Embracing synaesthesia in a world of "fake news"

In his remarkable book, 21 Lessons for the 21^st Century, Yuval Noah Harari, writes:

A cursory look at history reveals that propaganda and disinformation are nothing new, and even the habit of denying entire nations and creating fake countries has a long pedigree. In 1931, the Japanese army staged  mock attacks on itself to justify its invasion of China, and then created the fake country of Manchukuo to legitimate its conquests. China itself has long denied that Tibet ever existed as an independent country. British settlement in Australia was justified by the legal doctrine of terra nullis (nobody’s land in Latin), which effectively erased fifty thousand years of Aboriginal history.

In the twentieth century, a favourite Zionist slogan spoke of the return of “a people without a land (the Jews) to a land without a people (Palestine). The existence of the local Arab population was conveniently ignored. In 1969 Israeli prime minister Golda Meir famously said that there is no Palestinian people and never was. Such views are still very common in Israel even today, despite decades of armed conflicts against something that doesn’t exist. For example, in February 2016 Knesset member Anat Berko gave a speech to her fellow parliamentarians, in which she doubted the reality of the Palestinian people. Her Proof? The letter p does not even exist in Arabic. So how can there be a Palestinian people? (In Arabic, f stands for what in other languages is pronounced p, and the Arabic name for Palestine is Falastin.)

And then he also writes:

So if you blame Facebook Trump or Putin for ushering in a new and frightening era of post-truth, remind yourself that centuries ago millions of Christians locked themselves inside a self-reinforcing mythological bubble, never daring to question the factual veracity of the Bible, while millions of Muslims put their unquestioning faith in the Quran. For millennia, much of what passed for “news” and “facts” in human social networks were stories about miracles, angels demons, and witches, with bold reporters giving live coverage straight from the deepest pits of the underworld. We have zero scientific evidence that Eve was tempted by the serpent, that the souls of all infidels burn in hell after they die, or that the creator of the universe doesn’t like it when a Brahmin marries a Dalit—yet billions of people have believed in these stories for thousand of years. Some fake news lasts forever. (p.237-238)

Harari goes on to defend the use of mythology and its extensive repetition over centuries as a significant and highly instrumental approach for the purpose of inculcating a faith by bringing large numbers of people together.

It is his discernment of the literalism from the mythic, that merits serious and deep reflection in a world in which the west seems bound by obsession to the nano-second, and the most base and literal “reading” of all language. Instant gratification, no matter the theatre in which it operates, remains a dangerous and self-sabotaging perspective. And yet, that is where we seem to be living.

The reduction of language to the most base expression exclusively of “facts” that are either “believable” or “lies” not only ignores the many other levels of language, but reduces the culture to a battle of “he said”-“she said” in each and every situation. The kind of highly nuanced and sensitive decision, and ethical value, demonstrated by Queen Elizabeth II, by permitting the Churchill family to enter Westminster Abbey after the royal party, (an authentic sign of deference to Sir Winston Churchill, her first Prime Minster, and also her mentor) would likely go unnoticed or unappreciated today.*

Even the word “believe” has to be addressed today, as to whether or not it too has been reduced apply only to a kind of “legal, empirical, verifiable, extrinsic piece of information” as opposed to a piece of philosophical, spiritual or theological reflection. This separation between the categories of “legal evidence” and something else, like poetry, or song lyrics, or speculations, or provocative ideas, reducing the media and the public to a stringent, unforgiving and relentless moral and ethical critical parent of every word uttered, of every action in all situations, inevitably takes un on the road to an unsustainable and non-existent universe.

In his highly sensitive and provocative book, The Spell of the Sensuous, David Adam, details the kind of separation from nature that occurred with the advent of the alphabet. He writes:

Without a formal writing system, the language of an oral culture cannot be objectified as a separable entity by those who speak it, and this lack of objectification influence not only8 the way in which oral cultures experience the field of discursive meanings, but also the very character and structure of that field. In the absence of any written analogue to speech, the sensible, natural environment  remains the primary visual counterpart of spoken utterance, the visible accompaniment of all spoken meaning.

The land, in other words, is the sensible site or matrix wherein meaning occurs and proliferates. In the absence of writing, we find ourselves situated in the field of discourse as we are embedded in the natural landscape; indeed the two matrices are not separable. We can no more stabilize the langauge and render its meanings determinate than we can freeze all motion and metamorphosis within the land. (p.139-140)

If, as David Adam posits, we live in an animate environment, and deploy language that imitates the sounds and deep character of that natural universe, we are, by definition, then in an intimate and even conjoined relationship with that environment.

Acknowledging that most of us, raised as we have been, in a “culture that asks us to distrust our immediate sensory experience and to orient ourselves instead on the basis of an abstract “objective” reality known only through quantitative measurement, technological instrumentation and other exclusively human involvements. But for those indigenous cultures still participant with the more-than-human life-world, for those peoples that have no yet shifted their synaesthetic# focus from the animate earth to a purely human set of signs, the riddles of the under-the-ground and beyond-the-horizon (the inside of things and the other side of things) are felt as vast and powerful mysteries, the principal realms from whence beings enter the animate world, and into which they depart.

For instance, among most native tribes of the American Southwest, where I live,--the people believe that they came into the world from  under the ground.” (Adam, p. 217)

Clearly, there is a wide and potentially permanent chasm between the tight, anal, and restrictive literalism of the world of “fake news” and the judgemental energies that cling to that world view and the more liberating, inclusive, connective and fulsome energies that attend a world view encompassing synaesthesia.

