Editor’s Note

DISCOVER OJAI MONTHLY

Bret Bradigan

WILLIE LYNCH & OJAI

“Divide and rule, the politician cries; Unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The story goes that in 1712 a group of plantation owners along the James River in the Virginia colony hired another plantation owner, from the British West Indies, to help quell restive slaves who they feared were on the verge of rebellion.

His name was Willie Lynch, and his message was simple. Divide and conquer. Set the slaves one against the other, young versus old, housekeeping staff versus field hands, by emphasizing their differences — “Color, intelligence, size, sex, sizes of plantation, status on plantation, where they live in a valley, on a hill, East, West, North, South, have fine hair, coarse hair or is tall or short,” he wrote. It worked, he explained, “because distrust is stronger than trust and envy stronger than adulation, respect or admiration.” He concluded, “Let us make a slave.”

It’s a distressing fact of human nature that Willie Lynch, if ever he actually existed and was not invented as a parable to prove a point, isn’t wrong. It is far easier to separate people into squabbling factions than to unite them. We’d love to believe in Ojai that such lower vibrational energies aren’t part of our nature, but we’d be wrong. The bike lane project along Maricopa Highway, the suspicion of visitors and new residents, uninformed ramblings about water issues or steelhead, Facebook flame wars, etc, are all proof positive that we can be just as divided, and divisive, as anyone else.

This is not the space to posit solutions, because there are none. The goal is bring awareness. Fear and suspicion are just as much a part of our character as love and kindness, empathy and compassion. In fact, they are much more easily accessible. The unfortunate tendency to “other” people is ingrained and unavoidable, especially around election time. But in Ojai we have many examples going back to our founding of people who came here specifically to seek out a higher sense of purpose. In a community whose identity in large part centers around mindfulness, of reflection amid our astonishing natural beauty, we have the opportunity to take a breath and stand back from the keyboard before we post a snarky comment, to understand the hardships that turn some people mean and cynical, to find the hidden beauty that lies beneath the most mundane of encounters.

As we slowly shake off the pandemic torpor, we see signs that Ojai is getting back to normal. The streets are teeming with quarantine refugees, the restaurants are starting up inside dining, the hotels are beginning to book groups. An encouraging recent signal was the Ojai Music Festival’s announcement that they will postpone the festival from June until October, at which time it could or should be possible to pack Libbey Bowl. I can’t wait to see headliner Rhiannon Giddens, a prodigy whose range of mastery of musical styles is unsurpassed.

It’s been more than a year since the lockdown began and the world shifted. It appears to be shifting back, but let’s hope not before we take inventory on what we’d like to improve, about ourselves and about Ojai. If there’s ever a place where we can be stronger together, it’s here. After the Thomas Fire and through the pandemic, our bonds of unity have been both strained and strengthened. I’d like to think, perhaps foolishly, that in Ojai the Willie Lynchs of the world would be run out of town.

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