Patriotism is a funny thing. It’s often used for a hyper vigilant cover for ignorance and fear. The current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq follow the same, sick pattern of thinking we’ve always followed when conflicts are the result of the imprisoned, colonized mind, consumerism, racism, and power. It’s unconscionable that President Obama has just ordered 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. This on the heals of pious promises to the American people that we would drop troop occupation, bring the troops home, and focus on the real problems: universal healthcare, insuring all Americans a living wage, and prosecuting members of the prior Administration for war crimes or crimes of lying and falsifying information.
Patriotism may be a bias that creates a commitment to denial and the glory of imperious empowerment at the expense of smaller countries that are rich in natural resources, like oil, and have suffered under the jackboot of occupation and injustice. These occupations are wars of the rich, the connected and the elites, and the rest of us who oppose them aren’t being listened to. One organization, March Forward, urges all troops to refuse orders to go to Afghanistan. A sad result is that more troops back from Iraq have committed suicide than have been killed in battle.
Those claiming to be patriotic appear to have cases of selected memory. They will claim to be loyal to the U.S. Constitution, following the Commander-in-Chief’s orders on blind faith, but they ignore the constitutional imperative that both Houses must declare a legal war.
They intone that recruits signed a contract to unthinkingly follow all orders. They say that those who refuse to go to war, after experiencing the reality of way, should have never signed those contracts, and have full knowledge they’re now breaking the law.
This is an example of Western, white-based, linear reasoning; it’s rigid and doesn’t allow for any change on the part of Conscientious Objectors to military service and war. The way the world works is that it’s in process constantly of change, death, and growth. It’s dynamic is cyclic, not linear. The fact that a soldier has fought in Iraq or Afghanistan, seen the death of innocents, participated in interrogation techniques that may be torturous, and have known the racism and injustice firsthand has every right to respond like an intelligent human being and change his/her mind from a political, philosophical, or spiritual motivation. This is dissonant to the super-patriots’ tunnel-vision view of patriotism and sacrifice, so it cuts no ice with them; in fact, it creates division within themselves, and all they can do is to push back with paranoid, parroted, reactionary ideas, given to them by their social conditioning and the corporation’s cry for help!
I would argue that dissenters and COs are living out the real definition of patriotism. A loyal person isn’t one who never rocks the boat. True loyalty is born out of living out one’s truth even when under attack; true allegiance is not found in a ‘go along to get along’ philosophy. It’s found in the minds and actions of the nitty-gritting saying “no” philosophy in order that truth and justice has a tangible and demonstrable example of a person who believes that an illegal war will take more life in the end.
I know. I was a Vietnam Era Vet who became a CO. I was a CO when I was ordered by my local draft board in 1969 to be inducted into the U.S. Army. Did I remain the same throughout my entire military experience? Absolutely not. I grew as a human being in my core beliefs. In the final analysis, this is what it’s all about. I was a human being first, and a soldier second. I took personal responsibility for my own life, and the position in which I placed myself in: would I be a mindless, subservient killer, or a thoughtful person who had to consider whether any form of violence, abuse, or colonial domination would save lives. The ethical adage of do no harm was one guideline I followed, and almost forty years later I’m glad I did. Patriotism that feeds off illegal wars has never worked and it never will.
If you aren’t military or ex-military, you as an ordinary citizen must decide how you come down on this issue. If you decide or have already decided that we must get out of these racist, illegal conflicts, you must act. You can partner with other anti-war groups in their efforts to stop the war machine, or you can act alone by whatever means you choose. This is your choice. This is our choice, and choose we must. Do not let your speaking truth to power be shut down. Life is the most sacred essence we have, so we must take life by the horns, and pass it along in whatever form of protest we think is best.
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. December 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
PULL DOWN THE VEIL OVER YOUR FACE WITH TWO HANDS
FAMILY SECRETS
If you go up into the attic of the house of the U.S.A., and poke around a little, you will find an old, musty chest. It’s maybe a chest from the 1880s I would imagine. Slowly you open the creaking top of the chest, and inside you find a box labeled in faded black charcoal Family Secrets.
Every family has its secrets—some just have more than others. But this find is special, I mean it’s unique; it’s historic, isn’t it? Yes, it is. The U.S.A. Family Secrets is mixed in with a bucket of mortar to patch the brick of the house. It’s mixed with denial, doublespeak, and hypocrisy. Granted this kind of covert hype makes it easier to control children, because the chest of family secrets is like Santa’s bag of goodies at Christmas time. As long as we don’t let the family secrets out, our kids are happy, and ignorance is bliss, ‘what you don’t know can’t hurt you,’ and they think they’re going to live in the Garden Land of America.
We are the nation that purports to be a “Christian nation,” aren’t we? How is it then that we have trained ourselves so well to turn away, to turn our eyes towards the ground, to avert looking into the eyes of Mother Truth? This makes us a nation of dishonesty. Dishonest about the cruel oppressions of the past, their causal effects on the present, and their prophetic link to the future. Hypocrisy is being one way on the inside, but changing the outside to project our rightness in our own eyes. It’s wearing a mask like an actor who takes on the “face” of the person she’s portraying. We want the audience to see us with the mask---to see through the real face to only register the one portrayed.
We have “falsies” and “truthies.” They are all around us. It’s hard to get close to people when they have eyes in the back of their heads, but they have ways of watching. The “Truth Police” can only exist where there is no trust or a little trust. Since our forefathers (for me white, Scottish American) began this sewer of hypocrisy and doublespeak, to get what they wanted for themselves (shall we get real?) isn’t it for us to attempt to bring some answers and confessions to the public domain. Using doublespeak means we say one thing but mean another for our own purposes. It’s a clever distortion under cover in a land where statistics can lie depending on who is running the numbers.
To rationalize and continue our denial about what we actually did to human beings who don’t look like us or have the same color of skin hue, we must pretend that truth is stranger than fiction. We’ve created “sincere fictions” (Joe Feagin) to hold up the whole lie for somehow we have to, I mean just have to keep it held up. We like our fiction on CDs, movie theaters, DVDs, and draft houses, where we can suck our beer and punch more pizza into our mouths. We have to have it pretty to justify ourselves in our own eyes. We are the innocents! Our previous, familial generations could never have rapaciously ripped off the naïve and weak Indians in the way some people argue? The slaves from Africa were brought her to civilize them and bring them into another form of consciousness, out of savage wilderness, lonesome lands were only wild dogs and two-winged ones can exist. Their masters took care of them. Sure, you had the occasional rape or children out of wedlock coming from the consensual unions of whites and blacks. Indeed, they were happy and provided for by their owners and the plantations, were they not?