And rather than adopt a perspective that rejects either perspective, we would hope to embrace both in our imaginations, first, and then in through expanding our tolerance and wonder and awe at the complexity not only of the universe, but also of the human species of which we are a part. Refusing to reduce our perspective in any way could well turn out to be a sine qua non of our full embrace of our responsibility, individually and collectively, for the future of the planet that provides the essential elements for our life.

The full embrace of science includes and embraces the full engagement with the poetic, the mystic and the synaesthetic, as well as the embrace of the plethora of exciting and varied cultures, ethnicities, faiths, academies and traditions. We live in a veritable garden of world views, each with their unique and scintillating ways of mimicking the natural world. And, we are also the only gardeners in that garden, charged with attending to its perpetuity.

Are we really up to the task and the hope and the dream the task incarnates?

 _________

*The protocol for state funerals, also historically reserved for the royal family, and not for parliamentarians, required the monarch to be the last to enter the funeral.

#synaesthesia: Although contemporary neuroscientists study “synaesthesia-the overlap and blending of the senses, as though it were a rare or pathological experience to which only certain persons are prone (those who report “seeing sounds,” “hearing colors,” and the like), our primordial, preconceptual experience…in inherently synaesthetic. The intertwining of sensory modalities seems unusual to us only to the extent that we have become estranged from our direct experience. (Adam, p. 60)

Do we "have" emotions, or do emotions "have" us?

If James Hillman is on point that “emotions have us” not the other way round, then they can be ‘framed’ as searching for, expressing or painting something hidden, lost or repressed such as our imagination.

Most of us have suffered public contempt for “being too emotional,” or for “being too intense” or for “being too much” or for “being unstable” because of our emotional expression. To many, our emotions have defined us almost exclusively negatively.

Public criticism of the expression of emotion, unless contained and restricted to novels, plays, poems, movies and canvases or dances or musical manuscripts, is rampant in the public discourse.

For men in particular, the expression of anger and rage is especially dangerous in places not designated as “boxing rings” or “padded rooms” or forests where we flail branches of trees, baseball bats, or some other instrument against the trunks of large trees. And there is also the social ‘habit’ of ‘drowning’ sorrow/anger/rage/rejection/abandonment in some alcoholic beverage (or drug whether prescribed or not), in the hope either that the “medication” will take the pain away, or alternatively, that our inebriated state will give cover and explanation for our most profound emotional pain.

Therapy, traditionally, attempts to parse the nature, the source, the impacts and the “price” of intense emotions, whether through a return to childhood memories, or through some activity like art therapy. In his initial assessment of cancer patients seeking his help, Bernie Segal asks them to draw a picture of their life. Too often, the picture that emerges is one of a kitchen sink, giving public vent to the notion that the patient sees his/her life as the place where all the “garbage” gets dumped. He also asks those patients, “What do you need with this disease? Or “Why do you need this disease?” And, “Do you really want to be free from it?”

What if we were able to paint the picture of that rage that seems to have us in its grip? What if our bodies (headaches, stomach pains, stiff necks, diarrhea, sleeplessness, stammer, involuntary tears, or other visible symptoms) were telling us what we weren’t “hearing” or “grasping” or “comprehending” or “facing” or “unwilling to tolerate” and those symptoms were the voices of our gods, angels and interior mentors?

Rather than adopting the conventional, derisive and judgemental perspective on these physical symptoms, even among mature adults as well as among the young, what if we were to be able and willing to provide a safe space (where one does not  and cannot do harm to self or to another), a tolerant and empathic ear, and importantly, a patient and unfrightened and unfrightening imagination? A question like, “What is this “god” or “demon” trying to say?” might be a very different approach not only for the person who is in the throes of his emotion, but also for the person presently providing supportive safety.

From personal experience, it seems that, when in the grip of a strong emotion, I am not necessarily clear or confident in the precise “voice” or “lesson” or “picture” that the emotion is trying to utter. And, of course, there is a potential conflict if a supportive ‘other’ invades the space being filled by the emotion by asking any question, regardless of the helpful motive s/he might bring.

De-toxifying intense emotion, however, as natural, and potentially even beneficial to the individual in its “basinet” seems, however we look at it, to be a far more temperate, supportive, clarifying and genuinely creative voice, and reduce both the perceived need for, and demand for punitive judgement. Seeing intense emotion as legitimate, natural, innate and even essential to the health and wellness of the human psyche, (obviously only in situations in which no harm is inflicted to anyone), could and likely would open many doors that are currently closed to public discourse.*

My family of origin, as one example, witnessed intense emotions being thrust like paint-balls against the walls of the minds, ears and psyches of the rest of the family. Many of those “paint-balls” were venomous judgements of others by one member of the family. And, for the most part, these paint-balls were greeted with silence, confusion, and withdrawal. They also aroused anger among the targets, each of us unaware of how the anger was more indicative of the “self-loathing” of their source than it was a legitimate judgement of the targets. Self-loathing, as a well-spring of deep emotions, often conflicted and conflicting, merits a far different response than silence and withdrawal.

It warrants a kind of compassion and empathy for the “soul” of the person obviously writhing in pain, and apparently unable to express the real message of the emotion, or to participate in options that would amend the situation in which the emotions erupted. Seeing and hearing those deeply hurtful “cuts” from the tongue of a member of the family as “the troubles” of that person demanding “treatment” that was apparently unavailable, rather than a potential gift for the person and potentially even for the rest of the family, resulted in decades of angst without evoking the imagination either of the source of the emotions or of the rest of the family. Intimacy, care, collaboration and compassion do not walk away from the expression of intense emotions, unless those walking away consider those emotions to be dangerous, immature, psychically ill, or even demonic.

