WHAT IS TO BE DONE WITH THE NORMALIZING OF HATRED IN AMERICA

What do we do in a society where it becomes the norm to hate and to act out upon certain segments of that society? What do we do when there is no longer any social stigma or peer pressure for those who openly espouse and practice brutal and unethical behaviors? Once it was seen as shameful for people to intimidate and attack others because of their race or religion; they wore hoods to cover their faces. Now it is something to be proud of. Is hatred-as-the-norm a triumph of just ignorance? Was the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1920s and 30s just a result of ignorance? Obviously not. It was the rise of indifference though, and the rise of avoidance and obliviousness to injustice and brutality. 

Is this happening now in our country? How is it that the man running for President bragged that he could grab a woman's "pussy" whenever he wanted to and without any ramifications whatsoever, and was elected President by Americans? Is this a "liberal" problem? To my mind, a creep is a creep. And then he said it "just lockerroom talk," as if not actually doing that made it socially acceptable. Is this kind of thing actually acceptable to those who voted for this man? If so, America is in for a very bleak future, though I am quite aware that such mistreatment of women and of minorities, both racial and sexual, has never really subsided very much. That people could be treated as less, much less as less-than-human, is still the case. The genocide of Native People cannot be glossed over either. But, I digress.

If you were a Jew in Nazi Germany as the process of hatred was developing, what were you to do? If you had Christian friends in the community who had once treated you with respect and as German equals, what were you to do when they allowed themselves to be coopted by the social propaganda and did nothing as you and your people were singled out as pariahs and discriminated against? Most "good citizens" hope for the best or at least hope that this would be just a passing phase. Jews were aware that such things had happened to them in many societies throughout their history. But as Nazis came out in force and Brown Shirt thugs began to attack them, smashing their stores and beating them, how did they feel? What could they do? They believed in so-called democracy, but also knew, I imagine, just how fragile cooperation among people of different beliefs actually is. They probably realized that "faith in the goodness and fairness of others" is absolutely dependent on whether people had food on their table and money in their pockets. So most of them followed the rules and did what they were told. They knew they were outnumbered and out-manned.

I realize that to mention the predicament of the Jewish people in Germany (and elsewhere) at that time in history is provocative. I am not Jewish and perhaps am overly assumptive, if not arrogant. But what do decent, law-abiding Americans who "believe in democracy" and who actually have "faith in the goodness of others" do at this point in our American history? If the Jewish minority of Germany had "spoken out," they would have been crushed. However, we Americans who are ethical and democratic in our beliefs (and I realize the irony of that as I say it, for many Americans have grievously suffered at American hands), are in the majority and have not been coopted as yet. We have ideals of justice, of fairness, of equality, and of ethics. We have the responsibility to stand up to injustice, hatred, bigotry, corruption, greed, and the usurpation of power by those who seek to control America and its people. 

LEARN TO FEEL WHAT YOU FEEL

We must learn to feel what we feel. We must learn to be able to identify how we feel, what we feel. To "identify" in this way is not to "figure out," not to mentally analyze, but to know "this is joy," "this is grief," "this is fear," simply because the feeling is that clear and strong within us. If we do not know what we feel, we may readily believe others when they tell us what our feeling is. Or tell us why it is that we feel this way. Whether it is intentional or not, good or evil, our power is taken away from us. If we are angry or we are hurt, we must know this; it is specifically borne in us and is for us to feel and to see. It is not to be given up to someone else, nor is it to be judged to be "wrong" or "bad" or "evil," or even "misinformed." It is only when our action follows from our inability to know ourselves and is a reactive expression of it that it may become wrong, or bad, or evil, or it may also be right or good. To pretend that we do not feel, or to ignore our feelings and not recognize them, nor identify them, numbs us from ourselves, from our bodies and our beings, and separates us from each other as well, making us quite alone in the world and in our own life. We feel that we do not belong here in the world with other people. Some of us, because of trauma that we may have experienced in our lives, absolutely feel that we are separate from humanity itself and do not have a part with others in the world. And we may not even be aware of such a feeling and its accompanying belief and behavior. This is why it's so hard for many people to even be aware of themselves as feeling in the first place, for feeling for them may be a most painful experience, a most sorrowful and grief-stricken experience. 

