Do humans have efficacy? The ability to exert influence over the world around us?

An important philosophical question—one asked through the ages. Inherent in the debate about whether it is structure or action—external forces or free will—that determine our fate. But also a question that informs the “great person/on the shoulder of giants” versus “worker bee/group process” debate, applied to both intellectual production and societal evolution.

“Do humans have efficacy?” is a question at the heart of game theory and it also has, over the years, surfaced in fields as far-ranging as the biological and chemical sciences, physics, history, politics, and even, at times, economics.

It is also a question that can be asked when viewing movies such as the one referenced in this entry’s title. Well, for that matter . . . so, too, in just about every Hollywood movie currently produced. Charlie Wilson’s War, No Country for Old Men, Beowulf—you name it. How can a plot live without efficacious humans, natural forces (or sorceresses)? Without one or more characters exerting influence on someone or thing, plots tend to stall and cash registers tend not to ring, accordingly. So, according to Hollywood, humans have efficacy.

Dissolve to final curtain. End of discussion.

But what of real life? Well, that was the question I asked the day after I saw I am Legend, which was the night before I returned to my temporary home back in the U.S. The night that I shot hoops at my sports club.

“Do I have efficacy?”

A question asked not because I couldn’t get the ball to fit often enough in the basket; but because of a person I encountered. Quite by accident and then with not such a thrilling answer in response.

The story goes like this . . .

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. . . your mama used to say
My boy is gonna grow up and be
Some kind of leader some day . . .

But you’re a legend in your own time
A hero in the footlights . . .

-- Carly Simon, Legend in Your Own Time

Do media influence us?

This is a question that has been debated for a couple of generations. It is one that, despite thousands of academic studies, directed at a variety of communication forms, has not yet been satisfactorily resolved.

Do media make us: more violent? More sexual? More prone to bend the truth? To seek out the gray in life? To disbelieve? To trust? To think in terms of permanence? Or evanescence?

Well, the jury is still out, as it has been since work on media effects began right after the second Great War. Yet, despite the inconclusive results, one thing that is certain (at least, if you ask me, based on my study and experience): media has been quite effective in getting in our heads, providing models of behavior, impelling us to respond by example under certain situations.

Such as?

Well, how about telling us what to do when we are being stalked by a crazed driver late at night on the open streets of our home towns?

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There on the corner. Across from the car wash; at the intersection just before the freeway on-ramp. He’s ever there, come rain or come shine. Unfailingly, clutching the meter-long squeegee under his darkened stump. A man of color; mid-fifties, could even be in his sixties. A trace of grey stubble flecked across his chin. Sometimes a smoke extending from between his pink lips. Usually a baseball cap pushed back on his crown.

Every day I pass him. Or, if the light happens to turn red, my car rolls up alongside his yellow water bucket. He turns his bad arm—the one that is only a tenth of a limb — my way. Giving me the full technicolor horror. Forcing my mind to linger over the details; imagine the possible scenarios. After my head is good and churned, he turns his eyes full bore through the windshield.

“Got it? Jack! My situation! My life, as it is. Today. Tomorrow. Every day hereafter forevermore. No money. No prosthesis. Barely enough for these here smokes.”

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This was the photo that should have gone with the drive talk entry a couple days back. It isn’t necessarily the best—and certainly not the only—image moseying on by at 30 clicks an hour on the congested LA freeways . . . but it unquestionably one of the more self-explanatory.

Besides, it was the one most readily available. The one just outside my windshield today heading home from work. Availing itself of my phone-camera.

Opportunity being the blessed child of expediency. Success the golden fruit of dumb chance.

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