Weapons: the pseudo-strength of the weak

Grieving, bereaved and distraught young people, crying, “The NRA is killing me! The NRA is killing you!” into microphones of national news agencies sound a long-overdue alarm!

The United States is a killing field, and if I were a parent of a child in a U.S. school, I would be lying on the pavement outside the White House with them.

The mountain of money, a virtual monster in American politics, poured by the NRA into the campaigns of duped and spineless political actors is not only a source of national shame and shamelessness; it is also a clear sign of the power of perverted wealth, the wealth of lobbies including the pharmaceutical, insurance, weapons manufacturing and more recently the security apparatus, that is strangling a once-powerful and respected global leader.

President Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the military-industrial complex, as he prepared to leave the White House. A celebrated military leader, he knew all too well of the depth and the entanglements of the military in the political and cultural processes and roots of the nation. Counter to his critical and profound warning, however, the basic “business-model” of the megacorporation as the primary engine driving the economy, fueled by the for-profit/for-freedom/for self-gratification/for-dominance/for top-gun motivation, has overtaken all reasonable and proportional iterations of its predecessors.

“World” champions, (in football, in baseball, in basketball….and definitely in military hard power) the United States has fed its children a diet of hubris, superiority, and cut-throat competition that, ironically and tragically, is undergirded by deep, profound and relentless fear, anxiety, insecurity and neurosis. Parents vy, on behalf of their children, for the ‘best schools,’ the best corporate executive suites, the best legal firms, the most affluent Wall Street firms, the most preferred church establishments and cathedrals. And while a vision of pursuing the “best” has some specific advantages, in its absolute form, in the real world it also carries significant burdens….especially for those whose circumstances and whose support systems categorically exclude and alienate them from the what the culture deems the ‘best’ of everything. In excess, pursuing the “best” under pressure of its negative alternative, gives vent to frustration, racism, and the worst tumors of exclusivity and rejection.

“Suck it up” and “pull yourself up by the boot-straps”…and “you have to get back up after falling down”….these are the locker-room lectures of highly competitive athletic coaches, sales directors, field lieutenants, and war-room strategists. Churchill is written indelibly into the history books for his bull-dog determination, stubbornness and oppressive hubris. World War will tend to focus the body and the mind and bring such qualities of character into the breach. Painting human existence as another “world war” demanding a parallel set of strategies and tactics, including the mind-set of the military victory as the only acceptable outcome, however, has serious social, intellectual, cultural and spiritual consequences and implications.

The contemporary phrase “crisis management” is useful, if there is a crisis, and if the options forward include multiple complex and collaborative approaches. However, since there is an inherent drama imbued into each crisis, leaders have an over-developed proclivity to revert to the crisis management manual, partly out of fear and anxiety that they will “fail” in the eyes of their “masters” and partly out of a strong preference to see themselves as heroic….and to have others see them in a similar light. The actual situation they have too often prematurely deigned as a crisis may be much more modest, and warranting much more complex and nuanced interventions.

Too often, however, when a crisis surfaces, the preferred options tend to be extreme, in response to a perceived emergency. Triage nurses and doctors, in the emergency ward, are both trained and experienced in discerning the signs of varying degrees of emergency, and the deployment of finite resources, in part, as well as their innate good judgement combine to disperse their staff and facilities in the optimum “design”. Not all doctors and nurses on duty can be assigned to a high-profile case, leaving other patients in the lurch. Fortunately, doctors and nurses do not bring an ideological agenda to their triage duties. Such a compounding and counter-intuitive perspective serves neither the patient nor the medical staff. Saving lives is the declared objective and goal of the exercise.

In the public arena, where the skill/art/agenda/modus operandi/traditions of the political theatre are unleashed, however, such discipline and such restraint and such clarity of purpose and such focus, unless and until war has formally been declared, is absent. The public is more and more treated to a pseudo-drama of egos on steroids, statements calculated to sustain the support of funding sources, of ardent supporters and ultimately the return of the actor to the job, following the next election. The public good, clearly, has been relegated to a vestige of its rightful significance, under the weight of personal aggrandizement, and under the pressure of the interest groups and super-pacs writing those campaign cheques.

So Wednesday’s theatre of “listening” in the East Room of the White House complete with live national television coverage, bereaved parents of children killed at both Sandy Hook and Parkland, students of Parkland, and various other voices, selected likely to balance the agenda of the anti-gun lobby, was followed by an out-of-touch president tweeting advocacy for gun-toting teachers, signifying both his deaf ear and his intransigent and immoveable dependence on the NRA.

