One of the fond memories of my childhood was the Fun House at the now defunct Geauga Lake Amusement Park. My recollections may be murky, since they come from experiences 50 years ago, but as I recall it there was a spooky dark portion with moving floor boards and strange sounds that you had to go through either to enter or exit the place. Then you came upon a wall of mirrors which distorted you in hilarious ways so your legs were super-short and neck elongated, and many other variations. Eventually you were inside, and for kids it was a blast because you could stay as long as you liked.I'm not sure what all was in there now as I think back. Maybe this is where the penny arcade was, I don't know. What I remember most is the slide and the circular wheel ride.
The slide was made out of wood, had multiple lanes and as kids we would run up a long flight of stairs to the top where you grabbed a gunny sack and sat on it like a sled, zoom. The slide was wax polished like the lanes of a bowling alley and must have been steep enough to give you a good rush without being scary. There were humps and contours to make it interesting so that it was not just a straight chute.
The circular wheel was like a centrifuge, something like a flat merry-go-round except run by a rotor beneath the floor. You did not see anything except the circular polished wooden board. Even a small child could grasp the principle of the thing. As the wheel was set in motion and went faster and faster, all the kids would try to hold on but with nothing to hold onto they would be flung in all directions.
As we got older we understood that the best way to stay on for the longest time possible would be to get into the precise center. Even then, one's irregular body mass distribution would lead to the inevitable, being discharged out of control from the whirling surface. Perhaps even worse is getting really successful at finding that center spot so that you get dizzy and sick from being on there too long. But you seldom got that center spot because there was a line and you were competing with a couple dozen other kids who crammed themselves onto it as densely as able.
This image of the wheel flinging kids off in all directions came to mind as I have been reading about and observing some of what is happening in America today. Protests are one thing, but total chaos makes people insecure. At a certain point mobs can only be subdued by excessive authority. Nobody wants that, but they do not want the chaos of the mob either, and no one wants rampant guillotine bloodletting. So we have to figure out how to get along.
The problem is with the wheel spinning faster and faster we're all being thrown in a variety of directions and the things that once unified us (the American dream and confidence of a better future for our children) has flung us into the sideboards. There's no doubt that a lot of people are frustrated. We don't know what's true. We don't know who we can trust. We distrust those who tell us to "trust the process." But then what?
In the Fun House you don't have to get on all the rides. It can be entertaining just watching the expressions of those having fun. And even watching the Occupy Wall Street antics can produce some entertaining images, but it is my recollection of the May Day riots in Washington that not everyone there has the same agenda. Some are opportunists whose only aim is to make trouble. As I hitch-hiked back from the antiwar protests of May Day 1971 I was picked up by two students from Antioch and an older fellow whose only aim that day was to "get cops" and do some damage. The cops were brutal, and the violence terrifying for a young innocent, but the protesters were also naive. And this time around I'm not hearing anyone offering a sensible solution because the center of the maelstrom this time around is an undulating abstraction, an emotion, a loss of hope, a rage against the machine.
I guess we'll see where it all leads but to be honest, I've been in mobs and I'm not really sure how much problem solving a mob can really do.
In the meantime, just a little something to think about.