your eyes and ears.  If you can essentially “WAKE UP”…If you can “YOPP!” Some of the members of the forum I have joined are not nearly as reserved as Horton.  😉 Nevertheless, we are all commonly trying to find a way to exist among the Whos.  (I like to call the un-awakened whos, “sheeple”–I first heard this term used by my husband and found it appropriate for everyday use).

Horton and the Whos:  Doomers and the Sheeple

Essentially, I see myself and other like minded folks (including the group I mentioned) as the “Hortons.”  Gathered together as many different levels of Horton, we believe that our current way of life in America, our industrial civilization, cannot continue along its current path.  We abbreviate the way things are now as “BAU” (Business As Usual).  In America, our BAU consists of dependence on oil and petroleum products.  Oil and Petroleum are limited resources.  We have stupidly built our entire way of life around the NECESSITY of these products.  Driving our cars, running our air conditioning, running our programed mouths, outsourcing our food supply, unwrapping our plastic products from their plastic containers…I could go on and on. (Google “Peak Oil” and prepare to read the Whos’ disapproving comments) OR  watch THIS.  We are also so spoiled to the gift that the Industrial Revolution handed to us (easily accessible everything), that we have lost the knowledge that our forefathers used to survive off the land.  If you handed most US citizens a bag of dried rice they wouldn’t know how to cook it without a microwave.  Americans are spoiled, spoiled, SPOILED when it comes to food products.  They’re also oblivious to the harmful petropesticides that are coated in thick layers all over those food products.  Most of them don’t CARE to know.  BAU= will be short lived.

Horton, the main character of the movie has a large presence…but doesn’t impress this upon his fellow members of the jungle.  He doesn’t go around romping and stomping and shouting his beliefs.  He actually comes across as humble, polite and withdrawn.  Horton has just discovered that something exists he must accept.   In the movie, it’s a dust speck on a clover.  In our reality, it is the collapse of the industrial civilization as we know it.

Horton, upon learning the truth about this dust speck, puts himself into a situational dilemma.  He feels obligated to save the speck’s mostly clueless inhabitants (The Whos).  Often unseen and unheard, this speck of dust is, at the beginning of the movie, filled with inhabitants that believe that THEIR way of life is the only way.  That there can’t possibly be anything more than what they see.  That BAU is alllll good….so why change?  Why believe in crazy theories from a grey haired scientist (Doctor Whovee).  Doctor Whovee has built a scientific structure he calls his “Who Who Scope” in an attempt to prove his theory that there is more to their world, more they could pay attention to and accept, if they could only BELIEVE.  We’ll call Doctor Whovee the DOOMER of the story.

When the Whos are awakened by the CRASH of the black bottomed eagle dropping their speck of dust into a clover patch (when the sheeple WAKE UP to how the world has turned and where it is headed), they suddenly trust in the beliefs of the educated Doomer, Doctor Whovee.  This is the severity of what I believe will need to happen for the majority of Americans to be able to see the future of our world as I do (umm…FUCKED UP!).  What will it take to wake everyone up? …To make them see?  I think that the easiest way will be the depletion of gasoline.  No one will be able to drive their cars… Simple enough to cause mass chaos.  The trucks that deliver our food will park = no food in the grocery stores, producing PANIC. Perhaps we will lose power for a long period of time…NO AIR CONDITIONING?  STRESS.  It will truly take an Earth/Clover shattering SHAKE to get some of the sheeple I have encountered to see that we cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet.

And we’ll have to get past The Wickersham Brothers too:

“We’re the Wickersham Brothers.
We’re vigilant spotters.
Hot shot spotters of rotters and plotters.
And we’re going to save our sons and our daughters from you.
You’re a dastardly, ghastardly, shnasterdly, schnook,
Trying to brainwash our brains,
With this gobbledy gook.
We know what you’re up to pal.
You’re trying to shatter our morale.
You’re trying to stir up discontent.
And seize the reigns of government.
You’re trying to throw sand in our eyes.
You’re trying to kill free enterprise.
And raise the cost of figs and dates,
And wreck our compound interest rates.
And shut our schools,
And steal our jewels,
And even change our football rules.
Take away our garden tools,
And lock us up in vestibules.”

These darkened monkeys scared me a bit as a child.  I didn’t really understand the lyrics of their song, but I liked repeating the big words.  As an adult, I see this acrobatic trio as the voice of media, Corporations, big money, the strong arm of the law, The  MAN.  Essentially, you could compare them to any of the entities that tell us BAU is all good, and it would make sense to me.  I hear doublethink, fear, greed, and coverup in their song now.  They are fearful of the truth and are doing all they can to keep the jungle creatures COOL and focused on carrying on with their daily lives…lives covered in an invisible gossamer curtain of programming.

So how does one begin to see a Children’s movie in this light?  It is my process of acceptance.  Did Dr. Seuss intend these messages to be interpreted this way?  I suppose we all interpret things as we want to see them.

I have just stepped onto the clover, I suppose.  I’m only now becoming one of the many shouting “WE ARE HERE!”