Yesterday, the NRA’s Wayne Lapiere was loudly denouncing all those opposed to the free sale of assault weapons, and those supportive of background checks, and those wanting to restrict guns from individuals suffering mental illness as “European Socialists” determined to remove the Second Amendment and the hallowed right to bear arms. Together, the president’s tweets and the NRA’s slanderous characterization of reasonable people of all ages who want to limit the spread of deadly weapons from innocent lives offer not only no hope to the grieving, but also the promise of more slaughter of innocent children, teachers and school staff.

One could even hear the outlandish observation that the media “loves” another shooting because their ratings go through the roof. Even my own cynicism about the affliction of the media to its own ratings will not permit such hyperbole: the media would be quite satisfied if there were never another mass shooting in American schools.

This debate, long in the tooth of age, and short on signs that the nation is a mature and trustworthy place to raise children, is unlikely to bring about significant change to satisfy the legitimate cries of those young people, trumping as the establishment always does, the public interest and popular opinion (some 75% of Americans support stronger background checks and banning assault weapons).

Media blips, threatening rhetoric from the NRA, and cries from grieving parents and children aside, The United States is in the midst of a crisis of its own making, one that is far larger and more comprehensive that whether gun sales can or will be curtailed. The country, in a word, is in the throes of a melt-down that includes, but is certainly not restricted to, the erosion of public trust in public institutions, the subversion of most of the traditional sustaining traditions and protocols, the    debasement of public office by a generation of political leaders, topped by the president, who are not deserving of their offices, whether they are “worthy” in a formal sense or not.

Public outcries facing politicians so deeply embedded, enmeshed and indebted with/to the NRA will merely create another mini-episode in an otherwise inconsequential manipulation of the same public, by those same politicians, and yet, the successive repetitions of manipulations, far from inconsequential, erode the very fabric of trust on which the healthy functioning of a democracy depends.

The sheer gall and insouciance of the political class, as fully sentient and conscious participants in these charades demonstrates a level of narcissistic self-sabotage that can and will only leave the country’s institutional infrastructure fractured, eroded and depleted perhaps beyond repair.

So it is not only more lives of innocent children and their teachers (none of whom wish to carry weapons as a part of their professional obligations) are at risk; the nation is actively contributing to its own embarrassment.

Effectively the NRA has become the most powerful political party, without having to take  the necessary steps to make such a posture legitimate. And offering both political and financial support for the pursuit of violence by the right and the left, without having to own the political ideology of either side, the NRA escapes the kind of political scrutiny it warrants.

How long will it take for someone/some organization to publicly denounce the NRA as a “terrorist” organization, funded by various private funding sources, continuing to pour venomous and illegitimate arguments in favour of making the nation a virtual armed camp, under the guise of “protection”? Moderation, reasonable approaches, long-term vision and insights, all of them in the public interest are falling by the wayside in the U.S., as measures that qualify as “extreme” find more and more public support and resonance.

Much as the microbes are outstripping the vaccines concocted to prevent their lethality, so too are the social demons outstripping the political class’s capacity and willingness to counter their impact just as the cyber-threats are outstripping any counter-measures to protect the public interest…both the official interest of the state and the private interests of the citizens. Twenty-first century realities on many levels require, even demand, twenty-first century commitments, most clearly missing from the political landscape in the U.S. especially and to a lesser extent in Canada and other developed countries.

And the “reality-show” modalities are absolutely inadequate, if not counter-intuitive to the public needs. Incipient show-biz wannabe “stars” can and will only fall far short of meeting a minimal bar for public safety, security and health. (Example: stripping the Center for Disease Control of the necessary research money to combat global pandemics, as trump has done, while arming the Pentagon with super-charged nuclear weapons, as trump has also done, is definitely not in the public interest; in fact it contravenes all reasonable and mature measures of that public interest.)

Arming teachers (under secret carry rules) is also definitely not in the public interest; it too contravenes that public interest. Incentivizing those teachers with additional pay, that could otherwise fund classroom supplies and the hiring of additional teachers to alleviate over-crowded classrooms in public schools, also contravenes the public interest. Shifting responsibility for public education to for-profit charter schools also threatens the public education system, in a thinly veiled war on unions and labour.

If Americans consider their situation unstable, as they do, it’s because their situation is unstable, and growing more unstable every moment of every day.