Likely we have all had moments in which our emotions “seemed to get the better of us” as the vernacular puts it. And, similarly, those moments have likely resulted in witnessing the walking away, the silence, and the distancing of others from their expression. And there is a range of other emotions that accompany that alienation, separation and abandonment.

If we were to be asked, upon reflection, what those moments of intense emotions were trying to “say” we could most likely put words and pictures to the root cause and source of those emotions. And those words/pictures would be worthy of encoding, especially upon the initial release of the energy that accompanied them.

I recall being told I was no longer either needed or wanted in a specific situation, by a person for whom I had deep respect. After driving for several hours through the night, immediately after receiving the news, I recall falling to the floor of the basement of a friend’s house, and weeping inconsolably for two or three hours. Those “attending” to me, in my grief and anger were gentle, kind and somewhat confused. They were also withdrawn, leaving me to the cauldron of my loss of pride, the loss of my self-respect and the devastation of the experience of abandonment.

Abandonment, that word that beats loudly in the unconscious, raising the spectre of the orphan, comes in many different faces and voices. It comes in an overt trigger to evoke the work needed by the orphan to grow and to develop and evolve. Carol Pearson reminds us (in Awakening the Heroes Within) that the orphan’s goal is to regain safety, and that its gift is interdependence and realism.

And how and when one is permitted to “hear” and to “adopt” and to “embrace” the orphan, for example, or one of the other archetypes that can be given voice through turning points that can be found in the signposts of strong emotions, is unique to each of us. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that we can find clues in those moments when we find ourselves in the “throes” of our deep, authentic and warranted emotions (not manipulative, or manipulated, or deployed to achieve a deceptive end or goal).

When we lose a love, a job, a friend, or even a pet, we grieve, and learn to recover our commitment and passion, as the ultimate gift of the loss.

How we perceive our own emotions, and the authentic emotions of another, is a subject that has received gallons of ink throughout the centuries, from individuals with different backgrounds: philosophy, psychology, politics, medicine, theology, and even economics and biology. The theme that runs through their pages is often considered to be confused and confusing. This piece is not attempting to write the last word on the question of human emotions.

It is, however, determined to confront the far too prevalent convention that emotion unpacked, and released is too dangerous, and must be repressed, controlled and kept under wraps. It is also determined to push back on the convention of applying pharmaceutical prescriptions to each and every experience of emotions that might include discomfort, unease, worry, shame, embarrassment, and many of the other “life” experiences that will dot our path through our lifetime. The separation of reason from emotion, is another of the myths needing de-mythologizing, as is the experience of faith, love and life choices.

First, emotion accompanies, so intimately and so imperceptibly, every breath we take, and every perception we ‘hold’ and every value we incarnate. Second, the chemistry, and the physiology and the neurology and the anatomy of each emotion remains something of a sacred mystery, much like the far edge of the solar system whose edges the satellite Horizon is only now beginning to plumb.

This piece also invites an open-eyed, open-minded, open-book and open-attitude to the process of getting to know, to embrace and to discern the meaning and the purpose of this “force of nature” that comes into every room into which each human being walks.

Looking at the plethora of ways by which we deny, avoid, repress, treat, and judge this integral aspect of human life, throughout history, one is prompted to inquire: “How is the current approach working for us?”

*This is not a justification for the trump-venom, distortion and compulsive “enemizing” of all people who might disagree with him. And it does require a highly sensitive and empathic discernment of potential manipulation, another of the means to which strong emotion is deployed.

Remembering a childhood piano teacher

Back in1995, a friend and mentor from my youth departed this orb. She was my piano teacher for some twelve years. I had previously had the opportunity to visit with her, three decades after leaving her tutelage, when we reminisced about old times and former relationships.

Upon her death, I penned these words, recently retrieved from an old storage box in the garage. Her family tells me the words played a role in her funeral celebration, for which I was and remain very grateful.

                                                   In Memoriam

                                              For Eleanor Beatty

Creator God, we giver you thanks for the

Life and spirit of Eleanor Beatty.

Her elegant mind and sensibility were both

Calming and inspiring;

Her steady, measured dependability would

Infrequently give way to her absolute

delight in the absurdity of human foolishness..

because although she kept the necessary

correctnesses,

she never lost sight of the more important

counterpoint of mystery.

To the uninitiated, she may have appeared

The epitome of order and balance..

But thot hose of us privileged to really

Know her,

From the hours of waiting for the

Adjudicator’s bell in the festivals,

Or the hours of travel in her old Buick,

Or the focussed but often whimsical

Conversations about forum, history or

Harmony…

We all knew that the form and order

Of the musical scores were, to her,

The songs of the souls crying for

Connection…

And that is the gift for which we give thanks…

That this unmarried daughter, sister, aunt,

Teacher and friend

Could always see beneath and behind the

Vagaries of the moment, the pains of the

Seasons and the days to the more distant,

Eternal and universal horizon of

Sunrise and sunset…

And accompany us beyond the keyboard;

She was and is for me the

Muse and magician behind the rehearsals,

Far from centrestage,

A spiritual guide to the composers,

Their lives and their work.

A friend who truly understood the

Unimportance of marks and grades

But the immeasureable significance of the

Beat of the metronome,

Connecting each second to the beginning

and end of time…

this is, was and alwuyas shall be my

eschatological soulmate..

whose recitals taught me the difference

between art and ego,

whose coaching taught me the difference

between life as performance and

the business of living,

whose surrogate parenting gave me

the daily and weekly measure of

tranquility and cosmic predictability

I needed

In what seemed the turbulent

‘big sound’ of my heart.