These are the fantasies that are fatal. When children wake up to the fact that the ones who love them the most (the “gods”) have lied to them for years about the truth of a being named Santa Claus, this is a rude and traumatic shock to a child’s entire conscience, brain chemistry, cognitive processes, and affective education for their sentiments and emotions.
Family secrets are closed off from public view, and peculiar masks and hypocritical means must be found to keep them hidden; the light hurts their eyes as they lie in the attic with chains of invisible silk.
© Christopher Bear Beam 11/09
If you go up into the attic of the house of the U.S.A., and poke around a little, you will find an old, musty chest. It’s maybe a chest from the 1880s I would imagine. Slowly you open the creaking top of the chest, and inside you find a box labeled in faded black charcoal Family Secrets.
Every family has its secrets—some just have more than others. But this find is special, I mean it’s unique; it’s historic, isn’t it? Yes, it is. The U.S.A. Family Secrets is mixed in with a bucket of mortar to patch the brick of the house. It’s mixed with denial, doublespeak, and hypocrisy. Granted this kind of covert hype makes it easier to control children, because the chest of family secrets is like Santa’s bag of goodies at Christmas time. As long as we don’t let the family secrets out, our kids are happy, and ignorance is bliss, ‘what you don’t know can’t hurt you,’ and they think they’re going to live in the Garden Land of America.
We are the nation that purports to be a “Christian nation,” aren’t we? How is it then that we have trained ourselves so well to turn away, to turn our eyes towards the ground, to avert looking into the eyes of Mother Truth? This makes us a nation of dishonesty. Dishonest about the cruel oppressions of the past, their causal effects on the present, and their prophetic link to the future. Hypocrisy is being one way on the inside, but changing the outside to project our rightness in our own eyes. It’s wearing a mask like an actor who takes on the “face” of the person she’s portraying. We want the audience to see us with the mask---to see through the real face to only register the one portrayed.
We have “falsies” and “truthies.” They are all around us. It’s hard to get close to people when they have eyes in the back of their heads, but they have ways of watching. The “Truth Police” can only exist where there is no trust or a little trust. Since our forefathers (for me white, Scottish American) began this sewer of hypocrisy and doublespeak, to get what they wanted for themselves (shall we get real?) isn’t it for us to attempt to bring some answers and confessions to the public domain. Using doublespeak means we say one thing but mean another for our own purposes. It’s a clever distortion under cover in a land where statistics can lie depending on who is running the numbers.
To rationalize and continue our denial about what we actually did to human beings who don’t look like us or have the same color of skin hue, we must pretend that truth is stranger than fiction. We’ve created “sincere fictions” (Joe Feagin) to hold up the whole lie for somehow we have to, I mean just have to keep it held up. We like our fiction on CDs, movie theaters, DVDs, and draft houses, where we can suck our beer and punch more pizza into our mouths. We have to have it pretty to justify ourselves in our own eyes. We are the innocents! Our previous, familial generations could never have rapaciously ripped off the naïve and weak Indians in the way some people argue? The slaves from Africa were brought her to civilize them and bring them into another form of consciousness, out of savage wilderness, lonesome lands were only wild dogs and two-winged ones can exist. Their masters took care of them. Sure, you had the occasional rape or children out of wedlock coming from the consensual unions of whites and blacks. Indeed, they were happy and provided for by their owners and the plantations, were they not?
These are the fantasies that are fatal. When children wake up to the fact that the ones who love them the most (the “gods”) have lied to them for years about the truth of a being named Santa Claus, this is a rude and traumatic shock to a child’s entire conscience, brain chemistry, cognitive processes, and affective education for their sentiments and emotions.
Family secrets are closed off from public view, and peculiar masks and hypocritical means must be found to keep them hidden; the light hurts their eyes as they lie in the attic with chains of invisible silk.
© Christopher Bear Beam 11/09
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Are You a Conscientous Objector?
On Saturday, September 26, 2009, in Austin, Texas there was an assembly to honor Conscientious Objection. This included having CO values and commitments to any thing that one chooses to make a stand to oppose. One panel had a group of Desert Storm and Iraq Occupation occupations, with panel members describing how their combat experiences triggered PTSD and its concomitant symptoms.
The purpose of the assembly was to honor all those who are Cos; this may include being conscientiously opposed to paying taxes to pay for the U.S. Military or to a service member who takes a stand against the Corporation-Military Complex by making application for Conscientous Objection. Honor is a vital key to creating any sort of community; many cultures practice honor as a regular part of their deep and surface structures by their honoring traditions, notably Native Americans in North America. Men can honor their elders who came before them; women can honor their sheroes who took stands against various injustices perpetrated against them and others. Seems like it’s a good practice to honor anyone older than we are or who come from the generation that came before us.
Unfortunately, our culture highly values the ‘glorious deeds’ of military service and war. We want to be triumphant in all we do and say; the propaganda of the state rolls out its script whenever a war happens, giving the entire society the norms of what it means to be patriotic in our day and time. Sadly, the war spirit, with all of its emotional content too many times keeps people in a mental state of inertia with the symptoms of narrow definitions of patriotism. Would it not be patriotic, as happened to one WWII CO, to do some kind of alternate service? Instead, the residents of the small town he lived in thought he was crazy, a slacker, and not patriotic simply because he didn’t want to kill anyone.
As we have seen recently, from the narratives of “Bush and Cheney’s War,” many lies concerning the facts on the ground were told to the American people. Clearly, there was no respect shown to us here. And having telecom companies spy into our phone conversations is the antithesis of a free and open society and flies in the face of the Constitution. There have been many allegedly illegal acts foisted on the military and the citizens, all in the name of the War on Terror.
Personally, this entire experience was deeply moving and refined my thoughts and memories to some new insights. One of those is that being a CO may be seen in a very broad panorama, and goes way beyond the boundaries of being a military CO. One can be a CO who is opposed to globalism, and dissents by choosing to live an alternate lifestyle. A friend of mine is adamant about helping to keep his community environment clean and spends hours cleaning up trash. He is conscientiously opposed to a non-hygenic and ugly landscape in the city where he lives.
For me, when I was discharged in the beginning of 1971 there was no hero’s welcome; I had been a member of an unorthodox church denomination that had a lengthily tradition of pacifism going back to the Civil War. It also espoused various other religious practices that more or less drew a line in the sand between orthodox and unorthodox Christianity. I was a relatively new member in this denomination when I faced my own crisis of conscience at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. With their assistance, I wrote my application for CO.
When I was released, after spending time in house arrest, and a minimum-security prison within the confines of the military base, I was clinically depressed, and my spirit had suffered severe pummeling. Not one minister or administrative member from this denomination really sat down with me to debrief the experience, nor counsel me about the kinds of symptoms I might see in myself due to this trauma. The term PTSD wasn’t even created yet. Going back to WWI and WWII PTSD was called battle fatigue or shell shock, but what about COs who never saw combat experience but were just as much impacted by the system as they were. Combat vets could show their physical wounds, but I could show my psycho-spiritual ones.