And, the rest of the world is clearly not immune to the many toxic viruses that are being incubated in the “great” United States….nor do we have the vaccines to ward them off.

jagged individualism

scarcity defines the

              parameters of vision

in the outback town separated

                   by the continental divide

        from their nearest 

urban magnet

          winds blow dust and tumbleweed

up and down the alleys

               between the buildings and the

traffic lights

            a mythic pastoral pastiche

overlays the scene from afar

          on brochures of Yampa River

flowing through canyons

       while within the tensions and

conflicts reach back into the 

                legends of outlaws

catholics despise the fundies

           who return the contempt

on steroids

        brown and black faces edge

sidewalks ...school hallways...

        K- Mart aisles and the waiting

room of indigent clinic

               gays dare not come out

of their closet

               wives are trophies for

ego display

         similar to the trophy heads

on the walls of their dens

         “suped-up” half-tons

shoulder rifles on racks

      in rear cab windows

and boast nra decals on their

                  rear-ends

coffee shops buzz with

          ridicule of those

tree-huggers in cities, the

     "girlie Rav-4's" and the

"gay" liberals in the capital….

          walking town streets

is risking random shots

      fired at a sparrow innocently

chirping on a clothesline

        an ex-marine tries to impress his

twelve-year-old daughter

         with his machismo

as she pleads with him

not to shoot...

         with 87% of this county

voting for trump

can the country survive

         him and his 

bigoted testosterone

troops?

Words: the gas in our shock-absorber, the water in our railway engines

There is a descending process, from elevated and proud, and, yes, a little haughty, to minimal and radioactive in the vernacular of public discourse. Nuance, once considered subtle, sophisticated, temperate, moderate and even poised, (like a ballerina in a pas de deux) is now considered outmoded, old-fashioned, ponderous, slow and heavy. Time (the prevailing scarcity), and instant contact, mostly in “tweets” (or more often blurps!) continue to take a large toll on our vaunted human extended concentration “span”. Words are replaced by initials; emotions by emoticons; sentences by single words or phrases; paragraphs by a single word.

And the range of words shrinks with every utterance. We are imposing a degree of acceptance on what used to be known as “the taciturn” on everyone. Verbosity, not that popular ever, has become a verbal crime. (Of course, the sale of books continues, thankfully, with literary prizes abounding; so some are obviously spending time looking at the written word, pausing to savour its subtlety and its provocations and implications.) And yet, is this another of the generational gaps, with those beyond the half-century mark pulling away from their much younger children and grandchildren?

Self-disclosure, that sine qua non of all healthy, evolving, maturing and engaging relationships, cannot but suffer from the metaphoric telegrams that pass for ‘connection’. And self-disclosure itself has never been an easy “climb” given that most prefer to present a “face”  they (we) think and believe will make (us) them more acceptable to the other. Males, especially, and many women also, are disclosure-averse, especially when it comes to their private emotions and thoughts. Possibly, there is an element of perceived inadequacy when one is asked, “How are you feeling?” that “oprahfied” question that falls like a magnetized sword dividing a room-full into one corner filled with men, another filled with women. In the male corner, the magnet has driven them away, while in the female corner, that same magnet has drawn them “in”.  John Powell, the Jesuit writer/thinker/soul-searcher, wrote a little book, (referred to several times in this space) entitled, “Why I do not tell you who I am!”….the essence of which is that who I am is all I have, and yo might reject me. So there is a long history of resistance to self-disclosure.

Frequent ‘contact’, as well all know, is no guarantee of ‘getting to know’ another person. People enter the same office space every day for decades, without “knowing” the person at the next desk. Tasks, especially those to which we have been assigned, consume most of our time, energy, concentration and emotional expressions. Of course, the “MO” of the boss is an inevitable subject of emotional response, regardless of whether it is negative or positive, and each of those extremes are moderated by a culture that permits or forbids honesty about such matters.

The schedules and activities of family members, too, will often consume most of the verbal exchanges among family members, without fully disclosing feelings and thoughts that might find objection or criticism or conflict if released. In the current social climate, we hear of the proverbial refusal even to respond to a parent’s texts by most adolescents. Choosing whom to pay attention to, if and when to respond to someone seeking response, and making such decisions at a pre-pubescent age is a radical revolution. Is this the first pre-teen generation who has faced those choices every minute, hour and day? (Tech interruptions, spaces without network connections, naturally complicate the situation, while providing alibis for those seeking reclusivity.)

