The power of the ordinary
Last week, I was on a tour of the west side of the Grand Canyon, as well as Hoover Dam. It was the first time that I’d been to the Grand Canyon, the second to Hoover Dam; but going to both in a tour that set them in context was an experience that allowed me to see them as more than mere tourist stops.
Both these places have been turned into spectacles, but they, too, represent episodes in human history where visitors became invaders, where conquerors became oppressors.The Grand Canyon is a showcase of the power of nature: its thousands-of-feet drops reveal the stories of an earth billions of years in the telling. I climbed to the top of Guano Point, a red clay peak-of-sorts, and found myself dwarfed by an expanse of blue sky above, rocks beneath my feet, and a near-dried river gorge even farther down.
There was beauty in everything I stepped on, everything I witnessed. There, too, was history. It was to this part of the canyon, in the 1800s, that American soldiers forced members of the Hualapai tribe to choose: either march off the cliff or be shot.
It is part of a long history of oppression of the First Nations: the smallpox blankets that conquerors brought from Europe, the Trail of Tears that pushed tribes through an unforgiving continent, the Trail of Death that saw tribes wiped out in the dead of winter.Hoover Dam, for its part, is remarkable; it is a testament to the ability of innovation to meet human needs through great infrastructure. Its making, however, came with great sacrifice, as many of those who worked on it died from carbon monoxide poisoning, drowning, and dynamite blasts.
Both the places are great to behold, and yet contain, within themselves, great stories that tell of abuses of power cloaked within the narrative of progress.
They, too, represent the power of the ordinary to tell stories.
I am a researcher who specializes in qualitatively-based methods. I seek depth and authenticity, rather than the broad brushstrokes and generalizations characteristic of quantitatively-based work. I try to capture details of the human experience, placing value on a critique of society, or an examination of what we construct as real, or on narratives whose deep themes call out to all humans at a level that statistics cannot reach.
That’s why many of us on the qualitative side of social sciences are drawn to stories. There is something we are taught, after all, in our first years of being socialized into the field: qualitative work reveals tales in the old and ordinary that make them new and unique; it also reveals worlds in the new and unique that make them old and ordinary.
The Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam are such places. They have become almost ordinary tourist fare, something to behold on one’s own way. Their stories, however, reveal the power of the ordinary in speaking of the human experience: the capacity of great men to give unjust orders, the suffering that humans withstand, the sacrifices they make.These are not hidden histories. These stories are out, begging for us to pay attention so that we do not forget that beauty and grandeur can shield pain and evil.
There, too, are recent events that speak of the power of the ordinary to tear through our comfort every day. The ordinary cop manning the closure of a road on the orders of a supposed VIP, and who is then suspended for offering information. Regardless of who the VIP is, the reprimand indicates that we are willing to sacrifice the livelihoods and comfort of thousands of ordinary people for the temporary convenience of a single person who might have been voted into power and is now drunk with entitlement.
The fishermen who died after their flimsy boat came up against a massive foreign vessel. The activists who spoke up against the police who had tried to silence them after their abduction. The Film Center that still stands on the backs and bones of those who died building it.
On our way home, a United States airport security officer inspected our passports and talked about how he had been following our news for years.
“The son of your former dictator is now your president, even after you took the father out in the 1980s! You let their family sneak back in!” He said, with a Caribbean accent that shed all semblance of levity in the face of a serious offense.
“We didn’t vote for him!” My mom declared.
“I work for a newspaper back home,” I added, “I’m fighting to wake people up.”
He smiled widely, “Keep doing that. You need to keep doing that.”
A security officer had a greater grasp of world affairs than many of our current politicians who extol the artificial powers of VIPs and confidential funds. He was an ordinary man in his place of work who spoke with accurate frustration against a system not even his own.
See, that’s the power of the ordinary, of they whose eyes look up into the realms of power, of they who have nothing to lose in their anger. It is they, whether the rocks that witness history or the person speaking out, that tell us great truths about ourselves.
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