Detour

I pointed at the bright orange "ROAD CLOSED" sign and said to Aaron, "Isn't this the biggest east-west artery in Washington? How can they just close it?" He was driving.

"Maybe it's a prank. I sure don't want to get off the highway."

They weren't joking. Cars began funneling into the far right lane and clogging the off ramp. Orange cones cut across the road diagonally to show in no uncertain terms that, yes, this was the end of the road. But we needed to get to Spokane.

"Where do we go?" I asked. We looked hopefully for detour signs, but they were curiously absent. The cars in front of us went left. We did too. "I certainly hope someone knows where they're going."

"I don't think they do," Aaron said as four vehicles pulled into a gas station together. On reflection, they must have been asking for directions; at the time we were afraid that soon there would be nobody left to follow.

There remained a few cars in front of us, so we attached ourselves to them like the survivors of a shipwreck clutching to humanity; adrift, but unwilling to admit it. The cars behind us followed in our wake.

The sun began its descent to the rim of the world: closing time. The clouds, having worn their drab office employee hues throughout the day, donned their evening finery in preparation for an exciting night. Our simple drive home began to take on epic proportions; the players of the sky had dealt us a card to play in their celestial opera.

We caught tantalizing glimpses of the interstate every once in a while. Little signs that, though we may not know where we were going, we were at least going in the right direction. Those brief flashes were framed in the language of sunset. That is to say, the wheat shone golden on the tops of the hills, but purple in the valleys; the landscape was segregated into places of glory and places of mystery; the clouds emptied themselves of rain to create spectacular washes in the sky, their last little task before extinguising the lights and heading out. We wove between showers.

"Is it possible to change the world?" Aaron asked on a whim. "I think it's impossible."

"I don't think so." He know that. He was baiting me.

"It's impossible. Big ideas can't change people, because people are little."

"But they value big ideas. They're willing to die for them, sometimes."

He shook his head. "That's just the problem. They're willing to die for any big idea, not just the right ones. They've got a round hole and a sack of round pegs. Big ideas do as much harm as they do good, just look at religion. The only good people really understand is small good; big good gets out of hand."

Behind us the sun transformed a tiny farming outpost into a fantastic city. Silos became magnificent spires of light. Houses and barns and toolsheds that rested on winding countries roads were drawn onto broad thoroughfares, and trees indicated fanciful parks that gave the city weight. Somehow that city became our home in those minutes between day and dark. On that country road that we by fate were forced to drive. An hour ago, we had been heading from the unknown to the unknown. We had exchanged lives for something grander; now the known lay behind us and we struck forth into new lands.

"Here's an idea," I said. "What if we could build the large goods from small ones?"

"How do you mean?" He didn't quite take his eyes from the road, but I knew he wanted to.

"Things look entirely different at a macro level than they do close up. A nest of ants is built of workers with very simple rules, and results in a complex group organism. You can apply the same thing to people. Sociology is loaded with stuff like that."

The car that we had been following turned left, but the road went straight. Aaron made a snap decision and followed the one in front of it instead.

"Wouldn't it be better if we taught people how to decide on the best big ideas?" He was playing the devil's advocate.

"Yeah, but that's enormously difficult. People have to allocate their resources carefully. That's why a religious code of ethics was such a powerful tool for society in earlier ages."

He thought for a moment. "Religious memes may have been necessary then, but people today have a lot more time."

"I don't think it's quite that simple. It's not how much free time you have, it's about how else you might spend the time you do have."

"You're saying that people can't be taught?"

"I'm saying that they're unlikely to give more than lip service to ideas they can't grasp, but if we could frame the larger concepts in ideas that are easier to swallow, maybe things would change."

"Huh. It might work. Good luck finding the right small ideas. It's like a fairy tale; you're looking for a key that might exist to open a castle that might just save the world."

"Yeah, no kidding."

The remaining car turned onto a small road that went absolutely the wrong way. We were stranded at the front of a column of cars. The sun ducked below the horizon and the fields were lost in purple. We drove on.