How to Be a Good Person In a Storm
‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ was one of three key messages created by Britain’s wartime propaganda department, the Ministry of Information, during the second World War. The now-ubiquitous ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ phrase was chosen for its clear message of ‘sober restraint’ and was coined sometime between June 27th and July 6th, 1939.
It was hardly used during the war. Around 2.4 million posters with the statement were printed which had to be scrapped, pulped, and turned into recycled paper to handle a severe shortage in Great Britain.
I have to wonder — Google couldn’t answer my question — how many people, since Keep Calm entered mainstream more than 2 decades ago, have committed violent acts or even just lost their temper while sporting a t-shirt or some other article of clothing emblazoned with that slogan.
Gandalf the Grey, in a confrontational moment says, “Tell me, friend, when did Saruman The Wise abandon reason for madness?”
There have been certain epochs in world history where reason has been abandoned for madness. We live in such a time now. In ways perhaps too varied and numerous to list, normally civil people have been whipped into such a frenzy that even in fairly conservative areas like Salt Lake City, Utah, cars have been overturned and set ablaze when rioters don’t agree with the way things are…