In 2007 or so I decided to write a book called The Invisible Warrior (2008) (available by going to http://www.xlibris.com/, http://www.amazon.com/, or http://www.bn.com/). This was a chronicle of my journey as a Vietnam Era Vet CO, and the kinds of experiences, both humiliating and scintillating, that I encountered in my resistance to military service and war. It’s a collection of reflections of what I learned. As time went on, I noticed more and more PTSD symptoms in my life, even though I didn’t wear that diagnostic label. At the very least I was diagnosed as having a Depressive Disorder accompanied by an Anxiety Disorder.
It was then that I decided to make an appeal to the Department of Veteran’s Affairs. However, the military system is based on really not trusting your own instincts (I realize this may vary with the kind of superior you’ve got), but those of the powers above you. It is courageous and brave to be so counter-cultural to trust yourself that you’ve had certain symptoms you can read about in the Diagnostic Manual. We, after all, know our bodies and minds better than anyone else; you may ask, “Yes, we do know ourselves the best, but someone who is dealing with an assessed mental illness is out of touch with reality, so how could this person trust herself to make a clear-thinking diagnosis?” That’s a very good question. But there are various kinds of psychiatric diagnoses, many of which don’t include psychosis, meaning a break with reality.
It’s true that some may not be able to function enough so as not to be able to do this, but for many of us, who are functioning enough can see the tree that is squarely in front of us. Needless to say, my application was denied, but I had to follow my own conscience here too.
Honor is the tonic we need to restore trust and community. Respect and honor are two curative properties for healing trauma. A drink of honor is equal to a gallon of cure. Most importantly we must honor ourselves; guard against shame (“I am a mistake”) and guilt (“Oh no I did something wrong; I’ll be punished; better not to do anything else than what I’m told to do. How high was that you wanted me to jump?”). When we take steps to put our true selves on the line, after thinking about the many consequences this decision will engender, the voices of doubt, uncertainty and self-hate will try to take over. Speak the truth first by loving yourself in all your nobility and warrior-like qualities. We are the pure gold found in a rock at the bottom of the streambed. We have shined beautifully.
© Christopher Bear Beam, MA 10/09
The purpose of the assembly was to honor all those who are Cos; this may include being conscientiously opposed to paying taxes to pay for the U.S. Military or to a service member who takes a stand against the Corporation-Military Complex by making application for Conscientous Objection. Honor is a vital key to creating any sort of community; many cultures practice honor as a regular part of their deep and surface structures by their honoring traditions, notably Native Americans in North America. Men can honor their elders who came before them; women can honor their sheroes who took stands against various injustices perpetrated against them and others. Seems like it’s a good practice to honor anyone older than we are or who come from the generation that came before us.
Unfortunately, our culture highly values the ‘glorious deeds’ of military service and war. We want to be triumphant in all we do and say; the propaganda of the state rolls out its script whenever a war happens, giving the entire society the norms of what it means to be patriotic in our day and time. Sadly, the war spirit, with all of its emotional content too many times keeps people in a mental state of inertia with the symptoms of narrow definitions of patriotism. Would it not be patriotic, as happened to one WWII CO, to do some kind of alternate service? Instead, the residents of the small town he lived in thought he was crazy, a slacker, and not patriotic simply because he didn’t want to kill anyone.
As we have seen recently, from the narratives of “Bush and Cheney’s War,” many lies concerning the facts on the ground were told to the American people. Clearly, there was no respect shown to us here. And having telecom companies spy into our phone conversations is the antithesis of a free and open society and flies in the face of the Constitution. There have been many allegedly illegal acts foisted on the military and the citizens, all in the name of the War on Terror.
Personally, this entire experience was deeply moving and refined my thoughts and memories to some new insights. One of those is that being a CO may be seen in a very broad panorama, and goes way beyond the boundaries of being a military CO. One can be a CO who is opposed to globalism, and dissents by choosing to live an alternate lifestyle. A friend of mine is adamant about helping to keep his community environment clean and spends hours cleaning up trash. He is conscientiously opposed to a non-hygenic and ugly landscape in the city where he lives.
For me, when I was discharged in the beginning of 1971 there was no hero’s welcome; I had been a member of an unorthodox church denomination that had a lengthily tradition of pacifism going back to the Civil War. It also espoused various other religious practices that more or less drew a line in the sand between orthodox and unorthodox Christianity. I was a relatively new member in this denomination when I faced my own crisis of conscience at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. With their assistance, I wrote my application for CO.
When I was released, after spending time in house arrest, and a minimum-security prison within the confines of the military base, I was clinically depressed, and my spirit had suffered severe pummeling. Not one minister or administrative member from this denomination really sat down with me to debrief the experience, nor counsel me about the kinds of symptoms I might see in myself due to this trauma. The term PTSD wasn’t even created yet. Going back to WWI and WWII PTSD was called battle fatigue or shell shock, but what about COs who never saw combat experience but were just as much impacted by the system as they were. Combat vets could show their physical wounds, but I could show my psycho-spiritual ones.
In 2007 or so I decided to write a book called The Invisible Warrior (2008) (available by going to http://www.xlibris.com/, http://www.amazon.com/, or http://www.bn.com/). This was a chronicle of my journey as a Vietnam Era Vet CO, and the kinds of experiences, both humiliating and scintillating, that I encountered in my resistance to military service and war. It’s a collection of reflections of what I learned. As time went on, I noticed more and more PTSD symptoms in my life, even though I didn’t wear that diagnostic label. At the very least I was diagnosed as having a Depressive Disorder accompanied by an Anxiety Disorder.
It was then that I decided to make an appeal to the Department of Veteran’s Affairs. However, the military system is based on really not trusting your own instincts (I realize this may vary with the kind of superior you’ve got), but those of the powers above you. It is courageous and brave to be so counter-cultural to trust yourself that you’ve had certain symptoms you can read about in the Diagnostic Manual. We, after all, know our bodies and minds better than anyone else; you may ask, “Yes, we do know ourselves the best, but someone who is dealing with an assessed mental illness is out of touch with reality, so how could this person trust herself to make a clear-thinking diagnosis?” That’s a very good question. But there are various kinds of psychiatric diagnoses, many of which don’t include psychosis, meaning a break with reality.
It’s true that some may not be able to function enough so as not to be able to do this, but for many of us, who are functioning enough can see the tree that is squarely in front of us. Needless to say, my application was denied, but I had to follow my own conscience here too.