I thank God for every note, and every

Stroke of the metronome

We shared

And each infrequent but poignant

Disappointment…

Because she helped me to learn

That life, although often messy,

Is never without the melody of a

Shubert impromptu, of a Bach

Prelude, or a Beethoven cascade…

And she mastered the instrument of my

Heart and mind…opening them to the

Wonders of the creative genius of

The songs without words

That even Mendelssohn would thank her

For keeping alive..

And not mine alone…

         But the hearts and minds of

Hundreds of other young people whose

Tour through musical antiquity

Would not have been so colourful

Or memorable without

“Elfie’s” accompaniment.

                                                                                      December 10, 1995

Reflecting on "incurvatus"...especially in contemporary culture

Among faith communities, certainly among Christian faith communities, there is at least a veneer, if not a concrete foundation, of sacralising the past. Hallowing the past, beginning with “the Garden” and the “Birth” and the “Crucifixion” and the “Resurrection”. The Eucharist celebrates The Last Supper, in which Jesus accompanied his disciples prior to his death.

Nevertheless, without in any way rejecting or even disdaining the stories carried forward from scripture, Jurgen Moltman writes a theology entitled, The Future of Creation.

After Moltman calls creation “in the beginning a system open for time and potentiality,” he then posits a corollary: “we can understand sin and slavery as the self-closing of open systems against their own time and their own potentialities. If a person closes himself against his potentialities, then he is fixing himself on his present reality and trying to uphold what is present, and to maintain the present against possible changes. By doing this he turns into homo incurvatus in se. (That is a life lived “inward” for oneself rather than “outward” for God and others.) If a human society settles down as a closed system, seeking to be self-sufficient, then something similar happens: a society of this kind will project its own present into the future and will merely repeat the form is has already acquired. For this society, the future ceases to offer scope for possible change; and in this way the society also surrenders its freedom. A society of this kind becomes societas incurvata in se. Natural history demonstrates, from other living things as well that closing up against the future, self-immunization against change, and the breaking off of communication with other living things leads to self-destruction and death…..We can therefore call salvation in history the divine opening of ‘closed systems’. The closed or isolated person is freed for liberty and for his own future. A closed society is brought to life so that it can look upon the future as being the transformation of itself…..

Closed systems bar themselves against suffering and self-transformation. They grow rigid and condemn themselves to death. The opening of closed systems and the breaking down of their isolation and immunization will have to come about through the acceptance of suffering,. But the only living beings that are capable of doing this are the ones which display a high degree of vulnerability and capacity for change. They are not merely alive; they can make other things live as well. (Jurgen Moltmann, The Future of Creation, SCM Press, 1979, p.122-123)

Suffering, of the kind that others impose by bullying, or of the kind that the universe delivers through disease, loss, alienation and death, has been co-opted as the “enemy” against which much of contemporary culture has declared a “zero tolerance policy”. And while legal justice is relative, it is not the most important end goal of acts that inflict suffering. Legal justice invokes a kind of punishment, calling that punishment “justice” without pausing to reflect on the spiritual, psychological impact and “gift” of the suffering. That pause and reflection, especially if it is allotted a significant amount and degree of time and energy, is too often considered self-indulgent, self-pity, and it is especially disdained by those who chant, “That was in the past; let’s leave it there and get on with the future.”

An “open” person, paradoxically, opens his/her eyes, ears, mind and imagination to the suffering s/he has experienced even through acts and attitudes that s/he has committed against others. An “open” societal system, too, remains open to accepting, acknowledging and then fully owning the pain/suffering it has brought about against those within, and especially those without the system. We live in a period of history in which pain/suffering are the focus of much of the public discourse, including the media. And we almost universally do this with pointed fingers at the “other” as agent of the pain/suffering while demanding judgement be meted out to that “deplorable” person/agency. The universe, including our private, inner voices, however, does not relegate pain to the agency of “the other”. The universe and our “inner voice” (as if they are one both) know that we too are vulnerable to the prospect of inflicting pain and suffering. And the pain that we inflict carries with it a penetrating potential of “waking us to truth and reality” to which we were previously blind, ignorant and insensitive.

A person, ensconced in the concrete of blind innocence, denial, and willful ignorance of the pain/suffering s/he has inflicted and continues to inflict, remains “closed” and primarily, if not exclusively, for him/herself. Similarly, a closed society that remains blindly innocent, in denial, and willfully ignorant of the pain/suffering it has and continues to inflict, is also existing exclusively for itself. In the vernacular, we used terms like “narcissistic” to depict a “closed” person and a closed society gestalt.

Not surprisingly, closed individuals breed other closed individuals, just as ‘open’ individuals also breed open individuals. And a society fossilized in the “closed” and inward gestalt of armies of “closed” persons, will effectively breed more in conformity with the societal norm.

It is not an accident that we are currently drowning in rhetoric that divides between “closed” and “open” persons and society. And the implications of this “either-or” pitting the “closed” option as the preferred, and allegedly legally and institutionally emboldened one is dangerous from so many perspectives.

The gestalt breeds an inordinate burden of the health care systems of people so self-defining. Withdrawal, isolation, alienation, segregation, classism, racism, ageism, sexism…..these are all contributory factors in the pervasive process of justified “closed” persons and systems. And the implications are ubiquitous: in our ER’s, our cancer wards, our courts, our prisons, our schools, and even in our own homes. It is not mere the health care budget that struggles under this “drain.”

