How WE can know so much and do so little.

I believe that WE need to spend more time discussing, i.e. more time, speaking and investigating together, the ideas of cooperation and consensus and the common bonds that those two ideas illustrate about US, both as humans and as individuals.

I believe that WE should look more deeply into what WE have in common and how WE can share and enlarge those things that WE have in common; when WE enlarge OUR shared reality, the other reality will wither and WE will no longer be separate.

Lasting friendship.  Loyalty.  The sharing and cooperation that combines small cells of loving friends into an increasingly larger family of common values, ideas and beliefs.

"Aw, Jesus, Edith!" 

Questions like these always leave me feeling like Archie Bunker: Leaving aside that "wise and insightful comment" bullshit.  I reckon I got a fair bit of Archie Bunker in me, but I couldn't be Amerikan without a little Archie Bunker and a whole lot of Christian nonsense.  Culture being what it is and all-pervasive.

But having a redneck-Judeo-Christian background ain't my main problem, nor why I really feel like an all-Amerikan bigot when I read certain questions here.  My main problem with questions like this one is honesty.  And that honesty bit is two-fold: One is that most of US do not like honesty of any flavor -- no matter how WE doth protest.

Secondly, when someone is honest with US, WE almost always wanna kill the messenger and that ain't good for the messenger.  I say this, without ignoring how hard it is for the receiver to even hear the message without feeling murderous and frightened.  Those outraged felonious feelings toward the messenger are hard on US too.  The blood-pressure goes up; the ability to think goes down.

What does ALL this preamble mean?  Certainly it means that I am grumpy when I read such questions and it means that some of ya'll need to stop reading right now: Lest I offend you, or be murdered.  ME be-in grumpy and all.

Coming back to Gaia, I committed, at least internally, to answering these questions and questions like these because I can't be here honestly otherwise.

Here goes . . .

When I was ten, my father tied me to a bed and beat me with an extension cord until I honestly thought that I would die.  The year was 1962.  We lived in the projects in pre-Disney Orlando.  I do not know what my infraction was, and in all likelihood did not know even then.  Offence is not a requirement for a a rage-filled drunken beating, although some excuse can always be found -- usually by both parties.

As Daddy whipped me, inwardly, I drew further and further into myself; while outwardly I begged and screamed all the louder, for him to stop.  I had been cruelly beaten many times before and was used to beatings, for the most part, but something in this rage was different and not just its intensity or length.  Finally, I accepted the fact that my father was going to kill me and that I would die. 

At that moment a sort of internal bliss came over me and the pounding stopped affecting me inwardly, though I do not believe that I stopped snuffling and crying.  As the beating continued, a voice came to me -- that to this day I do not think of as MY own, and told me that I would be alright.

Depending upon your spiritual and social background, I either had an out-of-body experience, or a disassociative episode, or both, in that childish moment. 

I really do not care what WE call any of OUR shared-moments, so long as WE can talk about them with compassionate and cooperative understanding.  Neither do I intend to ever let anyone make ME wrong about ANY of MY moments.  So you lingering psycho-babblests and New-Agers take heed.

I have always felt blessed and protected -- even before that beating; I also know that this is a typical kind of magical-thinking for abused children. 

MY problem is that I remember feeling blessed and chosen before I remember being beaten.  There was a period, when I was real little, that my siblings and I were not beaten every day and even during that time, I felt that there was something exceptional and extra in the world.  I still do.  I don't know what it is. 

I know that WE call these unknown things meta-physical, but to me they feel more real sometimes than reality.  I know there are psychological terms describing this so-called misconception of reality as well.  I know ALL the lingo and can talk a lot of shit when I want.  My very first college degree was psychology; I was that fucked-up.

Now I have nothing to do with psychology, or religion, which has very little to do with MY spiritual Path.  Mostly this is because of long-term participation in 12-Step programs, but it also has to do with many other fellowships and Ways of learning.

Sort of a late entry for this jim-johnson . . .

MY relationship with violence is probably MY most complex relationship.  I am the guy who very gently gets the biker to stop hitting his kid at Walmart.  I am also a trainer of trainers for a community called the Alternative to Violence Project, or AVP volunteering mostly in prison because prison workshops are a good fit for me. 

Convicts being truly a captive audience.

The phrase "Trainer of Trainers" is an AVP shorthand, or a fancy way of saying,  that I took four AVP workshops and served an apprenticeship as a potential trainer in three more AVP workshops.  Though I haven't volunteered very much over this past summer, I will return on a regualr basis soon -- IF only to get tomatoes from Keith and Cynthia.

As a child, I was beaten every day, by both my mother and my father.  Very often brutally assaulted. 

From eight to fifteen, I regularly suffered contusions, abrasions, broken bones and teeth, and the psychological and emotional abuse attendant to such beatings.  I was beaten suddenly, often for little or no reason and with whatever object, tool, or weapon that came to hand, including, but not limited to, hands, fists, belts, shoes, brushes, light cords and ropes, electrical extension cords, rifle barrels, pieces of lumber, sticks, canes, switches, and on one memorable occasion, a bullwhip.

At around age fifteen, or a little before, I became a violent perpertrator myself.  I did all the things done to me, and more, to others.  Since then I have been shot, stabbed, run over and blown up.  I am deeply conversant with violence from both ends of the stick.  The simple truth is that IF you put a dog into a cage and poke it with a stick long enough, it will either fight back, or die. 

The problem with the "fighting back" theory is that the category "fighting back" gets broader and broader until eventually any kind of violence is justified: Which is how WE got Viet Nam, Bunker Hill, the Battle of the Bulge, and Iraq.

There are no just wars.  Not even personal ones. 

Though I do believe in self-defense; I do not believe that even self-defense is just, though as a human being, I can justify most anything.

However, there is no such thing as national defense.  What we call national defense is war planning and as Einstein said, "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."  WE are a violent, war-like nation not a peaceful one as OUR propaganda suggests.  WE almost always begin any international interaction with violence, or the threat of violence, which is the same thing, rather than diplomacy. 

This is basically true for most Amerikans on a personal level as well.  For most of US, just under OUR surface politeness is a defensive posture waiting to emerge.

Challenge OUR worldview even a little and WE respond with tooth and nail.

Even to my own ears, it sounds so pathetic to say that I am not excited about much of anything right now.

And this is a weird state for me because I am usually an upbeat, optimistic, eager kind of a guy.  I do not know what is happening, but I wish it would stop.

As IF "wishing" would help.