Category Archives: politics

conflict habituated relationships

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Mobi Ho, in his introduction to  book, Thich Nhat Hanh’s, The Miracle of Mindfulness, describes how the disciples of Hanh attempted to facilitate reconciliation in Viet Nam after the war ended in 1973.  He noted that these disciples “persistently refused to support either armed party and believed that both sides were but the reflection of one reality, (my emphasis) and that the true enemies were not people, but ideology, hatred, and ignorance. (my emphasis)

How can opposing sides of any issue be merely “the reflection of one reality”?  Even more so, how can this be the case when both sides are armed to the teeth?  Ho believed that the answer is because both sides of the conflict were slaves to “ideology, hatred, and ignorance.”  T. S. Eliot described these peoples as “united by the strife which divided them.”

This is also relevant to the field of mental health.  In my trade, we have a term for couples who are joined at the hip in intense conflict and would never leave each other for any amount of money:  conflict habituated relationships.  I once knew a couple who spent the last 35 years of their life, living at opposite ends of the same house.  They hated each other intently and ravaged the lives of their children.  But they could not do without each other.

I believe that Ho was very astute in his observation that the real issue in conflicts like these is “ideology, hatred, and ignorance.”   It is as if the people are “the toy of some great pain”.  (I think that quote comes from Ranier Rilke).

And, to conclude, I can’t help but apply this phenomena to our current Congress.  I fear that the real issue is that many of them are mere ideologues, filled with “hatred and ignorance” and are willing to “ravage the lives of their children”, i.e. the American citizenry.

And one further point.  Ideology is ideology.  Be it conservative or be it liberal, ideology is ideology.  The point is to have ideas, of course, but not be so blind as to bludgeon other people with those ideas.

Mormonism and the GOP

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I’m a staunch liberal Democrat but I’m very interested in the Republican campaign underway.  I’m amazed that Romney is doing so well as I have always avowed a Mormon would have no chance with the right ring contingent of the GOP.  Sure, Mormonism has some really strange beliefs but I think that can be said of any religion.  The right-wingers might be backed into the corner on this issue and have to vote for Romney if O’Bama is going to be defeated.  And, as they’ve made clear, defeat of O’Bama is their number one objective.  And I’d love it even more if Herman Cain proves to be the VP nominee.  I can see those right-wingers grimacing at the prospect of voting for a Mormon and a black man on the same ticket.  And that would give me a perverted pleasure, I agree.  But, more importantly, it might be one small baby-step in the direction of increased tolerance for the conservative Republicans.

 

O’bama faking terrorist threat!!!!

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“Yeah, O’Bama and his cohorts are making up this terrorist threat for 9/11 just to divert attention from a failing economy!”

No, once again, I don’t really believe that.  I made it up!   But if I happen to hate him and/or “liberals”, I am inclined to interpret news in a fashion to confirm my bias and therefore arouse passions in similarly uncritical thinkers to hate him/them like I do.  It is similar to the prophets of doom and catastrophe-monger-ers–they are full of existential insecurity and dread (i.e. the poison of self-loathing) and thus compulsively announce, “The sky is falling!  The sky is falling!”  The simpleton “birthers” and “O’bama is a Muslim” crowd are guilty of the same lack of critical thinking.

Now, conservatives are going to interpret O’Bama and liberalism from their perspective.  And they should!  We need different perspectives, certainly the conservative one.  But it is important that conservatives, or liberals, or libertarians pause briefly before they make pronouncements and consider, “Now, am I just grinding my axe again?”  Now most of us will, after that pause, go right ahead and grind our axe.  I know I will!  But it is important to pause, and in that pause, from time to time we might learn that there is another way of looking at things.  And, it is important to look at things differently on occasion.

And this touches on a core issue in our culture right now—what is real and what is unreal.  I am of the conviction (i.e. “bias”) that “real” is a very nebulous term.  We are now at a point in our species development where we need to embrace the nebulous nature of reality and be willing to re-define a lot of the “categories” that we fall into and into which we project our world.  But this kind of “sophistry” is anathema to the hyper-conservatives who are not willing, or able, to compromise with what they know to be “real.”  An old fundamentalist bromide sums up this attitude, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.”

 

 

Be nice!

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I watched the Republican debate last night and was made aware of how important it is to “be nice.”  Even when we have strong feelings about something…such as political issues…it is important to realize that we can still “be nice” even as we feel very intensely.  As the two parties gear up for the 2012 election, it is important to remember that it is kind of like being on the playground and choosing sides for some scrap football game, then wanting, re the opponent, “to kick their ass.”  It is fun to win and part of the energy flowing on the political scene is that of a horse race….if I might switch metaphor here…and I want my pony to win.