There is also a “price” for every organization in which “closed” persons seek and find employment. Looking inward, exclusively “padding” the resume without caring an iota about the culture in the workplace, and the hidden “downside” to a growing cadre of “closed” persons, once again, develop almost inadvertently, a culture in which “closed” becomes the norm, and “open” persons struggle to find a place, given the charges of “innocent” and “apple-polisher” and “sycophant” to the authority structure. Remaining “closed” and looking “inward” becomes easily and readily justified in a cultural rationale that goes like this: “We really do not wish to stick our noses into another’s personal life!” even if and when we know that another is so burdened with pain, and so isolated, for any of a number of “reasons” (most of which do not qualify as such) of being different.

An “open” person, given the context of our culture, is also exposed as “different” if not even considered “deviant” given the norm of “closed” that so infects so many cultures, especially ecclesial organizations. And this “closed” persona is also reinforced by the “closed” society of the church establishment, locked as it is in avoidance, denial and refusal to own the plethora of ways it participates in the infliction of pain and suffering, and even directly inflicts that pain directly. Barring themselves from pain and transformation, churches reinforce a cultural norm and an indefensible social and personal “ethic” that paradoxically defies Moltmann’s theological thesis.

By definition, closed persons and closed systems are far more likely to inflict pain, given the natural disposition that undergirds all life, to be open, and receptive to change.

Canada, as a nation, is especially subject to a diagnosis as “closed” in both the personal archetypes of its people, and in the organizational norms of its various groups. Recently, in a conversation with a professional fully engaged in the prevention of homelessness among Canadian youth, I heard these words: “After all the research and the programs and the worthwhile efforts to prevent homelessness, we still find that even youth who have become housed, are still distinguished by their aloneness and their loneliness and we are still working on that.”

Preserving a culture that is “closed” while reinforcing a similar model of closed for aspiring individuals, is a sure way to guarantee that aloneness and loneliness will continue to prevail after all the work to devise and implement innovative systems to prevent homelessness. My wife and I have live on our street for going on five years, in a small Canadian town; and with some dozen houses on our block, one individual has gone out of his way to extend a hand of friendship and neighbourliness, while another two make it a habit to say “Hello” if and when we meet on our respective driveways, coming or going from our homes. Mostly, though, this kind of neighbourhood prevails across the country. And the archetype simply reinforces itself, as if it has been and will continue to be the Canadian model of citizenship.

Of course, if there is an emergency, on our street or on another, immediately upon become aware, neighbours will often shed their “reserved” closedness.

Research evidence continues to mount, too, about the increasing feeling of aloneness and loneliness that pervades the young people in our culture, in spite of the four hours most of them spend every day locked on their cell phones, supposedly in “contact” with their friends.

It is a shared collective and collaborative future that is sentenced to death, with the deepening penetration of the “closed” incurvatus person and/or organization. And, it will take a tectonic shift in both perceptions and attitudes to link the original “creation” to the final eschaton, rendering every moment past and present as an integral and intimate part of the eternal future. Such a shift might have some potential for those who consider themselves Christians, with easy access to Moltmann’s thought and theology.

Releasing any clinging to the past as “sacred” will make such a shift in attitudes and perceptions feasible and accessible. Clinging to an obsession with legal retribution and vengeance will preclude such a shift. Are we up to that shift?

It is important theologically, spiritually, psychologically and culturally!

Where is the collaborative world view among leaders?

Paris is burning on weekends!

London is in such disarray as to be literally paralyzed.

Washington is fixated on and paralyzed by the profound complexities of broken laws, trashed traditions and institutions, and unilateral withdrawal from the world of the current administration.

Moscow, the intrepid mischief-maker, is stirring the pot in Syria, Saudi-Arabia, North Korea, Crimea/Ukraine, and potentially in other currently less visible spots.

Bejing watches inscrutably, patiently, and from a perch of financial superiority, industrial prowess, military expansion, and ubiquitous cyber-penetration.

Iran and North Korea are likely pursuing enhanced nuclear capabilities, in spite of rhetoric and an agreement to the contrary.

Corporations like Facebook, Google, Instagram, and Huawei are under scrutiny for violating privacy rights of their “clients.”

Observers like Richard Haaas, Chair of the Council on Foreign Relations in the U.S., writes and speaks about the world being in more disarray than he predicted in a book written within the last year.

Children around the world, inspired by a fifteen-year-old Swedish girl who has been protesting the dangers of global warming and climate change every Friday for months, are taking to the streets to give voice to the slogan, “There is NO PLANET B”

Seventeen of the 18 warmest years in the 136-year record all have occurred since 2001. The five warmest years in the global record have all come in the 2010’s. The 10 warmest years on record have all come since 1998. The 20 warmest years on record have all come since 1995.

The Economist magazine predicts that 2019 will witness and experience a serious conflict between populism and globalism.

Russia scales up its conflict with Ukraine, while NATO allies of Ukraine sit on their hands, their cell phones and their laptops, pondering if and how to discharge their responsibility under Article #5, to defend a NATO member under attack.

Mohammed bin Salman clearly instigates the brutal murder of a disaffected Saudi journalist while Canada and the U.S. ponder their response to the murder, through blocking or continuing the sale of military equipment…demonstrating a glaring paralysis over the question of human rights versus profit and jobs.

According to the United Nations, the number of forcibly displaced people worldwide reached 65,600,000 at the end of 2016, the highest level since World War II, with a 40% increase since 2011. That number rose to 68.5 million in 2017, due to global wars, violence and persecution.

626,483,739 people live in extreme poverty, 8% of the world’s population. In 18 countries, extreme poverty is on the rise; by 2030, 16 countries will have erased extreme poverty; in 42 countries, extreme poverty is declining, but not fast enough to wipe it out by 2030.

Over 75% of the world’s 781 million illiterate adults are in South Asia, West Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa and women represent almost two-thirds of all illiterate adults globally.