Honor is the tonic we need to restore trust and community. Respect and honor are two curative properties for healing trauma. A drink of honor is equal to a gallon of cure. Most importantly we must honor ourselves; guard against shame (“I am a mistake”) and guilt (“Oh no I did something wrong; I’ll be punished; better not to do anything else than what I’m told to do. How high was that you wanted me to jump?”). When we take steps to put our true selves on the line, after thinking about the many consequences this decision will engender, the voices of doubt, uncertainty and self-hate will try to take over. Speak the truth first by loving yourself in all your nobility and warrior-like qualities. We are the pure gold found in a rock at the bottom of the streambed. We have shined beautifully.
© Christopher Bear Beam, MA 10/09
Saturday, August 22, 2009
A VIEW FROM EL PASO
I recently went to the border town of El Paso, Texas that is just on the other side of the river from Cuidad Juarez.
I am not familiar with many of the issues that affect those who live on the U.S. side nor the Mexican side. I know what people told me. I do know that there is a great deal of traffic between both cities, in work places and domiciles. I do know that since about April of 2008 there has been a major increase in cartel and gang-related violence; American citizens have also been targets. Murders have taken place in broad daylight, and sometimes bodies are found decapitated.
The “narco wars” have taken more than 11,000 lives since it started to heat up in intensity and frequency. Juarez has now become known as “Mexico’s deadliest city” with 800 drug-related deaths so far this year. This isn’t only happening at this crossroads, but is occurring at many areas along the U.S./Mexico border.
I went to El Paso to be a participant in a training conference. One mental health professional from Juarez told the participants that the residents have few options to deal with this trauma along the border. She said what is needed is activism and hope. She related to the audience that ‘this is all we have—hope.’
What does any community do when their main resource is hope, and when deadly stressors and community-disruption now are the way of life? Any organism will respond by seeking more creatively how to survive. But if the societal breakdown is maintained over a long period of time, research indicates that the kind of behavior we call “normal” doesn’t return. It’s replaced by a new, more violent sort of behavior.
According to the stories—from those who are aware of this regression—this significant trauma is affecting the social, physical, emotional, mental, and religious domains of life in many ways. For one thing, the violence is just one more reason for people to want to migrate to the U.S. for something better for their families. Last week, however, the Barrera family was returning to their home deeper into Mexico, after living for a while in Juarez, and was attacked with gunfire. Three of the family members were murdered, while the two youngest children watched in psychic shock. The violence is more and more affecting innocents who have no connection with drugs, crime, or anything illegal.
Which brings me to an important point: many of you have heard that we’re attempting to build a wall all along our border with Mexico. Now, apparently, we’re trying to keep out illegal aliens (there are no illegal people by the way) and drug-runners who are competing for the market in the U.S. In my mind, this is an archaic way of dealing with these two problems. The U.S. and Mexico will never even come close to solving this problem, by the use of power, force, the military, or money. Fear is an incredible motivating factor; no one wants to live in the middle of this kind of chaos, so believe me, they’ll keep coming.
And why shouldn’t they? The United States of Europe has already been using a model of porous borders, and people cross from one country within the EU as freely as we go from one state to the next. Europe has not experienced the same kinds of consequences that we have by using an “old brain” approach to a “new brain” dilemma.
Of course migration is built into our human natures. People have been migrating from one place to another ever since humans have been on the planet. People can migrate to get away from something such as political unrest, or migrate to get somewhere such as employment.
A famous eco-researcher, Jack Calhoun, predicted years ago, that the nations of the world would be facing these kinds of staggering problems; he said that immigration is the problem, but it isn’t the problem. His research demonstrated that there were predictable human behaviors that occur when stress reaches a certain maintained level. Any social order will do what it can to retain its own culture and way of life within the parameters of social networks and social connections. This is survival for the need of community, closeness, and support. One of the worst spin-offs of the immigration quagmire is the separation of family members, and this adds more tension to an already tenuous situation.
The experience of history indicates that we need a new adaptive focus to problems like what we find on the border between El Paso and Juarez. These problems call us to look at all the factors involved in a systemic fashion. Sometimes the smallest of changes within any system can have huge consequences; these changes may be for better or ill.
Fear causes people to seek out single causes expecting single effects; behavior becomes reactive and many tend to lean towards biases against the groups involved in the conflicted paradigm. In other words, they use a means of stereotypical thinking, and by this I mean they view the groups who they feel are parts of the problem by using stereotypes as a form of fact. “If we don’t put that wall up, they’ll keep coming over and take all of our jobs! That’s a fact.” Usually, immigrants do the kind of work others don’t want to do, they pay taxes, and add monetary influx into the economy.
We’ve been trying these methods for some time, and we must acknowledge that they simply don’t work; “the war on drugs” has been a dismal failure. Many law enforcement officials now come down “anti-drug war” because we spend far too much money, and the models being used leave out much that is needed to correct the problem.
El Paso seemed like a quiet little town; for me it was peaceful, and a restful escape from the heat and humidity in East Texas. Cooler winds are the natural, airy fans to maintain comfortabililty. It’s nestled in the mountains and seems like a laid back place. Unless you seek it out, you may not hear much about what’s really going on in Juarez—it’s such a different environment. That’s why you need to make it your business to obtain news from good, perhaps alternative media sources, so that you can view the border situation in a systemic and facts-based way.
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. August 2009
I am not familiar with many of the issues that affect those who live on the U.S. side nor the Mexican side. I know what people told me. I do know that there is a great deal of traffic between both cities, in work places and domiciles. I do know that since about April of 2008 there has been a major increase in cartel and gang-related violence; American citizens have also been targets. Murders have taken place in broad daylight, and sometimes bodies are found decapitated.
The “narco wars” have taken more than 11,000 lives since it started to heat up in intensity and frequency. Juarez has now become known as “Mexico’s deadliest city” with 800 drug-related deaths so far this year. This isn’t only happening at this crossroads, but is occurring at many areas along the U.S./Mexico border.
I went to El Paso to be a participant in a training conference. One mental health professional from Juarez told the participants that the residents have few options to deal with this trauma along the border. She said what is needed is activism and hope. She related to the audience that ‘this is all we have—hope.’
What does any community do when their main resource is hope, and when deadly stressors and community-disruption now are the way of life? Any organism will respond by seeking more creatively how to survive. But if the societal breakdown is maintained over a long period of time, research indicates that the kind of behavior we call “normal” doesn’t return. It’s replaced by a new, more violent sort of behavior.
According to the stories—from those who are aware of this regression—this significant trauma is affecting the social, physical, emotional, mental, and religious domains of life in many ways. For one thing, the violence is just one more reason for people to want to migrate to the U.S. for something better for their families. Last week, however, the Barrera family was returning to their home deeper into Mexico, after living for a while in Juarez, and was attacked with gunfire. Three of the family members were murdered, while the two youngest children watched in psychic shock. The violence is more and more affecting innocents who have no connection with drugs, crime, or anything illegal.