I was born six weeks early and kept in an incubator, a plastic box with a heat lamp like they use to hatch chickens, with very little human touch for another six weeks. I did not know human touch. After three months alone in this way, being touched was most intense, invasive and frightening to me; I recoiled from it in fear and pain, causing people who loved me to lose patience and label me as a certain kind of child. At that time it was called "childhood schizophrenia"; now it's "autism." My father was a medic in WWII and was present at Normandy Beach on D-Day and at the Battle of the Bulge. He was artistic and drew pen and ink drawings of the battlefield. They looked like a Bosch painting of Hell with my father standing right in the middle of dying men surrounded by body parts. This affected him deeply; he suffered from PTSD. When I was a young child with my inability to relate normally, he thought I was being defiant, came after me and beat me, terrifying me to the point that I could not even move. And I could see the images of the battlefield in his mind. He had no idea where he was or what he was doing; he too was terrified. The hardest part for me was to reconcile that this pain and violence came from someone whom I knew loved me. He was never able to talk about what happened or how he felt. There was no medical program available for WWII veterans to "debrief" or otherwise treat them. Their children, if they were fortunate, came to somehow understand why this was happening, though this did not diminish the bodily pain and shame, and the psychological terror. I learned to outrun my father; I could see the condition "coming on" and just got out of his vicinity and hid where I could. I never told anyone about it until I was in my twenties and my father never told anyone about either the war or about his treatment of me. He could never bring himself to identify with his pain and I think it did much to make him a sad man and to destroy his health. In retrospect I wish I could have "been there" more for him but I wasn't. I moved to California, three thousand miles away, to "feel safe," and this, as a grown man in my twenties. The hardest part is that I always knew he loved me very much but that he felt so bad about hurting me that he couldn't accept himself, nor could he ask me for forgiveness. 

And so, we must be willing to know how we feel and why we feel that way. Sometimes I notice that I feel a certain way--sad, happy, angry, etc.-- though I cannot really see why or how I do. Usually the reason "comes" to me in due time. Sometimes it's not even so personal but almost a collective feeling, a social barometer, so to speak. I do see how people's emotions are manipulated by those in power as well as any social media, and that societies are highly susceptible to what amounts to propaganda. It is so important that we learn to know ourselves.

MY "EXISTENTIAL DILEMMA" PRESENTED TO A SAGE PHILOSOPHER

First, let me present what might be called the existential/ontological dilemma and seeming opposition that I have been grappling with and seeking reconciliation for many years. You may be familiar with it and it may be very basic and simple for you with your philosophical background. Simply put, it is the question of the "here and now" vs. the "there and then," or the pragmatic vs. the metaphysical. One perspective is that of our existence as simply unmediated and unprincipled, i.e., as inherently without meaning but certainly happening here and now and to be utilized optimally for not just ourselves but for all extensions of such, viz., the community, the world. This notion is very well-presented and articulated in Daodejing--"Making This Life Significant"; A Philosophical Translation by Ames and Hall (2003). The authors see Daoism as quite philosophically Pragmatic, citing James, Dewey, and Rorty. However, the text itself, utilizing the "recently discovered Bamboo Texts," states:

"In carrying about your more spiritual and more physical aspects and embracing their oneness, 

Are you able to keep them from separating?" (90)