In 2016, the UN estimates reveal that 142 million youth between 15 and 17 are not in school. This age group is four times more likely not to be in school than children between 6 and 11. 15 million girls of primary school age will never get the chance to learn to read of write in primary school, compared to about 10 million boys. Over half, some 9 million, live in sub-Saharan Africa.

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These data points are not listed in order to provide a layer of sponge rubber distance from their significance.  In fact, in a moment in time when all of these, and much more, are readily available to every human living on the planet, there is considerable cause for the road rage, the impolite and aggressive attitudes that we all encounter whenever we are “in public”…for the incidents of both revenge and withdrawal from the vortex of social and political conditions. We are definitely living in a time when leadership is under fire; responsible citizenship is begging for more than the youthful leadership poking their heads out of the soil of the earth’s cultural and political garden; and in the midst of all of this turmoil, the United States has relinquished its leadership on the world stage.

These ‘dots’ on the cultural intellectual and informational map are also linked with an apparent rise of insular populism, racism, bigotry and selfish narcissism, just yesterday, some 160 countries signed a non-binding agreement on the treatment of migrants around the world.

Called the United Nations Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and regular Migration, the agreement sets out 23 objectives for improving international co-operation on all forms of migration from refuges to skilled workers. Yesterday, December 10 was International Human Rights Day, and yet, tragically, the United States government opposed the pact, warning it could compromise national sovereignty when it comes to immigration. Ten other countries, mostly in formerly Communist Eastern Europe have pulled out. Six more, among them Israel and Bulgaria are debating whether to quit.

What kind of list of challenges would be needed to wake up the gestalt of world leadership as a matter of national security, international stability, global health and wellness, and the preservation of that old cliché, the reservoir of optimism and hope, on which the world, and each individual, still have to rely?

If such a list of threats/opportunities is not enough to sound the global planetary alarm, the wake-up call, the siren-song of fate and the most heroic challenge in history as well as mythology, then what will be?

The Christian Church's "white supremacy" shame (James H. Cone)

Chris Hedges underscore the theological contribution of James H. Cone’s “withering critique of the white supremacy and racism inherent within the white, liberal Christian church” in his latest column in truthdig.com.

According to Cone, privileged which Christianity and its theology were heresy.
Hedges quotes Cone: “When it became clear to me that Jesus was not biologically white and that white scholars actually lied by not telling people who he really way, I stopped trusting anything they said,” from Said I wasn’t Gonna Tell Nobody: The Making of a Black Theologian.

Cone also writes, as Hedges reports:

White supremacy is America’s original sin and liberation is the Bible’s central message…..Any theology in America that fails to engage white supremacy and God’s liberation of black people from that evil is not Christian theology but a theology of the Antichrist.

White supremacy “is the Antichrist in America because it has killed and crippled tens of millions of black bodies and minds in the modern world…It has also committed genocide against the indigenous people of this land…. If that isn’t demonic, I don’t know what is…and it is found in every aspect of American life, especially churches, seminaries and theology.

Two questions emerge:

First, does Cone’s critique apply to Canada?

Second, Is the church’s enmeshment with the archetype of the for-profit corporation an extension of its colonial “white supremacy”?

Notwithstanding the herculean efforts of many well-intentioned people to bring about reconciliation regarding the “residential schools” tragedy, all of those efforts both necessary and long over-due, one has to ask, “Have we really addressed the theological roots of the issue”? Canada continues to face the haunting and daunting spectre of thousands of indigenous peoples who have to boil their water, attend below-standard schools, search in vain for adequate and accessible health care, and a basement-like ceiling on opportunities for work with dignity. Canadian prisons, too, are “over-stocked” (as if indigenous inmates were mere objects) with indigenous prisoners many of whose lives are the direct result of Canadian social policy, historic patterns and the impunity to which previous Canadian leaders (all of them dutiful and serious adherents to one of the establishment churches) were and are indebted.

As recently as the 1990’s in Ontario theology schools, Huron College and Trinity College, specifically, no a single word was uttered, by way of curricular offerings, in rebuttal of the church’s complicity, or even direct responsibility for the “white supremacy” that has been perpetrated for more than a century, demonstrably in the name of God and His Son, Jesus Christ. Political correctness, ironically, consumed much of the “talking points” about such things as the debated rights of gays to administer the eucharist, the rights of women to be bishops, the relative merits of the “Red” and the “green prayer books.

And then there is the ghost of “filling the coffers and the pews, in the manner of the corporate balance sheet that permeated the atmosphere around “successful parishes. It is, was and for too long will continue to be, a prime responsibility of  Christian clergy to do anything and everything imaginable to keep the bills paid, the numbers climbing and the reputation of the denomination unsullied.

I have led public services from which people actually got up out of their pew and walked out, because a “guest” gay priest was celebrating the eucharist. In the U.S. a parishioner confronted me, just before the Christmas services with this question: “Would it be alright for a black boyfriend of my grand-daughter to attend the Christmas Eve service?” And, following three years of serving a small church as a single divorced clergy, I was harangued with the following utterance: “You would never have been given this job as priest here if you had arrived with a black wife!” White immigrants from eastern Europe, who worshipped in that church, reported that white crosses had been burned on their property, when they were young people, and they were not even black….so rampant and deep was the racism of “white supremacy” against even white European immigrants. Not surprisingly, 87% of the people living in this country voted for trump in 2016, and in 2018, 76% voted for the Republican candidate, continuing the indelible crucifixion of any Christian expression of liberation of and for all.