The sparse and frugal sprinkling of words in our communication necessarily also raises the level of their radioactivity, prompting more extreme responses and reactions. And this is especially dangerous in the public hermeneutics of public officials’ utterances. Every word, formerly couched in a larger, more clarifying context, is now left bare and flying like a missile through the universe, not only leave their originator more exposed to misinterpretation, but also offering to the editorialists and the talking heads, a miasma of possible, and often quite extreme, readings of the meaning, intent, implications and dangers of each word. And those editorialists, and talking heads themselves, are also expected to muse publicly to an audience so divided in their political ideologies, that audiences themselves have become armed camps, with words as their weapons. And mostly those words are ‘fired’ out of context, without the supplementing of nuance, explication, intent, clarification and modest containment.

Paradoxically, the reduction of the number and the colour (literary devices, tonalities, vocabulary range, creative sentence structures) being used in public discourse, is another and significant (if unacknowledged) scarcities to which we are willingly, if unconsciously, subjecting our public debate, decisions and the range of options. And this scarcity, by compensation, elevates the emotive power of each word. So, those intuitively and creatively “using” these dynamics have more political “power” in the moment, than was previously accessed and deployed by public figures.

Critical thought has always depended on a foundational base of a substantial and broad vocabulary and the risk-taking impetus to stretch its use to provide the needed context for its delivery. Stripping our vocabulary of much of its nuanced, contextual sensibilities leaves it and all of us without much of the needed “gas” in our shock absorbers…so to speak. There has been a kind of pacing and reflective quality to much public discourse, even if it often seemed couched in gobbledegook.

Nuance does not necessarily mean legalese, obfuscation, or bafflegab. In fact, it can and often does mean greater clarity, and a rather kind spirit of the “speaker/writer” that respects the listener/reader and offers from a place of generous sharing. Of course, writers like Hemingway push back, merging a terse and pungent prose from his journalistic experience into his novels and short stories, injected with serious human drama. Poetry, too, exhibits an economy of language, that normally hits the reader/listener in the “gut” or the “heart” with its impact.

However, detailed and interesting and engaging prose need not be reserved for policy papers, doctoral theses, or legal arguments. And the history of fervent political and intellectual movements is linked inextricably to a long list of pamphleteers, essayists, and even comics. Today, magazines like The Atlantic, and The New Yorker offer some of the best writing available, along with the occasional news column from people like David Brooks, Nicholas Christof, Maureen Dowd, and in Canada, Roy MacGregor when one can find his work.

Leaving the public with headlines and tweets, while that may satisfy the “public appetite” and thereby offer its own kind of justification to those making the business decisions, robs the body politic of some of the most nourishing and potentially significant details. And their significance can not be restricted only to the immediate impact of the story, but extends to the reader/listener in generating a longer look at the story. Each story, as we all know, is never fully or adequately contained in its headline….and this is especially true if and when the headline writer misses the point of the story.

Another aspect of this pronounced reductionism in language (and thought) is that too often the political story is encapsulated in the “personality” of the main actor/speaker. And we also know that personalizing the story is another way of dismissing it from our critical observation, once again eliminating or at least reducing the number of opportunities to evaluate the proposed idea, theory, or policy option. Personalizing incidents or mini-dramas in the workplace is an important sign of the level of adult maturity among the workers. And openness to some of the conflicting pressures, on the part of factory or office or hospitality workers can to a long way to both their enhanced understanding of the enterprise and also to an enhanced and enlightened relationship between supervisory staff and supervisees.

Headlines shouting at least other, no matter the venue, are simply additional examples of what Margaret Atwood once dubbed the dialogue between the separatists and the federalists in Quebec, a “dialogue of the deaf.” Between those headlines on every subject, there are a plethora of nuanced details with which all sides can concur. And, those minimal agreements can be, and must become, the building bricks to construct walls of concensus….no matter the primary purpose of the venture. When those details are omitted, or glazed over, or ignored, the full import of any position or story is lost. And when the full ‘story’ is lost, all participants are deprived of needed resources on which to make those critical judgements about culpability, about guilt, about shared responsibility and about potential future steps.

“Due process” is not only a legal term necessary in a society to permit the “accused” his/her day in court, to defend, to explain and to perhaps even justify his behaviour, given the full disclosure of the context. Due process depends upon full disclosure, and the willingness of all parties to permit such disclosure….and that includes people in positions of responsibility making such opportunities accessible to anyone who has erred in their mind.