The other perspective in this equation, if you will, is the notion that we are spirits embodied in flesh and this being between spirit and matter is called soul. I have tended to be "torn" between the two, but see that the twain does meet, and meet well, in Daoism. This Daoism was further "developed" into ritualistic and social Confucianism and also into a kind of metaphysics in Buddhism (I am referring primarily to Zen, which may even be seen as a Japanese form of Daoism-Confucianism, according to my interpretation of Suzuki). Zen does hold to a sense of eternalness and unchangingness in its notion of "true nature," or "suchness of being," and, in that respect, is dissimilar to Daoism, which is more nature-based and change-based, or cycle-oriented. The more metaphysical perspective, which is mediated, structured, and principled, is also strongly present within Gnosticism (apparently in all of its schools), at least up to a certain point of development. The same is true for Theosophy. However, once awareness reaches the pinnacle of the seventh chakra, the self moves into the Self and becomes boddhisatvic. I apologize for mixing all these religious metaphors. 

My point is that I am able to get a grasp of being in the here and now while also being in the there and then; we are multi-leveled beings. But the Daoist realization is NOT one of "understanding" or "wisdom" but rather of experience in the body, in the embodied soul that feels all of this livingness. It seems that such experience is just about impossible for a Western mind trained in principled logic, and, yes, magic (as opposed to what I see as spiritual transformation). James Hillman, of archetypal psychology, is a most notable exception; he understood the vitality of the embodied, feeling soul so well.  

FATE'S GREAT WONDER AND GOODNESS

The only "saving grace" for me that allows me to "press on" and live my life each day is that I believe that my life is meant to happen as it does and that my challenge and role is to glean or learn from it in order to become a "better person," obviously, to the world itself and not just me as an individual. What keeps my life in place is the "cement" of my responsibilities to others and even myself. Such responsibilities are the "blinders" this donkey wears so as to not stray from the "crooked and wide" road he is on. It is only my belief in the "good of fate" as a guide and teacher that keeps me moving in just this pragmatic and natural "faith." I profess a rather Daoistic view of life, which would seem at odds with my belief that "my life is meant to happen as it does." The Daoists would not say that it is "meant" but rather that it happens as it does because that's how it is, and that one must learn to be present and aware as much as possible in order to be as fully in and best responsive to the moment as possible. They do moralize things as "good" or "bad" though they do recognize responses as well as events that are "increasing" or "decreasing" to the integrity and reality of the moment. They also recognize the "habit" of responsive ritual that assists us in self-discipline and in otherwise "doing the right thing." I may be misinterpreting Daoism but I think I'm being pretty accurate.

All that is interesting, but, in the meantime, I have people who are close to me who suffer great physical pain and must live with it, and themselves deteriorating as each day comes and goes. I even happen to fit in that category. I overexert myself all the time and then suffer painful consequences. But I don't tend to further suffer in my mind over any of my physical suffering, whereas other people do. At times I may even be depressive but I'm not depressed; more of a tending to than an active state. But I am affected by the sorrow of people, of the "pain of the world," called weltschmerz by Schopenhauer. It is something I always want to somehow alleviate by bringing some kind of "understanding" or awareness to people. I realize that we all die, that death is imminent for all of us, that we do in fact fall apart in due time, and then vanish from the face of the earth. I find the last fact to be utterly amazing, for I find myself to be so identified, for instance, with this little book-lined office in which I word; I am literally surrounded by all this stuff on my desk and in front of me all these words I have written, seemingly endlessly. And when I am gone, the mess will be right here on my desk; my words and my books standing alone. But, in truth, no one hears them or reads them even now, in spite of any interesting, much less "valuable," things they may hold. Such is life and fate.

So I continue to take even this bodily and sometimes emotional and psychological pain with a certain kind of peace and acceptance; it is always life speaking to me. God or the gods don't tend to speak to me as such but life does. In other words, I speak to myself, often even as father to child, or as mother to child, for each speaks differently, and I do my best to hear this pain and suffering and lack of understanding that comes from the child. I actually have a black and white third-grade school photo of myself right next to my desk; it does speak volumes to me. My lips are set in a kind of grim smile. My eyes portray a pained anger behind the black-rimmed glasses that were broken in half and that I repaired myself with electrical tape after my father slapped me hard across the face, smashing my glasses against the wall, after I put my elbow on the dinner table. I let this little boy speak to me whenever he has the need or desire. I also hold him gently now, offering a bit of rather late consolation.