Which brings me to an important point: many of you have heard that we’re attempting to build a wall all along our border with Mexico. Now, apparently, we’re trying to keep out illegal aliens (there are no illegal people by the way) and drug-runners who are competing for the market in the U.S. In my mind, this is an archaic way of dealing with these two problems. The U.S. and Mexico will never even come close to solving this problem, by the use of power, force, the military, or money. Fear is an incredible motivating factor; no one wants to live in the middle of this kind of chaos, so believe me, they’ll keep coming.
And why shouldn’t they? The United States of Europe has already been using a model of porous borders, and people cross from one country within the EU as freely as we go from one state to the next. Europe has not experienced the same kinds of consequences that we have by using an “old brain” approach to a “new brain” dilemma.
Of course migration is built into our human natures. People have been migrating from one place to another ever since humans have been on the planet. People can migrate to get away from something such as political unrest, or migrate to get somewhere such as employment.
A famous eco-researcher, Jack Calhoun, predicted years ago, that the nations of the world would be facing these kinds of staggering problems; he said that immigration is the problem, but it isn’t the problem. His research demonstrated that there were predictable human behaviors that occur when stress reaches a certain maintained level. Any social order will do what it can to retain its own culture and way of life within the parameters of social networks and social connections. This is survival for the need of community, closeness, and support. One of the worst spin-offs of the immigration quagmire is the separation of family members, and this adds more tension to an already tenuous situation.
The experience of history indicates that we need a new adaptive focus to problems like what we find on the border between El Paso and Juarez. These problems call us to look at all the factors involved in a systemic fashion. Sometimes the smallest of changes within any system can have huge consequences; these changes may be for better or ill.
Fear causes people to seek out single causes expecting single effects; behavior becomes reactive and many tend to lean towards biases against the groups involved in the conflicted paradigm. In other words, they use a means of stereotypical thinking, and by this I mean they view the groups who they feel are parts of the problem by using stereotypes as a form of fact. “If we don’t put that wall up, they’ll keep coming over and take all of our jobs! That’s a fact.” Usually, immigrants do the kind of work others don’t want to do, they pay taxes, and add monetary influx into the economy.
We’ve been trying these methods for some time, and we must acknowledge that they simply don’t work; “the war on drugs” has been a dismal failure. Many law enforcement officials now come down “anti-drug war” because we spend far too much money, and the models being used leave out much that is needed to correct the problem.
El Paso seemed like a quiet little town; for me it was peaceful, and a restful escape from the heat and humidity in East Texas. Cooler winds are the natural, airy fans to maintain comfortabililty. It’s nestled in the mountains and seems like a laid back place. Unless you seek it out, you may not hear much about what’s really going on in Juarez—it’s such a different environment. That’s why you need to make it your business to obtain news from good, perhaps alternative media sources, so that you can view the border situation in a systemic and facts-based way.
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. August 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
THE WOMEN'S HOLOCAUST
THE WOMEN’S HOLOCAUST
By Christopher Bear Beam, M.A.
There are many holocausts that many in the West – and all over the planet – have not much heard about. The article “War Rape” in Wikipedia cites that 500,000 women were raped in the Rwanda Genocide of 1994. War Rape was first recognized as a crime against humanity when the International Criminal Tribunal tried the Former Yugoslavia. It was evidenced that Muslim women in Foca (southeast Bosnia and Herzegovina) were subjected to the systematic and widespread gang rape, torture and sexual enslavement by Bosnian Serb soldiers, policemen, and members in paramilitary groups. Crimes against women are also recognized as integral to the strategy of war in some cultures.
We must never forget that rape is a crime of violence. As far at its effects, a recent study (cited by Wikipedia) lists STDs or VDs, (including HIV) and pregnancy. Another two physical effects are incontinence and vaginal fistulas. The short-term or long-term psychological wounds may include depression, anxiety disorders (including PTSD), multiple somatic symptoms, flashbacks, difficulty re-establishing intimate relationships, shame and persistent fears.
We have forgotten about the African holocaust that took place in colonial, slave-trading days. The millions of Africans, who were stolen from their homes, put on floating coffins in absolutely deplorable conditions, where men, women, and children, in the millions, died in the Middle Passage. All people need to learn this history, and remember it.
I say this in the spirit of “identificational sorrow,” a concept that means that we do have a link to our European ancestors who were culpable in this African Holocaust. It doesn’t matter if our defense is “Well, my family were never slave-owners,” because we were the ones who benefited from this genocide, and we still, even today, are reaping the benefits. The largest slave-traders in America lived up north of the Mason-Dixon line: the duplicity of the DeWolf family, who amassed a fortune from the bestial treatment of African slaves, made us all culpable, so that we can no longer turn away our eyes to escape our shame. This was another one of our own white-driven holocausts.
Then there are the indigenous peoples of the land in North and South America who have been the targets of genocide and holocaust. Native Americans had their land taken by theft, were dispossessed to places other than their homeland, slaughtered, tortured—men, women, and children. Eventually, their children were taken from their families by ‘good Christian folk,’ housed in boarding schools, stripped of their language, their names, their native clothing, sometimes of their womanhood by forced sterilization, their spirituality (you can only really strip a person or group of their religion, but their spirituality may become more impervious through resistance), and made into the image of the white man. The saying, as a rationalization for their abuse, was, ‘Kill the Indian, save the man.’ This was both a physical and a psycho-spiritual holocaust, since the psychological trauma, poverty, lack of access to resources, internalized oppression, and intimidation of beatings, lynching, and rapes were seen as its consequences by future generations.
When the early immigrants came to America, they created a political moment (a moment for European American history) by inviting the leaders of the American Indian Nations to come and meet with them to see if any kind of strategy might be engineered for peaceful co-existence in order that they might take more of the land and resources of America. The white men noticed that Native Americans brought women with them to these assemblies; in Native culture, women were viewed as equals to men, so they were in leadership responsibilities. The white leaders were horrified because of their sexist views of women, so they counseled the male Native American leaders to leave them at home. After all, Europeans reasoned, they weren’t intelligent enough for the business of ruling, controlling, and stealing what wasn’t theirs to steal, and this was, in the end, what leadership was all about, right? I doubt if the Native Americans took their advice.
We never have to look too far away for historical examples, once we wipe the historical denial from our eyes, and can use our special vision called ‘remembering the past and our part in it.’ The examples are there. I suppose one could even dispute the term genocide or holocaust (there are various interpretations and definitions); in my mind, we don’t need to limit it to the extermination of targeted people. The forced and coercive transfers of any group of people from the land of their ancestor’s kills their spirit… Dislocation leads to the decimation of people’s identities.