And the need to “be nice” is always present.  As I lead my day-to-day life, there are often feelings of unpleasantness re other people I come in contact with.   And I try to practice “mindfulness” and recognize these thoughts and feelings as they come.  And it is often very helpful to remember the notion of “random acts of kindness” and respond appropriately.

The media is so often “not nice.”  It is almost as if they seek stories to hold out before us in which someone has acted foolishly and shamefully.  It is so rewarding to listen to or read of these people and snicker, laugh, or heap scorn upon them.  I often think of Michael Jackson and how he became a scapegoat for us.  Sure, he was….well…Michael Jackson.  Michael made some horrible choices because he wrestled with deep-seated personal demons.  But we went too far in ridicule of him.  I recently read where he had acknowledged this experience and how it made him feel.—“Yeah, Wacko Jacko, where did that come from? Some English tabloid. I have a heart and I have feelings. I feel that when you do that to me. It’s not nice.”

Michael suffered a lot in his life, and caused suffering to others, but we didn’t have to demonize him.  When I was a child we had “the village idiot” and it was so fun to view him with contempt, scorn, and derisive humor.  But it was “not nice.”  So, today, let’s all “be nice!”

All Republicans are racist!!!!!!!

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The Republican party is united against President O’Bama and O’Bama is a black man.  Ip so facto, all Republicans are racist.

Well, actually I don’t think this is so.  BUT, why not say that it is so, and say so with vehemence and self-assuredness, and do so on the “lame-street media”, and therefore make it so. For, most people do not watch or read the news with any discrimination and believe whatever is presented to them as fact.  This is particularly so with the right-wing of the conservative movement.  They live on a steady diet of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh (and his ilk), and conservative religion.  And they are now dug in at the heels.  And, they hate O’Bama and I do suspect that with the fringe element there is a racist dimension to their acrimony.

It is fascinating to watch what Limbaugh, Fox News, and Company have done with the “O’Bama is a Muslim” and “O’Bama in not an American” stuff.  There are millions of people who believe that non-sense and do so because that is what has been presented to them and because it feeds the poison that festers in their heart.   Sure, liberals are not objective either.  But they are much more likely to have a healthy self-doubt and be aware that they are not objective.  Such a perspective makes some allowance that other view points have some degree of validity.

The core issue here is, “What is real and what is unreal?”  Hermeneutical willingness is the issue.  Each of us interprets his/her world and does so on a daily, minute-by-minute basis.  The more conservative one is the less likely is it that he/she will grasp the flimsiness of his/her perspective and be willing to consider other interpretations of reality.  That is the reason I subscribe to my particular bias–liberal Democrat!  So don’t dare confront me with anything which might challenge this assumption!  And let me gravitate to a social context that has the same bias and then all will be well with the world.

(On the last note, I hope you are not ironically-challenged!)

 

Purity and Danger

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Mary Douglas, a noted anthropologist, wrote a very provocative book in 1966 entitled, Purity and Danger.  In this book she explains the origin of a need for purity in primitive tribes and the perceived “danger” of impurity.  (And though I hear described this as a “perceived” danger, that is not to dismiss the very real danger of impurity run amok.  Boundaries are necessary.)

I was raised in a sectarian, fundamentalist church which also emphasized purity and did so to excess.  It emphasized rules and regulations to a fault, believing that the essential dimension of Christian piety was combating the forces of darkness, inside and outside.  And to those who failed to live up to those standards there was always a hefty dollop of shame and guilt that was heaped upon them.  In retrospect, I now see that shame and guilt was the essence of their belief system.

We have modern-day examples of purity run amok.  The best one is the Taliban.  It was interesting, though horrifying, to watch them rise to power as they emphasized purity morally, politically, and socially.  But purity when it is running amok always runs out of grist for its mill when its primary focus is within its own ranks.  At some point the machinery of purity has done all it can do within its own ranks and has to turn its focus outside, seeking to purify the world.  Unfortunately for groups like this, the outside world always has a mind of its own and fights back.

Now there is nothing wrong with purity.  It is an essential dimension of human experience.  But mature purity will recognize that the impurity that it resists cannot be obliterated and that the very effort to obliterate it will result in a catastrophe if balance is not found.  As Jung noted, “What we resists, persists.”  The goal is to acknowledge the presence of impurity in our hearts and actions but to consciously pursue the pure instead.  And I think that the Christian obligation to “confess ours sins, one to another” (James 5:16) is a ritual that facilitates this recognition of impurity and provides an opportunity for catharsis.