So, there is no escaping ourselves or our history. Telling our stories does help to free us of ourselves, even if told just to ourselves. Even if told to others, they are still just told to ourselves, for others are not ourselves; they are themselves. They have their own experience, as we have ours. In other words, it is we ourselves who must learn from life as it has come at us, while also realizing that, in many respects, it is we ourselves who have molded both our lives and ourselves to be as they are. Our reactions to what happens are all internal, all within us, right down to the pain we may feel in our bodies. I once meditated (zazen) to attain a semblance of peace but that gave way to trying to be able to see who I am and how I am, what I feel and how I think and vice-versa. Peace is somewhere in the mix but has been ruled out as a goal in itself. I believe we are here to make our own sense of both our lives and of existence in itself; we are not just here to "feel good," especially when the world itself does not. Rather, I believe we are here to help as best we can. Help who?, you may ask. Help ourselves, which is everyone.

WHERE MY STORIES "GO"

Sometimes I convey myself and my life by telling stories of things that I have experienced in my life. Such stories seem rather compelling in the moment. But a number of realizations and further directions occur after I tell the stories:
  1. I realize that I am not simply a series of stories about myself in my life.
  2. The stories lead to a context that is larger than myself or my life, or to a place of all stories in all lives. In other words, I go both bigger and more inclusive, and deeper within myself to a place more of "human existence" than of "personal being" (though the latter is still there).
  3. Once I tell the story, it is as though it has been "published" or is now a "major motion picture" and is other out of my hands and something about me which has now been externalized and is no longer very "personal" to me. In telling such stories, I seem to "lose" a bit of myself. 

We tell our stories about ourselves, believing that they are ourselves, that they are what "makes us up" to be as we are. I think we tell them so that we might be "heard," and thus have more proof to ourselves that we do in fact exist and have our own lives. Some of us may tell our stories to others but I think we all tell our stories to ourselves; we just have to know that we are somehow real. I don't think that to tell our stories is narcissitic or self-centered, but, rather, human. Why did we once make paintings of bison in caves? Why do we "pass down our histories"? Perhaps that is the only thing we can really "leave" of ourselves to others. Like "do this in remembrance of me."

So, of late, I have conveyed a few stories, perhaps also to demonstrate what I see as philosophical points or simply observations of what it is to be human. We use our own lives as examples of this or of that, of wisdom or of folly, of success or failure, of pride or of regret. And we are the authorities on our own stories, our own experiences, even if our reading of ourselves is purely subjective. If I can show people how I feel about something, they might very well be able to feel it too. So, our story-telling can make us more human and bring us together if we speak from what we call our hearts. What I'm trying to say is that telling our stories has the potential to bring us close to each other. And why would we want to be "close to each other"? Because that's actually who we are and why we are here; that is the natural outcome of ourselve if we were free enough to actually be ourselves.

WE CAN DO THE RIGHT THING IF WE DO IT RIGHT/WRITE

I write because there is always something wanting to be said; always an unspoken voice wanting to be heard. I write so I can hear it, so that I know it has been said. The world has not been saved by whatever has been spoken, written, but it has been changed, perhaps even improved a very light bit, because something that wanted to be said has been said and I have heard it. I am probably the only one changed by my writing, and so I keep on telling a story, never knowing where it goes or even where it comes from. It seems to come perhaps from my interpretation of my experience, but, though it may be my interpretation, is it actually of "my" experience. Back in 1970, I was a Conscientious Objector, objecting to my participation in the war in Vietnam. That is a story in itself but I was "assigned" to work in a residential care facility near Millbrook, NY at which I was a "child care counselor" or houseparent to a group of "emotionally disturbed" boys, ages 3 to 12. Most of these kids were from Harlem, NY, and had lived hellish lives before they were taken out of their living situations and put into this "institution" where I worked. When some of them first arrived, they were very afraid of the trees, which flailed wildly in the wind at times. The kids thought the trees were monstrous and were going to "get them." They had actually never seen such "wild trees" in their lives and thought that they were somehow moving on their own volition. I, man of the world that I was, and one quite familiar with wild trees, helped allay their fears. But the interesting part is that when I was a very young child, my mother parked me in my carriage in the park near where I lived, and I watched the trees moving for hours, and came to believe too that they were quite alive and moving on their own. I had forgotten about that until these little kids came along, and I still have the same thought when I walk these days in the Forest of Nisene Marks, a great redwood forest where I walk frequently. In fact, I tell people that the "big joke that the trees play on humans is that they all move their branches around at the same time so that humans will think it is the wind blowing."  