This instant accusation, trial and judgement that is being exercised every minute and every hour of the day, based on the words of only one side of the story, is not a perversion of justice; it is a outright denial of justice, for all. And the potential of embedding this kind of kangaroo court into the public arena, as a matter of normal censure, renders all of us endangered. Critical judgements to have any value at all, have to come out of detailed analyses of all available information, whether the issue is one of business, politics, morality and ethics or simply human relationships. Dismissal of details as boring, irrelevant, unimportant or more dangerously, damaging to the ‘story’ only demeans both the story and the story teller, not to mention the actors in the story.

Words do, in fact, matter a great deal. And un-uttered words also matter….this ‘railway’ (society, culture, body politic) needs both the coal, or the diesel, and the water necessary to cool the engine, as well as the rails and the wheels for it to function. Burning fuel, without the accompanying needed water to provide the cooling off, will shortly result in an engine burn-out.

Having been left on the side of the road at midnight, after such a burn-out, I would not recommend that kind of outcome for a modern, developed and mature culture.

There are imminent signs that burn-out is a real possibility, and words, learning them, using them, listening to them and experimenting with them could slow the danger, if not reduce its impact. 

A troubled and dangerous young man in a troubled and dangerous nation

Another of the eighteen school shootings this year in Parkland Florida yesterday bloodied the bodies of students, the halls of a mega-high school, and dealt another blow to the kind of hope and promise the United States has trumpeted for centuries. And while all the rhetoric coming from public officials decries all violence, and acknowledges that the weapon of choice for mass murderers is the AR-15, a semi-automatic killing machine, and a vast majority of American voters favour gun control and want these slaughters of the innocents to cease, there seems to be no general recognition and acknowledgement of the depth of violence that has embedded itself, like black India ink into a national blotter, into the very fabric of the United States culture.

It is not only that such massacres do not happen in other countries to this degree; nor that terrorists are not planning and strategizing this minute to wreak havoc wherever and whenever they can in cities around the world, including American cities; nor that street killings in American cities, like Chicago and until recently Baltimore, are not an epidemic.

It is the obvious fact that human lives including those of factory and restaurant and hotel and hospital and school workers are “at the bottom of the food chain” in the political hierarchy….

·        while the political power brokers “sleep” with the drug companies in what in Canada we call a “family compact” (another word for oligarchy), and

·        the tax plan tilts the ordinary American playing field so far in favour of the rich, and brokenness and hopelessness lurk like stray cats in the alleys of most cities at night, looking for the next “pain-killer” drug, (most of them researched and marketed by “white collar” scientists and their huckster marketers,

·        and street gangs traffic in illicit deals to feed their own insatiable addiction

·        and the health care and social safety nets are wantonly shredded in an act of collective prejudice

·        and the arms industry is injected with billions of dollars of steroids

·        and  the public schools are handed over to the private sector benefactors of those same political vultures

·        and millions of undocumented immigrants are pushed to the brink of sanity with threats of deportation

·        and millions more in primarily black voting districts are gerrymandered out of the franchise

·        and the video game industry pumps out highly sophisticated and seductive images of violence to poison young minds and line their own pockets, stretching freedom of speech to the breaking point

·        and consequences have replaced intent in the public opinion courtrooms, as instant gratification reaches far beyond anything previously conceived

·        and formerly sober and mature and moderate voices have gone mute in the face of the onslaught on the constitution and the proud traditions and heritage of the former “beacon on a hill” to the world’s hopeless

·        and the mental health system (literally a mere skeleton of anything worth the name) demonstrates the collective denial that such a need even exists in “our” country

·        and jails and police are assigned the custody and “treatment” of disturbed individuals  who are then used as poster-children for the massacres, by those seeking a gun-toting society as their “security” against such madness

·       and today hands are wringing, voices are pleading and bereaved parents, teachers, administrators and fellow students are weeping for their lost friends and relatives….

And yet, in the face of this brutal and seeming growing avalanche of killings, there is no hope for new attitudes and new perspectives and new summoning of the political will to make the changes to attitudes, and to language and to world views and to even a semblance of modesty, moderation, tolerance and even submission to the deep and undeniable truth that America is in the act of a rolling and collective national suicide. Just as the signs of trouble were evident for years in the life of the accused in the Parkland Florida massacre, (as they were in most of the previous mass murders), and were either ignored or dismissed out of hand, (without a competent and professional national treatment agenda), so too the signs of deep and intractable “trouble” are evident everywhere in the nation for anyone willing to look and admit and then take responsible action.

In the therapy business, we would call this “parallel process” and there is little hope that the nation will begin to see itself as epitomized by such “troubled souls” whose interventions were needed long ago. Remember Pogo’s “We have met the enemy and it is us”  insight.