If we research very far in the distant past, we can locate the almost invisible, yet primeval, string of yarn that stitched the ideology of Domionism--the design of the chain of the hierarchy of life. Dominionism (growing out of European philosophy and theology) espoused the ideology that men should control nature to make it habitable and productive. For this, they cleverly twisted the theological word stewardship. At the top of this ladder reign men, and at the bottom they placed the ecosphere. Next on the hierarchy, one step down from men came women, but they were viewed as pretty far down the ladder, closer to the earth, which is base, wild, and savage. Women were made invisible, seen as seducing men and leading them into moral depravity, the essence of physicality and sexuality; impudent, easily persuaded by evil spirits (the Devil), unintelligent, in need of control and guidance, etc., etc., etc. You can see the close connection the way Europeans viewed animals.
During the “Dark Ages” the majority of criminals brought to tribunals and village kangaroo courts were women. Is there any reason to wonder about the Women’s Holocaust and how it could happen? Author Rossell Hope Robbins writes about this era being a “shocking nightmare, the foulest crime and deepest shame of Western civilization, the blackest of everything that Homo sapiens, the reasoning man, has ever upheld” (cited by Jim Mason in An Unnatural Order: Uncovering the Roots of Our Domination of Nature and Each Other, p. 226). This emerged as a power struggle between women and institutional male power. Eighty-five percent of the victims during this time were women.
Mason reports that victims of this holocaust range between 200,000 to a high of two million women burned at the stake during this 300-year period. The sordid paradox of the Women’s Holocaust is that it happened during the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. This is just another example of how male-dominated power and extermination is truly crazy making.
Women were already cast in the role as being complicit with the Devil, so it was no stretch to level accusations against them for behaviors the church claimed as heretical. But really the causal factor behind this holocaust was that of sustaining the power of men and the church. If the church had been holding high the truth of the dignity and sacredness of all people, things, and every created being, why would it be torturing and killing so many women who they ruled were guilty of spurious charges?
Women were accused of witchcraft; some were covered with burning oil, or burned at the stake. No doubt, there were many terroristic rapes as well. Women were butchered or drowned, with their children forced to watch these insane and demonic acts; imagine, children forced to see their mothers killed… What else could this have resulted in except PTSD thousands of years before it was labeled this by contemporary psychologies? Women were also killed at the hands of church and state for being herbalists or healers. They were seen as evil because of their love of the earth and its restorative powers.
The mistreatment of women as inferior to men was part of the Holocaust of Women, and its practices migrated into the New World. It resulted in the Salem Witch trials in the New England states. It has continued to migrate by way of many more covert and subtle ways of oppression: at one time the suppression of civil rights such as voting, abusiveness, murder, rape, domestic violence, sexual harassment, discriminatory treatment, and a culture that still lives in many places steeped with sexism as a normal part of its life. I use the words “its life” advisedly because now sexism and misogyny are a part of our overall system. Systemic sources are bigger and more powerful than individuals. But it’s still a holocaust, no matter how you look at it or try to defend it.
I was so moved by a homiletic of a woman in our community Betty Duff that I became physically ill when I listened to her remarks: like a dredged out well with nothing left inside. All of us men had a mother; we may have sisters, aunts, girl cousins, and grandmothers we knew, yet each of us as men has assisted the White Male System to continue to live and breathe. I think of my own social conditioning growing up as a boy, then a young adult, and now an older adult. I am now recovery from this sickness of the male-dominated, sexist, and superior system; I listen more closely to my inner conversations around female stereotypes, as I have become more conscious and aware. My brain registers thoughts and ideas that I picked up in the land of domination and power. Now I’m moving through the plane of acute awareness, deconstruction, and reconstruction, and the old thought processes and behaviors are often hardened like fossils in ancient burial places. Healing is a dirty and messy business, but the end results are cleansing and lifting.
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. August 2009
Many, many thanks to Betty Duff who researched this time period and shared it with our community, Marilyn Douglas-Jones who offered help in editing, and Deborah Levine who gave me helpful feedback prior to the publishing of this blog on the American Diversity Report.
By Christopher Bear Beam, M.A.
There are many holocausts that many in the West – and all over the planet – have not much heard about. The article “War Rape” in Wikipedia cites that 500,000 women were raped in the Rwanda Genocide of 1994. War Rape was first recognized as a crime against humanity when the International Criminal Tribunal tried the Former Yugoslavia. It was evidenced that Muslim women in Foca (southeast Bosnia and Herzegovina) were subjected to the systematic and widespread gang rape, torture and sexual enslavement by Bosnian Serb soldiers, policemen, and members in paramilitary groups. Crimes against women are also recognized as integral to the strategy of war in some cultures.
We must never forget that rape is a crime of violence. As far at its effects, a recent study (cited by Wikipedia) lists STDs or VDs, (including HIV) and pregnancy. Another two physical effects are incontinence and vaginal fistulas. The short-term or long-term psychological wounds may include depression, anxiety disorders (including PTSD), multiple somatic symptoms, flashbacks, difficulty re-establishing intimate relationships, shame and persistent fears.
We have forgotten about the African holocaust that took place in colonial, slave-trading days. The millions of Africans, who were stolen from their homes, put on floating coffins in absolutely deplorable conditions, where men, women, and children, in the millions, died in the Middle Passage. All people need to learn this history, and remember it.
I say this in the spirit of “identificational sorrow,” a concept that means that we do have a link to our European ancestors who were culpable in this African Holocaust. It doesn’t matter if our defense is “Well, my family were never slave-owners,” because we were the ones who benefited from this genocide, and we still, even today, are reaping the benefits. The largest slave-traders in America lived up north of the Mason-Dixon line: the duplicity of the DeWolf family, who amassed a fortune from the bestial treatment of African slaves, made us all culpable, so that we can no longer turn away our eyes to escape our shame. This was another one of our own white-driven holocausts.
Then there are the indigenous peoples of the land in North and South America who have been the targets of genocide and holocaust. Native Americans had their land taken by theft, were dispossessed to places other than their homeland, slaughtered, tortured—men, women, and children. Eventually, their children were taken from their families by ‘good Christian folk,’ housed in boarding schools, stripped of their language, their names, their native clothing, sometimes of their womanhood by forced sterilization, their spirituality (you can only really strip a person or group of their religion, but their spirituality may become more impervious through resistance), and made into the image of the white man. The saying, as a rationalization for their abuse, was, ‘Kill the Indian, save the man.’ This was both a physical and a psycho-spiritual holocaust, since the psychological trauma, poverty, lack of access to resources, internalized oppression, and intimidation of beatings, lynching, and rapes were seen as its consequences by future generations.
