The Wabanaki Loop: It is Going to be A Very Cold Winter

A new chief was chosen to lead a confederation of Native Americans, collectively called the Wabanakis.  One day he was asked by the tribal leaders if it is going to be a cold winter.  Being a modern college educated man, the new chief had no idea about the traditional native weather forecasting that his elders were accustomed to. Wanting to appear strong and resolute, he stood quick on his feet and told the tribal leaders that it was going to be a cold one. He then declared, as a show of statesmanship,  that the people should gather firewood to prepare for the coming winter. The people (the Wabanakis) gathered as told.

As a hedge, he called the weather service a week later, without revealing his true identity, as a way to double check his decision and see if he needed to recalibrate.  The weather man told him that it was going to be a cold winter - a re-affirmation of what initially was a wild and slightly flippant guess on his part.  The chief summoned his tribal leaders again and told them that the winter weather will really be severe so the people should gather more firewood.  Again, the Wabanakis did as told, doubling their efforts even more.

Another week went by and the chief, still unsure and not too confident about his leadership role, he again anonymously called the weather service for the latest update.  The weather man said, "It is going to be a really, really severe winter".  

The chief then asked, "How can you be so sure?"

The weatherman replied, "I am 100% confident  it is going to be a really severe winter because we've observed that the Wabanakis  had been gathering firewood at a blistering pace these last two weeks".

That, of course, in this day and age, describes how information coming from a single source can spread and oftentimes doubles up on itself.  It is sort of a perversion of a feedback loop. It gets worse when viewed from the proliferation of information - true or false, real or fake - along the loopy corridors of social media, political punditry and society's short attention span. Both sides of the political aisles suffer from a phenomenon which I define now as the "Wabanaki Loop".  You read it here first - a new phrase soon to be in the annual "new lexicon for 2021" (just kidding).

Before I move on I intend to redeem myself later, at the bottom of this blog, if some of the readers find the story to be one of irreverence and disrespect for The Wabanaki Confederation, which is a real organization of Native Americans.

Many of the readers would be familiar with the telephone game, known by one other name, as quoted below:

"Chinese whispers (Commonwealth English) or telephone (American English)[1] is an internationally popular children's game.[2]

Players form a line or circle, and the first player comes up with a message and whispers it to the ear of the second person in the line. The second player repeats the message to the third player, and so on. When the last player is reached, they announce the message they heard to the entire group. The first person then compares the original message with the final version. Although the objective is to pass around the message without it becoming garbled along the way, part of the enjoyment is that, regardless, this usually ends up happening. Errors typically accumulate in the retellings, so the statement announced by the last player differs significantly from that of the first player, usually with amusing or humorous effect."

Another idea comes along:

"Our social media newsfeeds are often so full that many of us can view only the top few items, from which we choose to re-share or retweet."

"Information that passes from person to person along a chain becomes negative and more resistant to correction."

                                                --- Scientific American (December2020)

 {Note: This is the last time I will pick a quote from Scientific American; in fact, this is the last time I will read this magazine (ever). I only found out recently, the above quotes notwithstanding, that the magazine, for the first time in its 175 year history endorsed one presidential candidate over the other in the last 2020 election. It was stunning to find out from reading the back issue of Oct. 2020 that the editors of this highly esteemed scientific journal would stoop to blatant partisanship.}

That is the irony of it all because the quotes above were from their Dec. 2020 issue, after the endorsement in October.  Soon enough upon more careful re-reading, I noticed that their views on racism, climate change and Covid 19, were all slanted only one way.

That, among so many things going on, is one reason this country may remain divided for a very long time, if not irreversibly so, forever.  With the division comes the danger of one side feeding only on the information from within the one side and only that one side. It becomes the Wabanaki Loop. The country must get out of that loop or it will ultimately get caught by a self-feeding vortex it may never be able to climb out from.

The atonement part:

"The Wabanaki Confederacy (Wabenaki, Wobanaki, translated to "People of the Dawn" or "Easterner") is a North American First Nations and Native American confederation of four principal Eastern Algonquian nations: the Miꞌkmaq, Maliseet (Wolastoqey), Passamaquoddy (Peskotomahkati) and Penobscot. The Western Abenaki are also considered members, being a loose identity for a number of allied tribal peoples such as the Sokoki, Cowasuck, Missiquoi, and Arsigantegok, among others".

The original farce that I heard - a very short one at that - used politically incorrect generalization using a term to describe Native Americans in its non-PC form.  I remain sensitive to the idea that for a good part of over two centuries a significant slice of the U.S. population  had been maligned via an antiquated grouping of  people.  I do apologize. However, the humor will not have worked had a different story line was used, except that I then expanded the humorous little story with more descriptive words and an elaborately spun plot line.  I therefore apologize to the Wabanakis.  I encourage the readers to read up a bit more about them because their domain used to be that of Northeastern U.S. and the eastern coastal areas of Canada. They, like most indigenous people in the past, had suffered through a lot.

I must also mention that years ago in my career working for an oil company I worked with a true gentleman  named George G. He was Navajo, college educated with an engineering degree, who worked at our strategic planning group.  He and I had played doubles tennis a few times but diabetes later put an end to his mobility when one leg was amputated. Less than five years later he passed away.  George was a brilliant example of the strides taken by indigenous minorities who excelled to rise above the stereotyping generalization used to put certain groups in a segregated box of society. George had a very gentle demeanor who spoke softly and coherently when he was making a point.  He was  one of those "unforgettable characters" I met and knew well.  

There, I hope I have more than made up  for what some readers might consider irreverent humor about the winter and firewood story.