Look in the mirror, America!

Take stock of how your current president seduced enough of your voters and how your future, while threatened by outside actors like Russia, is in your own hands, as the future of this accused was long ago taken from his hands….until yesterday when he “took it back”!

Look at the mess that profit, money, status, power, stardom and unleashed and unfettered “freedom” has wrought; sit quietly in a dark room in reflection not only on how this national chaos began and continues, but also on what each of you can “DO” to begin to take responsibility for the wanton destruction of human lives, not only yesterday but everyday right under your eyes. It does not take a rocket scientist to connect the dots. They are written on tombstones, in headlines, in obituaries, and in presidential signatures on executive orders.

The world is watching the latest episode of what can be legitimately diagnosed as an act of national Thanatos….the urge and impetus for death…..

And you cannot say there were no signs!

You may be able to convict this accused, and even sentence him to the death penalty….who will intervene and begin the long process of coping with the  long-standing nation’s “troubles” that are just as lethal and out of control as this man’s….and there is also a clear causal link to his act and the nation’s failure to act.

Coma of Denial

I look onto the Ontario ocean where

                               a rising cloud of

icy mist plumes upward

              in a scene bordered by

hoar-frosted oaks, maples and willows...

only the bubbles keep the ice from

                     blocking the ancient

ferry's path

the natural fog morphs

     into a planetary cloud of sinister

                   infectious microbes

of cynicism, nihilism and despair

                across urban landscapes

there are no research grants to investigate

                 its poison

there are no deep thinkers probing its

                 sources

there are no corporations admitting its

                  ubiquity

while a storm of protest erupts like a

            volcanic cell

whenever a political or moral cross-check

     as another victim falls

                          into the boards

the bio-viruses send microbiologists

                scurrying for new serums 

the planet protectors are in headline battle with

             the pipeline proponents

the secret-carry demagogues push for

       the right of everyone to be

locked and loaded for

               "self-defence"

in the topsy-turvey and venomous illogic

                     that only a "good-guy-with-a-gun"

can ward against a 

                                      "bad-guy-with-a-gun"

the message gurus twist their words

      their ethic and truth

to comply with their clients’ most base

                 and narcissistic demands

the opioid producers mislead

 about the

      side-effects of their radioactive

                                   profit motive

and crying from the car radio

          in a desperate posthumous

scream from beyond, Gord Downie pleads,

"Love not money is how we got good"….

sitting at the corner of Ontario

      and The Tragically Hip Way

I ask, "Is the prevailing fog anesthetizing

us

into a coma of denial?"

Reflecting on turbulence within and without

Umbrella parents….infantilizing churches and religion… hierarchical corporate structures… “governance” boards… “star” culture…LGBT v
“straight….Fascists/Alt-Right v. Alt-left…have’s v. have not’s…women v. men…

Not only is it a binary, bi-polar world, and an over-protective culture…it is also a culture at war with itself.

We acknowledge there is and always has been, and likely will be for as far as the “eye” can see, a structural tension between order and chaos. Stereotypically, and historically, traditionalists prefer, seek, stand for and uphold “order” while rebels, iconoclasts, radicals, ‘shit disturbers’ anarchists and the dispossessed cluster around the chaos, given the inconsolable nature of many of their situations.

And when the “definitions” and the “identities” of each side are clearly identifiable, recognizable and agreed to by most people, the tensions have a way of playing “off” against each other, in a somewhat clear and somewhat predictable and therefore tolerable manner. And this socio-political-cultural tension also works in a less threatening way if and when there are no global and potentially lethal threats.

Like the movies of half a century ago, and the popular music of that time, the pace of the drama is more easily and more profoundly digested, contemplated, reflected upon and even modestly understood if it comes at us in a velocity that we feel capable of absorbing, letting in without being overwhelmed.

Whether or not there is a biological ‘optimum’ for humans to process change, our individual and shared receptivity, openness and comfort with transitions, while varying with each individual and each demographic, and possibly even each culture, is one of the ‘metrics’ that underlies our shared perception of how “stable” and “secure” we feel at any given moment….and then in a longer and longer period of time.

Also playing into the “equation of equanimity” are the models from history, literature, movies, music, art and philosophy that have made their way into our consciousness. Adding to the “receptor” acuity within each of us are the personal experiences that have shaped how we see/feel/intuit/envision  and even “dream” the world to be. Linked together, the extrinsic “models” and the intrinsic experiences comprise a dynamic framework we might loosely term our “world view”.