When I moved to my house in the "burbs" ten years ago, I looked out this window in my office and saw only houses around me. Now I look at out and see ... trees--pines, oaks, apple, birch. The biggest one blocking the view of the houses is an Italian Pine Christmas tree I replanted (and there are three others at various stages of growth). And my yard is so tiny. In 1987 I bought Dick Smothers' (of the Smothers Brothers) estate on thirty acres and nursed every little tree, most oak and pine, until there was a literal forest on the ex-vineyard in front of the house. Trees are mostly good listeners and very rarely answer back, though one time a dead branch fell, hit me in the face, and gave me a bloody nose. There was no wind, it had been listening to my babbling, and must've had enough. Three inches more and it could have cracked my skull. Such a sense of humor.

Now a blue jay is looking around for peanuts that I sometimes put on a plate outside on the deck. My daughter tells me that it is not "environmentally sound" or perhaps even "morally correct" to feed wild animals. But she seems unaware that it was the wild animals that tamed us humans and that they are far more "civilized" than any human beings. Though I have always wanted to have a bumpers ticker (still another silly) that read: "I eat dogs and I vote," just to irritate people. It is the sheer, stupid complacency of society that has always bothered me. This is why I am compelled and condemned to be the Devil's advocate. 

Let's talk about that. I already noted that I was assigned as a Conscientious Objector to work at the children's institution for two years. Within the first week, my boys started school at the on-campus school. And within the first week, the young and inexperienced teacher complained to the administration that the boys were "out of control" and "unteachable." And then within the first week, the administration had a meeting with the institution's "medical team" who decided that all of the boys should take Ritalin as a "mood stabilizer" so that they can be "properly educated." I will avoid "going racial" here. I was quite unfamiliar with Ritalin and did administer it initially to the kids before they went to school.
When they got home and all went to sleep, I realized that they were now quite "under control." The next day, before school, I made a deal with them. I said, "If you guys will be very good in school and do what the teacher says, I will let you stay up on Friday night and watch Creature Features, make you pop-corn and hot fudge sundaes, bring you out for pizza every week, and make hot dogs out on the barbecue." On that day I refrained from giving them the Ritalin just to see if they would keep their part of the bargain. And so for a few more days. Then, on that Friday, I got a call from the teacher, and she said, "The boys have been wonderful. That medication makes an absolute difference." For the next two years, at every weekly meeting, the administration and its doctors lauded themselves on their "profound success" in drugging the boys with Ritalin, and I dumped the Ritalin down the toilet every single morning. The Epilogue: as I neared the end of my two-year stint (in which I had become as a real parent to the boys), at one of the weekly meetings after the administration once again complimented itself on its great success, I told them, "For the last almost two years, it is the boys themselves who changed their behavior because I asked them to and gave them some minor positive reinforcements. In fact they have not received a single doze of Ritalin since the very first day." The administration threatened me with arrest and jail for what I had done, but they knew that if word got out, that they would be utterly ridiculed, if not sued themselves. So they had no recourse but to fire me just a few days early. Sometimes we can do the right thing, if we do it right.