Canadians do not like to speak or read the kind of language that fills the theology of James Cone. We like more euphemistic expressions, that essentially “paper over” the deep divisions that nevertheless define the Canadian cultural landscape. However, just today, the Ontario Human Rights Commission issued an interim report:

shot and killed by police…black people are overrepresented in several types of violent police interactions, including use-of-force cases, shootings deadly encounters and fatal shootings (CBC)

There is another under-reported piece of information in the OHRC report:

More white people were carrying weapons in police use of force cases, and that white people allegedly threatened or attacked police more often than black people

The words (previously reported in this space) of an Australian exchange student to a question in a Canadian high school student’s question, “What is the most noticeable difference between the United States and Canada?” come quickly to mind:

“Oh, that’s easy! In the U.S. racism and bigotry are on top of the table; in Canada they are both under the table!”

Trouble is in Canada, there has been little to no co-ordinated, funded and empirically researched data on the rise of white supremacy and organizations that purport to uphold the supremacist ideology, like the Southern Poverty Law Centre in the United States. Only this year has there been an organized and collaborative resource developed to document the various chapters of these organizations and their activities.

Notwithstanding the exemplary work of some leaders in Christian theology in promoting and nurturing ecumenism and inter-faith dialogue in Canada, there is nevertheless, a clear and indisputable link to racial superiority, bigotry and indefensible personal and national treatment of minorities, including various ethnicities and religions that continue to impede the success of all efforts at establishing equal human rights, equal racial justice and a theology that purports to be dedicated to the liberation of all without real and acknowledged voices in the political and cultural landscape.

If Cone spoke for his deceased, murdered ancestors, in the United States, who are the Christian theologians in Canada who dare face the ire of the Christian establishment by calling out the blatant and inexcusable racism of the Christian  church throughout Canadian history.

An underground Christian church that strips all veneer from the politically correct sophistication, acknowledging its complicity and culpability in both distorting and demeaning the core intention of the gospel, teachings and life of Jesus Christ Resurrected, would go a long way to freeing both the laity and the hierarchy from having to protect and defend the indefensible.

Jealousy: grain of sand, a worm and invisible lethal gas

Jealousy is a complex emotion that encompasses feelings ranging from fear of abandonment to rage and humiliation. Some consider it a wake-up call that a valued relationship is in danger and remedial steps are needed.

Differing from envy, in that a third party is always involved, (envy exists between two  people only), jealousy is, while necessary, nevertheless, a dangerous and toxic emotion. It often derails not only relationships but even careers, business deals, political accomplishments and the over-arching trend to co-operation, collaboration and sharing of goals among and between social agencies, political enemies and different nations.

The Shakespearean tragedy that depicts jealousy in its most venal forms, Othello, is so memorable because it focuses on a human dynamic that impacts each and every family. Other tragedies, like Macbeth and Julius Caesar, for example, deal with elevated personages, a kind of historic royalty, whereas Othello, a black moor, whose appointment of Casio as his lieutenant leaving a “wannabe” (Iago) out of power, illustrates the nitty-gritty of how easy and deceptive is the demise of human relationships.

The literary embodiment of evil, Iago, deliberately, deceptively and angrily plots the rumour of an illicit relationship between Casio and Desdemona (Othello’s wife) and goes about planting the seeds of his destructive, quasi-military ‘invasion’ before Othello’s eyes and ears, and especially injecting it into his imagination. Rage, in the form of Iago’s jealousy, invokes and evokes rage, in the form of Othello’s fear/pride of being a duped spouse.

People spurred by jealousy, almost invariably, are plagued in their minds and hearts with insecurities, anxieties, inadequacies, fears often unreached and possibly unreachable even to their possessor, that demand their own price. It is as if jealousy has taken up residence in his/her shoes, a reminder with each and every step, of the danger of being beaten, deceived, one-upped, out-done. Often, too, these men and women put on such a positive, authoritative, invincible and credible “face” in all dealings with the public, and even in their private relationships, that it  provides deep and often impenetrable cover for the latent worm whose existence and voice eventually will out.

That grain of sand in the shoe will eventually and inevitably stimulate the worm of conspiracy that crawls around in the recesses of the mind. Discomfort, after all, is relentless. And too often discomfort refuses to disclose fully its worm. Something just does not “feel” right as the stimulus of the grain of sand awakens the interior “worm” of jealousy.

It is often, if not always, in a moment of intense anxiety and fear that the worm can no longer stay hidden, silent and imperceptible. Just when we need our most confident, most creative and most authentic and generous “self”, out burps this measly worm of our most mean-spirited and most unexpected and most hurtful (both to the host and to the victim) Shadow feature. Not only do we discover a part of ourselves we find reprehensible, the rest of the world is also “treated” to another example of the dark side of human relations. And if we think we are immune to the attitude, the insecurity, the pain of its re-discovery (most of us have encountered this “worm” previously) and the implications in this new situation, we have to face ourselves anew.

Like Iago, sometimes it is our closest confidante (Emilia, his wife) who takes the cover off the plot and its perpetrator. Sometimes, it is a colleague or even a supervisor who sees and possibly brings the ‘diagnosis’ to our attention. Often, however, it is in our own private, secret and most penetrating self-aware moments, long after the specific situation has morphed into the dust of history, that the full truth of what was really going on back then becomes clear.

Jealousy, for example, of a matron who deeply desired, and considered it her “entitlement” to have been the recipient of, a preferred appointment, in an organization her family had worked diligently to preserve and support, shows its ugly face and voice, unexpectedly, in a meeting whose agenda and list of attendees included the actual recipient of that preferred appointment. Flowing out from the eruption of jealousy is the seemingly requisite and inevitable “pay-back” of vindictive revenge, often directed at the author of the decision to ignore the ‘insider’ and offer an outsider the privilege and the honour of the appointment.