Paradigm shifts

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An old bromide I’ve subscribed to is, “What we see is what we are.”  Anais Nin put it this way, “”We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”   And I know I’m harping on this theme but am doing so because I know it has been so helpful to me personally and I think it is very relevant to our world, especially our divided political world.  Nikos Kazantzakis in his wonderful book, Report to Greco, quotes an old Byzantine mystic, “Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes with which we see reality.”

So today, I urge each of us to just give this a try.  As we are making pronouncements upon the world, our private and our public world, let us pause for a moment and practice mindfulness.  In that pause, let us ask, “Now what does this say about me?”

And then we might have to follow the advice of T. S. Eliot and, for a moment or two, “live in the breakage, in the collapse of what was believed in as most certain, and therefore the fittest for renunciation.”
 

 

The wrath of god

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Michelle Bachman noted Sunday re the recent natural disasters, “I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?'”

So Bachman again trotted out her Old Testament world view but then, conferring with her handlers, realized this was imprudent and tried to explain she was only speaking in jest.  “No, Michelle.  You can’t get out that easy.  Your mind is teeming with that…ahem…stuff.”   Her religious affiliations and her speech has been replete with material which reflects the view of God as some vengeful, punitive tyrant.  And, as is always the case, our perspective on God always reflects our perspective on life itself and reflects our own view point on life.  As the Bible says, “As a man speaketh, so is he.”  And, “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.”

And, this perspective she offers is the reason she is a marketable political commodity in our current world.  Our country has millions of people who function on the basis of “concrete operational thinking.”  (See Jean Piaget re stages of cognitive development.)

the way things are

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We wake up each morning to "the way things are."  This is the
ideological/emotional template that we daily impose on the world which I blogged
about in recent weeks.  This template, this "way things are" is a powerful
force and we bring it to bear on our whole world---physical world and social
world---with each breath we take.  We impose it on the world and get by with it
because millions of others subscribe to a similar fantasy. 

And we must have a "way things are" to get by and to live together with some
degree of harmony.  If we had to start afresh each morning that we awaken, we
would not be able to function, individually or collectively.  We need this
"egoic consciousness" (Eckhart Tolle) to keep this dog-and-pony show afloat. 

BUT, we need awareness of its presence and its tyranny. We need the
"mindfulness" taught by the Buddhists.  Or, the "illuminating spirit of God"
taught by the Christians.  For, otherwise we totally disallow and disregard
those who do not fit into this culturally-derived template. 

I grew up in the ‘60’s and I so vividly remember the tyranny of "the way things
are" in a conservative, central Arkansas community.  For example, it was a given
that girls do not become lawyers or doctors.  This was actually noted by the
guidance counselor.  And, she was not a bad person or stupid.  She was merely
purveying "the way things are" in her day and time and locale.  And I vividly
remember the talk of the early part of that decade...and the late fifties...that
"blacks should know their place."  Racism was just part of the social fabric of
that time and place, it was an essential part of the "template" that had become
my reality.  And there was a rigid moral code, part of which was "nice girls
don’t do it. They save themselves for marriage."  And I vividly recall the
tyranny of the collective shame that was cast upon a couple of young
girls who became pregnant.

I wander what part of today’s "way things are" will be subject to scrutiny in coming decades?

Saved vs. unsaved

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Martin Buber, in his monumental work, I and Thou, eloquently describes human tendency to bifurcate reality into an “us-them” paradigm.  On our side are those who “believe right”, “act right”, and “vote right”.  In Christian circles it often appears in the form of a “saved-unsaved” paradigm.  We are so quick to define “saved” and do so in such a fashion that we are carefully ensconced in the “saved” category.  It is so rewarding to belong to the club.  But, we fail to understand that “the club” would not exist without the meaning provided by those who are excluded.  One could even say that the “unsaved” category is created and perpetuated by our insistence on maintaining the “saved” category.

Our need is that our faith be more inclusive, that the boundaries between “us” and “them” be more permeable.  And this will only occur when the individuals ensconced comfortably in the domain of  “us” be more open to the Spirit of God, to “mindfulness”,  and can relax those boundaries.  I believe there is a relationship between our ability to relax those boundaries and our ability to relax the boundary that exists between ourselves and God.