When the early immigrants came to America, they created a political moment (a moment for European American history) by inviting the leaders of the American Indian Nations to come and meet with them to see if any kind of strategy might be engineered for peaceful co-existence in order that they might take more of the land and resources of America. The white men noticed that Native Americans brought women with them to these assemblies; in Native culture, women were viewed as equals to men, so they were in leadership responsibilities. The white leaders were horrified because of their sexist views of women, so they counseled the male Native American leaders to leave them at home. After all, Europeans reasoned, they weren’t intelligent enough for the business of ruling, controlling, and stealing what wasn’t theirs to steal, and this was, in the end, what leadership was all about, right? I doubt if the Native Americans took their advice.
We never have to look too far away for historical examples, once we wipe the historical denial from our eyes, and can use our special vision called ‘remembering the past and our part in it.’ The examples are there. I suppose one could even dispute the term genocide or holocaust (there are various interpretations and definitions); in my mind, we don’t need to limit it to the extermination of targeted people. The forced and coercive transfers of any group of people from the land of their ancestor’s kills their spirit… Dislocation leads to the decimation of people’s identities.
If we research very far in the distant past, we can locate the almost invisible, yet primeval, string of yarn that stitched the ideology of Domionism--the design of the chain of the hierarchy of life. Dominionism (growing out of European philosophy and theology) espoused the ideology that men should control nature to make it habitable and productive. For this, they cleverly twisted the theological word stewardship. At the top of this ladder reign men, and at the bottom they placed the ecosphere. Next on the hierarchy, one step down from men came women, but they were viewed as pretty far down the ladder, closer to the earth, which is base, wild, and savage. Women were made invisible, seen as seducing men and leading them into moral depravity, the essence of physicality and sexuality; impudent, easily persuaded by evil spirits (the Devil), unintelligent, in need of control and guidance, etc., etc., etc. You can see the close connection the way Europeans viewed animals.
During the “Dark Ages” the majority of criminals brought to tribunals and village kangaroo courts were women. Is there any reason to wonder about the Women’s Holocaust and how it could happen? Author Rossell Hope Robbins writes about this era being a “shocking nightmare, the foulest crime and deepest shame of Western civilization, the blackest of everything that Homo sapiens, the reasoning man, has ever upheld” (cited by Jim Mason in An Unnatural Order: Uncovering the Roots of Our Domination of Nature and Each Other, p. 226). This emerged as a power struggle between women and institutional male power. Eighty-five percent of the victims during this time were women.
Mason reports that victims of this holocaust range between 200,000 to a high of two million women burned at the stake during this 300-year period. The sordid paradox of the Women’s Holocaust is that it happened during the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. This is just another example of how male-dominated power and extermination is truly crazy making.
Women were already cast in the role as being complicit with the Devil, so it was no stretch to level accusations against them for behaviors the church claimed as heretical. But really the causal factor behind this holocaust was that of sustaining the power of men and the church. If the church had been holding high the truth of the dignity and sacredness of all people, things, and every created being, why would it be torturing and killing so many women who they ruled were guilty of spurious charges?
Women were accused of witchcraft; some were covered with burning oil, or burned at the stake. No doubt, there were many terroristic rapes as well. Women were butchered or drowned, with their children forced to watch these insane and demonic acts; imagine, children forced to see their mothers killed… What else could this have resulted in except PTSD thousands of years before it was labeled this by contemporary psychologies? Women were also killed at the hands of church and state for being herbalists or healers. They were seen as evil because of their love of the earth and its restorative powers.
The mistreatment of women as inferior to men was part of the Holocaust of Women, and its practices migrated into the New World. It resulted in the Salem Witch trials in the New England states. It has continued to migrate by way of many more covert and subtle ways of oppression: at one time the suppression of civil rights such as voting, abusiveness, murder, rape, domestic violence, sexual harassment, discriminatory treatment, and a culture that still lives in many places steeped with sexism as a normal part of its life. I use the words “its life” advisedly because now sexism and misogyny are a part of our overall system. Systemic sources are bigger and more powerful than individuals. But it’s still a holocaust, no matter how you look at it or try to defend it.
I was so moved by a homiletic of a woman in our community Betty Duff that I became physically ill when I listened to her remarks: like a dredged out well with nothing left inside. All of us men had a mother; we may have sisters, aunts, girl cousins, and grandmothers we knew, yet each of us as men has assisted the White Male System to continue to live and breathe. I think of my own social conditioning growing up as a boy, then a young adult, and now an older adult. I am now recovery from this sickness of the male-dominated, sexist, and superior system; I listen more closely to my inner conversations around female stereotypes, as I have become more conscious and aware. My brain registers thoughts and ideas that I picked up in the land of domination and power. Now I’m moving through the plane of acute awareness, deconstruction, and reconstruction, and the old thought processes and behaviors are often hardened like fossils in ancient burial places. Healing is a dirty and messy business, but the end results are cleansing and lifting.
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. August 2009
Many, many thanks to Betty Duff who researched this time period and shared it with our community, Marilyn Douglas-Jones who offered help in editing, and Deborah Levine who gave me helpful feedback prior to the publishing of this blog on the American Diversity Report.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
INTERNAL DISARMAMENT (POEM)
INTERNAL DISARMAMENT
DL says/not talkin’ Hughley,
Talkin’ Dalai Lama/now that’s some real chewy\we all got this thing
From a negative cell……that’s called our brain/name it Internal Disarmament
For me, the news heaven-sent
Scraped off on my cranium cement/
Told me you can do something good
That’s coming from a bad ‘hood
And do it out of anger or another
Dark feeling that can smother
Every sight in your binoculars
High decibel mono-culture and
Mono lens/you drive away friends
Draw the haters to you/means and ends/ all scrambled it’s
Stubbing your toe on weeds brambled\
Message comes over the fire drill
Sound system/get yo act together
Says, “Enemy at hand!,” like PTSD/
Got to align yo inner and outer
Self and get ready to “T”
Off the ball at the first “T”
Just forget ‘bout me/you see/
Because in my denial I’m trying to not see the memory that brought
On this inner attack, just keep comin’ back/doing the same ole thing
I always done, so I ain’t aware
Of the big noise scare for the need
For Internal Disarmament
So go plant the seed
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. August, 2009
DL says/not talkin’ Hughley,
Talkin’ Dalai Lama/now that’s some real chewy\we all got this thing
From a negative cell……that’s called our brain/name it Internal Disarmament
For me, the news heaven-sent
Scraped off on my cranium cement/
Told me you can do something good
That’s coming from a bad ‘hood
And do it out of anger or another
Dark feeling that can smother
Every sight in your binoculars
High decibel mono-culture and
Mono lens/you drive away friends
Draw the haters to you/means and ends/ all scrambled it’s
Stubbing your toe on weeds brambled\
Message comes over the fire drill
Sound system/get yo act together
Says, “Enemy at hand!,” like PTSD/
Got to align yo inner and outer
Self and get ready to “T”
Off the ball at the first “T”
Just forget ‘bout me/you see/
Because in my denial I’m trying to not see the memory that brought
On this inner attack, just keep comin’ back/doing the same ole thing
I always done, so I ain’t aware
Of the big noise scare for the need
For Internal Disarmament
So go plant the seed
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. August, 2009
Saturday, August 8, 2009
INTERNAL DISARMAMENT
Some Buddhist activists were sitting around discussing a project they had worked on in Tibet (cited in Dharma, Color and Culture edited by Hilda Gutierrez Baldooquin, 2004, pp.205-208); some of the participants just didn’t feel right about how the project went that had been initiated and successfully completed years earlier. As they dialoged about this, a major self-reflection came to the fore. Some of the group suggested that while they were working on the project they felt they were coming out of an inner space of anger; because of the nature of anger dissipating what otherwise would be positive energy, they had fallen into the trap of overemphasizing their activism, and losing the emphasis of their spiritual practice.