PERPETUALLY SEEKING BALANCE: PERPETUALLY FINDING AND LOSING IT

"Seeking balance" is no simple task, for all moves all the time. From a Daoist perspective of unprincipled knowledge in which "events" are perpetually occurring, including oneself, there is not the psychological or spiritual comfort of an "unmoving, eternal center." There is no "God fix" available; rather, everything happening has its own being, its own reality, itself. All of this is taken into account, if not literally, then metaphorically, though still as attentively as is possible. This is necessary simply because all of it is so; all of it is occurring here and now, including ourselves. Even Zen presupposes a "suchness of being," a "true nature," as it were (and as it is). This too is all-inclusive, and, now that I think about it, even similar to Jung's notion of "Self" (though I have little regard for the most hypocritical man in spite of some of the insights he conveniently took from others while claiming full credit). And living in a most principled culture (in the sense of "absolutes" and "eternals"), I too have my staid beliefs in so many archetypes of reality.

So, though I may espouse a hoped-for Daoist and/or zen (with a "small z") perspective, I also find myself quite drawn to certain Gnostic beliefs (accounted for by my Catholic Calvinistic early "education" as well as my years of Theosophical training). In spite of the Daoist/zen leanings and my profound appreciation of filtered sunlight through the redwoods, I am fascinated by the Gnostic notion (as in Valentinianism but reflected in so many other places) that as the spirit incarnates in the flesh for the purpose of "knowing the flesh through being the flesh," it, now as the soul, the place of being "between" spirit and matter, necessarily identifies with the "lower," which is matter, flesh, and its particular survival desires, which are overpowering. That we are supposed to be able to rise above, i.e., to transcend, this identity of the flesh, of survival in the flesh after we have so successfully made the transition into human being, is fraught with much inherent difficulty, if not impossibility. And this is the pronounced quest of probably all religions: to get back to where we were with what we are. Even the Daodejing wants us to return to the purity of our "primordial state." And even the most sublime Christian or Theosophical teachings and/or magic, no matter how well understood and even known do not necessarily get us anywhere beyond ourselves, our current state of being. This is precisely why the Gnostics believed that only "God" could pick us out of the crowd and "save" us from the darkness of existence in the flesh. And then, once chosen, one was really "in for it," since now one had no choice because one was "anointed," i.e., "enlightened." I didn't mention Native American religion, which is kind of a cross (no pun intended) between East and West.

This "transmutation" or purification of "lower being" to "higher being" has always been my existential dilemma. I have sought to understand it from many vantage points and have tried many ways and rituals and spells and all kinds of actions to "transcend" myself. In some ways I have succeeded, while failing as well. Bob Dylan's lyrics, "There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all," come to mind (Love Minus Zero?). As I've previously noted, the closest I come to resolution of this riddle is in "sitting," in which I am just "here with myself as ever I may be." Provision of "breathing space" is seemingly the very best I can do for myself, which is to say, for everyone else as well. I once titled a blog, Taking a Breath in the Scheme of Things, so it has been with me for a while. A few people actually related to that theme. But I only sit occasionally these days. I'm disciplined when I'm disciplined, and otherwise not so much. My religion is my own and no one else's. If my soul shall be lost, I shall lose it and no one else. I wish. As if everything in my mind and my heart were actually mine. As if there could even be only me. No, truly, I am you as well as me. I am the other, both within and without. Sarte said, "Hell is other people," and he was so right. But, again, just where are all those "other people"?

I like writing this blog. It makes me think that someone is actually listening, and perhaps even understanding, and even better, enjoying the "conversation." I like to believe that there are people who see things much as I do, and question as I do. I'm sure there are, though I don't know what I would talk about if I met one. I have met people who "think along the same lines," as it were, but people that think like me also tend to be a bit argumentative, if not opinionated, even megalomanic. People have told me I'm "judgmental" and "too provocative," though to me, I simple assess and ask questions. Sometimes I am of the mind that one can "understand"; other times I believe that one can never possibly understand, but can only accept.