Of course, there are merely abstract concepts, until they are called into “play” and consciously or unconsciously they demonstrate their unique power and influence. We have to be on guard for the sudden eruption of the residue of those experiences we found too painful to address at the time of their occurrence, and ‘buried’ in our own sack of unresolved memories/traumas/shocks/losses/profound hurts. And as they jump back into the light of our current day, they will likely also trigger a ‘hot button’ in another person who happens to be very close. At that moment, it is highly unlikely that either party will comprehend “what just happened”. Both will be shocked, and often offended buy the inappropriateness of whatever blurted out, and by the unexpected timing of the ‘sting’.

As a culture deeply steeped in denial of failure, of betrayal, of emotional loss including death or serious illness, the culture itself has a multitude of “sacks” in its collective memory (Shadow) just lying dormant until the least appropriate and the least expected moment when it suddenly awakens, and shoots out the arrows of its long-forgotten truth.

Just as domestic conflict most often erupts if and when something trivial finally irks one into a volcanic eruption, so too can and does a similar pattern dot the timelines of national, ethnic, religious, and even geographic entities. It is perhaps like the ‘star’ aligning in a formation that sees no option but conflict, rationalized on whatever basis seems to fit the world view of the protagonists and the antagonists. And although there are historic patterns, archetypes, and stereotypes for study by those seeking or even finally engaged in a significant conflict, it is most lightly that there will be a unique display of bravado, essentially the summation of a vortex of forces that may escape fully identification.

In Israel, people do not stand in line until those in front select their fruits and vegetables at the market: they push and shove each other aside, trained in the attitude and play book of a country under siege, not knowing precisely when or where the next rocket or bomb will drop. It is this kind of urgency that tends to focus the mind, the heart and the body and spirit to be uber-conscious of one’s safety and security every moment of every day.

And that kind of combative approach to life in North America is taking hold. It is found in our political rhetoric, our succumbing to the “character assassination” by verbal abuse, both frontally and in secret, and as Professor Pederson (U. of Toronto) suggests when speaking about the #MeToo and #Time’sUp crowds, we have become focused exclusively on “consequences and not intent”.

In The United States a misogynist, racist, homophobic and white supremacist president continues his abuse, while, in Great Britain, a member of the House of Lords for five years, who has been habitually late for his seating assignments in the Upper Chamber, yesterday resigned in “shame” because he did not live up to the higher standards Lords need to uphold. Not only does the trump model of ethical and moral depravity not square with Senator Al Franken’s dismissal for much less offensive bejhaviour, but the “Lord’s” overkill (as CBC’s The National put it) does not square with a culture in which proportion has been so mercurial as to have lost its grip on the culture.

-------------------

A personal anecdote might illustrate:

For decades, I have listened to harsh and not so harsh criticism of my person and my professional performance, without so much as a grain of the leaven of “ah shucks” joking. The dissing for which men are supposedly infamous has passed me by, especially after my best friend pulled an unfortunate “joke” on this too innocent twelve-year-old. He thought it would be fun to “show” me how to hold a 12-guage shotgun, shoot it and absorb the recoil. So, without a hint of irony, or comedy, he ‘taught’ me to hold the gun at least ten inches from my right shoulder, before pulling the trigger. You guessed what came next! The recoil pummelled this overweight body back about ten feet, where I landed on my backside, to the uproarious laughter of my “friend”. Perhaps it should have had a different impact, but if that was fun, what would top it, at least in a friend’s mind?

Not having what could be considered “safe spaces” in which to joke, to “diss” and to engage with other men, except in a literal,  specific, empirical and rational manner, I essentially became a northern “Sheldon” from The Big Bang, without either the scientific intellect or wizardry, bumbling my way through a world in which unkindness, judgement and mostly disapproval prevailed. Trying desperately to “prove” myself, with extra-ordinary energy, exhausting over-commitments, and a obsessive-compulsive pursuit of applause, I literally and metaphorically sacrificed relationships simply because I had the deeply embedded “imprint” on my psyche that relationships could and would only ‘hurt’ more than they would reciprocate.

‘At war’ with myself, unconsciously, I kept slogging through such silly criticisms as “you are kind to a fault” or “you are too intense” or “your expectations are too high” or epithets like “anti-Christ,” or “alien” (especially in the U.S.) linking them in a montage that started with early chants from my mother directed at both my sister and me, “you are no good”. And walled off, then, I naturally presumed and assumed that there were no options between acceptance and rejection, “knowing” fully that the latter was more likely than the former.