The writer of this short article described the need for internal disarmament, a phrase borrowed from the Dalai Lama. The world does need external disarmament in terms of our addiction to possess nuclear weaponry to kill off our enemies. But maybe we need internal disarmament in an even more cogent way.
When I read this, it resonated with me right away. I thought back to my hippy days, and how I would relate to the establishment. I remember the strong and raw feelings of anger, disappointment, shattered expectations that I experienced towards the systemic problems of our culture. My solution at the time was to get in the face of anyone who seemed to be a symbol of this misguided culture we call the US of A. My protesting ways were laced with the fuel of anger, and this also colored many of my assumptions and biases that I felt toward society in general, but particularly those who claimed to be authority figures within the White Male System.
I have had similar reactions (leading to semantic reactions) towards conservatives, Christian fundamentalists, and anyone I considered anti-progressive. I have had a lot of anger towards people within these movements, and I know that this has lessened my ability to listen and to dialog with people who hold to some of these views. Perhaps I’ve missed some opportunities to get to some action steps. The old saying rings into my mind: ‘There are a lot of people against something, instead of being for something.’
Don’t get me wrong, there’s much to protest, and to raise awareness about right now; in fact, we may live at a threshold time when there are more social injustices grabbing the jugular veins of people who have the least resources, and even those others who may not be labeled as “disadvantaged” who are ordinary human beings simply trying to survive, while the wealthy and powerful, continue on in their bliss of denial and lack of accountability to society.
What I learned I had to do was to take a step backwards in detachment, and then look at my own motives and rationale for doing what I do. Do I resist the inequalities of society out of vengeance and retaliation, or do I think and act out of a well thought-out and honest critique of what’s wrong about the way our institutions function?
As I’m experiencing life presently, what is the most difficult thing to comprehend is how the employees of big corporations just ‘go along to get along’ for the security of their jobs. I know that unemployment is a stressful factor, but to deny our own integrity and collude with the monsters that put food into our mouths is for me totally inappropriate.
My daily interactions with representatives of the power elites, aka politicians, corporate systems, insurance systems, are often conversations of neglect and indifference. When I write letters I almost never get a human reply—usually it’s just some form letter. Rarely do I find someone that actually thinks for herself, and isn’t just trying to get over on my needs and me. So I guess what I’m angry at is the omission of humane treatment. I want to see corporations, companies, organizations and other groups simply meet me on a human level, display some humble accountability to me because I pay their salary, listen to me on that level, and then try to be an advocate for me when possible.
Part of the solution for me is doing the hard work of transforming my own heedless and self-oriented conditioning to one of humanistic dignity. If I don’t continue to do this kind of healing for myself, I will continue to react in anger and anxiety. Societal retrogression is in exponential movement, and is largely based on societal anxiety run wild. So I commit to be centered in my own humanity so that I can empathetically confront and comfort those in need. So I see my need for internal disarmament—do you?
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. August, 2009
The writer of this short article described the need for internal disarmament, a phrase borrowed from the Dalai Lama. The world does need external disarmament in terms of our addiction to possess nuclear weaponry to kill off our enemies. But maybe we need internal disarmament in an even more cogent way.
When I read this, it resonated with me right away. I thought back to my hippy days, and how I would relate to the establishment. I remember the strong and raw feelings of anger, disappointment, shattered expectations that I experienced towards the systemic problems of our culture. My solution at the time was to get in the face of anyone who seemed to be a symbol of this misguided culture we call the US of A. My protesting ways were laced with the fuel of anger, and this also colored many of my assumptions and biases that I felt toward society in general, but particularly those who claimed to be authority figures within the White Male System.
I have had similar reactions (leading to semantic reactions) towards conservatives, Christian fundamentalists, and anyone I considered anti-progressive. I have had a lot of anger towards people within these movements, and I know that this has lessened my ability to listen and to dialog with people who hold to some of these views. Perhaps I’ve missed some opportunities to get to some action steps. The old saying rings into my mind: ‘There are a lot of people against something, instead of being for something.’
Don’t get me wrong, there’s much to protest, and to raise awareness about right now; in fact, we may live at a threshold time when there are more social injustices grabbing the jugular veins of people who have the least resources, and even those others who may not be labeled as “disadvantaged” who are ordinary human beings simply trying to survive, while the wealthy and powerful, continue on in their bliss of denial and lack of accountability to society.
What I learned I had to do was to take a step backwards in detachment, and then look at my own motives and rationale for doing what I do. Do I resist the inequalities of society out of vengeance and retaliation, or do I think and act out of a well thought-out and honest critique of what’s wrong about the way our institutions function?
As I’m experiencing life presently, what is the most difficult thing to comprehend is how the employees of big corporations just ‘go along to get along’ for the security of their jobs. I know that unemployment is a stressful factor, but to deny our own integrity and collude with the monsters that put food into our mouths is for me totally inappropriate.
My daily interactions with representatives of the power elites, aka politicians, corporate systems, insurance systems, are often conversations of neglect and indifference. When I write letters I almost never get a human reply—usually it’s just some form letter. Rarely do I find someone that actually thinks for herself, and isn’t just trying to get over on my needs and me. So I guess what I’m angry at is the omission of humane treatment. I want to see corporations, companies, organizations and other groups simply meet me on a human level, display some humble accountability to me because I pay their salary, listen to me on that level, and then try to be an advocate for me when possible.
Part of the solution for me is doing the hard work of transforming my own heedless and self-oriented conditioning to one of humanistic dignity. If I don’t continue to do this kind of healing for myself, I will continue to react in anger and anxiety. Societal retrogression is in exponential movement, and is largely based on societal anxiety run wild. So I commit to be centered in my own humanity so that I can empathetically confront and comfort those in need. So I see my need for internal disarmament—do you?
© Christopher Bear Beam, M.A. August, 2009
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