This two-headed monster, jealousy-and-revenge, seems unwilling to undergo separation. Like the proverbial Siamese twins, “JR” (evoking that old television iteration of Iago, J.R. Ewing from Dallas) sleep, eat, read, think, and even pray with a binary yet unified voice. Insult, abandonment, and outright character, political, career assassination are only a few of the weapons and goals of persons so jealous, and “offended.”

Such a dynamic is endemic among the pre-pubescent set, the adolescent demographic, the college fraternity and sorority corps, and on into adult and professional life.

With pre-teens, the prototype known to most is the jealous co-ed whose favourite “male” has abandoned her for her best friend, her sister, or worse, her deepest enemy. Among professional adults, a rejected personal relationship, in favour of another, is too often one of the primary motivations in the revenge of the jealous wannabe, who can and often does seek and find co-conspirators to bring about the demise of the one who rejected the relationship.

Those with a “high” yet brittle concept of right and wrong give us examples of jealousy when a colleague reaches some lofty perch of success, without having to own or acknowledge a deeply flawed attitude, act, or belief that counters the “right way” as perceived by the jealous observer. Exposure of the fatal flaw, then, often becomes the goal of the righteous warrior, in the name of the public good, as well as the private satisfaction of a personal jealousy. Tabloid newspapers feed on such jealous revenge. Movies, and television dramas, too, mine this character and plot gemstone for its predictable audience-generation, as well as the advertising dollars and audience ratings that accompany such productions.

Parents, too, sadly, can become jealous of their opposite number, especially if that other parent appears to have a more reciprocal, mutual and deeper relationship with the children.This emerging dynamic is especially noticeable in the event of an unwanted separation and divorce. This “face” of jealousy is, unfortunately, discovered too late, long after the children have grown and left the nest. And yet, it had to have played a significant role in the family dynamic, without the “other” parent even being suspicious of its existence. The children, too, are often innocent of such a dynamic again until long after they have left home. Yet the subtlety, persistence and ethereal dimension of this jealousy can erode much of the implicit trust of any healthy domestic relationship.

From a grain of sand in the shoe, as an irritant, to the interiority of a “worm” infecting the unconscious, both of these images inside the individual, there is also a cultural dimension to this personal/psychological phenomenon of jealousy. Like an invisible, odorless, permeating gas, jealousy also attends, infects and drowns the attitudes of groups, political parties, churches, and even towns and cities who perceive that their “opposites” are being showered with “success” (however that may be measured) at their expense. At the root of that demon is the zero-sum game, whereby the only way “I” win is if “you” lose. In such a cultural dynamic, however, it is highly improbable that either “participant” in the “game” comes out a winner. Scarcity, that imperceptible and inescapable core of fear, is so sophisticated, so imperceptible, and so pervasive,  like carbon monoxide, or carbon dioxide that it can and does kill, by eroding what might appear to be an otherwise health, strong, and durable familial/organizational picture.

Too often dismissed as mere “office politics,” this personal jealousy leaps out when professional individuals in a large organization, foiled in their attempt to achieve a top position in that organization, subtly express their vindictive jealousy by an off-hand slight of tongue against the occupant of the rung on the corporate ladder they so desperately sought. “S/He communicates only on as “as needed” basis, as if none of us have either a need or a desire to know what is really going on!” Translated: ‘S/He should never have been given that post, and I would certainly communicate more openly and more effectively that s/he can or does.’ Depending on when and where such a judgement is uttered, its spirit carries a large cloud of jealousy and serves to undermine the successful occupant of the top office, with or without his/her awareness, unless or until a colleague exposes the disloyalty, or an agenda item authored by the “winner” is trashed and left for dead in the corporate trash.

In fact, it is reasonable to posit that loyalty, that treasured grease facilitating many relationships in the public arena, cannot co-exist in a culture of jealousy. And to take on the project of “training” or educating any organization about the dangers of/and options to counter jealousy/revenge is a fool’s errand, a tilting at windmills for the most idealistic of “fools”. This is one of those human qualities whose life, it seems, cannot be extinguished. Attempting to counter its seductive power and influence, however, is one of the more demanding of disciplines.

Squaring the circle of “large ambition” with the square of “humility,” as the world has attempted to do in eulogizing George H.W. Bush this week, so stretches the rational mind as to render one the servant of the other, likely in his case, humility he as a mask for deep, unrelenting and nuclear ambition. Literal identification, without acknowledging the complexity, interior competition, and the public and private confusion, ambiguity and humanity of the incompatibility of the two, is a reductionism “up with which we can not put”….to borrow from Churchill. Bush’s commitment to the pain and success of ‘the other,’ evidenced in his life-long letter-writing blizzard, does provide the link in the chain between the two: ambition and humility. It has been reported that Bush did not really have a “political base” but rather an “army” of letter recipients, in an otherwise alienated and alienating culture of American politics.

One thing seems clear: those whose “healthy self” has been nurtured and reared by effective, honest, authentic and loving parents, teachers, coaches, and even supervisors are more likely to be strong enough to avoid many of the lures of jealousy, and its nefarious worm, revenge that decimates both the perpetrator and the target. Finding the “better angels” within, and in the broader culture, in the classroom and in the boardroom, in the drill arena and on the playground, and among the most indigent and the most favoured continues to be a goal worthy of the commitment of each of us.

There is no culture, religion, ethnicity, geographic region or linguistic entity whose life and health are not enhanced by the pursuit of such a search for those better angels. And there is no single person who does not hope for the success of his own private search to be reinforced by the success of the larger culture in that search.