Such pretense, such myopia and such self-alienation! And there is no one responsible for this isolation except myself.

Occasionally, some other ‘desperate’ person would latch onto me like a life-raft, in order to prevent his or her drowning. Naturally, there were more females than males in this group. And, after finding their own voice and legs, they would be gone, in a pattern that repeated like a worn-out slogan or billboard in my mind. Occasionally, too, there were actual compliments for some piece of work that seemed very ordinary to me, while the utterances were also deemed “superficial” and “polite” and “insincere” when they might have been authentic. Deaf to the authenticity of ‘the other’ I pushed myself just like those people in the Jerusalem markets, always in a flurry of hurriedness and fear, only the rockets I was anticipating were “psychic” and “verbal” and judgemental and persistent and repeating and relentless and never changing.

So while attempting to find and express a “voice” and advocacy for peace, I was running away from the war that seemed inescapable within.

And then recently, after an especially enjoyable dinner party with friends, I was asked, (jokingly I later learned,) “Did Michelle kick you under table?” The reference was to my volubility, energy and being “revved” over dinner. And then, after emotionally turtling, critically examining my “bad behaviour” and painfully recoiling at the embarrassment, I was told, “Your response to my silly question was absurd! Did you not ever have any safe spaces in your life?”

And the answer was/is “No!”

So, my perception of things going awry is probably inexorably acute, and painstakingly detailed and could even be hyperbolic. The accession of the current U.S. president, in spite of his history, his attitude, his behaviour and his world view is particularly horrendous and frightening, simply because no one has any idea the lengths to which he will/can go to satisfy his personal desperate need for affirmation/applause/loyalty/fealty/slavery.

Social criticism, political criticism, linked to a rather fervent passion for change, for thinking outside the box, for leaving a mark of contribution on whatever “clay” I am privileged to walk has been a profound commitment for decades. And yet, this “super ego” parade of self-righteous correctives, targeting the “outside”  world has simultaneously served to mask the blindness to and inner vulnerability, a capacity to see things in a somewhat distorted perspective.

And maybe that is the light shining through the many ‘cracks’ that have appeared in the institutional ship of state: that finally, all of us will come to the place where, not equanimity but perhaps honesty with each other, including inside our institutions will rise above the public “mask” we have been wearing in our personal lives and have insisted on being an integral component of public discourse.

There will always be roiling sea of tumultuous winds and waves, even intense storms in the political theatre, just as there are different tensions within; yet,  we might at some future time be able and willing to set aside the magnetic distraction of hubris, and the lies that hubris/inferiority/neurosis all need in order to survive. If then we could begin to accept and to acknowledge our own, and our institutions’ blindnesses, cover-up’s, dissemblings and manipulations of the bare-bone facts, the kind of storms/conflicts  in which we could be engaged would focus, not only our personal narcissism, but on the predominance of our shared risk/threats and the need for a collective ingenuity in both content and in method to face those storms.

Consequences, demanded as a form of instant gratification for legitimate injustices, without a process for a critical examination of the ‘intent’ of those alleged perpetrators, not only in our personal struggles but also in our geopolitical tensions, will never move us to ‘higher’ ground. The concept that our inner turmoils and out public turbulences illustrate and prove a “parallel process” cannot be lost on those we put in positions of power and responsibility.

And when those two rivers of consciousness and unconsciousness can finally be embraced as mirrors and lamps of each other, then, perhaps, our obsession with the extrinsic will be more in balance with the intrinsic energies of our lives.

Kierkegaarde once reminded us that life is not a problem to be solved, but rather an experience to be lived….It is the degree to which we open to the full, comprehensive, and life-giving energies of the tensions of those experiences without denial, without blindness and without fear of vulnerability that is our challenge.

The rampant fears that jump out in every ‘water-cooler’ conversation about the  world’s nuclear clock’s having moved two more minutes to midnight, might just be a mirror our own anxieties within our own lives, seeking both our embrace and our gentle attention. Novelists, poets and political pundits are really telling us the same stories, from different perspectives. And the arts, in spite of the derision they suffer at the hands of policy-makers, still offer and invitation into our private secrets and blindness. Should we pause long enough to embrace their truth, we could be gifted with insights long overdue, in both our private lives and our public institutions.

We will not and ought not to expect the surgical removal of anxiety and tension; it is the gift of their hidden truths that awaits our discovery.