Shock and Awful

My readers may wonder why I write little about the political situation in the US. I admit I feel overwhelmed by the current political situation. New abuses of power occur daily, and I don’t recognize this as my country. There is little I can do, and I hate that.

Photo by Photo By: Kaboompics.com on Pexels.com

The leaders of my state, all Republican, think the coup is a good thing, even as the government cuts off funding for vulnerable citizens and people’s rights are being trampled. Even as our country alienates our former allies. Even as people are attacked for being different.

The coup has a way of making me uneasy about espousing the things I believe in. When I was teaching a class on cultural competency the other day, I wondered if it was a wise thing to do. I taught the lesson, hoping that the powers that eliminated the DEI program at our university wouldn’t come down on me. That’s what the fomenters of an oppressive regime want, the fear.

I will fight the fear as I stand up for what I believe in. I need to find a niche to fight in and fight there. I see so many injustices.

Day 37 Lenten Meditation: Forgiveness

I’m not going to accept the common wisdom of this concept, which says that you should readily and automatically forgive those who have wronged you. That advice is simplistic and does hot honor the situation of those who have been wronged.

Forgiving means to stop being angry for some harm or fault. For everyday mistakes and small infractions, forgiveness is merited because the need is to move on with life.

However, for victims of aggression, anger is a powerful emotion that can give power to the powerless. It can motivate toward justice for the wronged. Automatic forgiveness relinquishes power to the wrongdoer. Anger, and thus lack of forgiveness, becomes healing.

For the victim of great injustice, of abuse, of violence, they need only forgive when they feel their lives are held back by their anger, when they no longer see themselves as victims but as survivors. They should wait until the point where they feel they have personal power without the anger. Until then, they need anger’s power.

I’m not sure anyone has the right to tell someone else when to forgive. Forgiveness is very personal, and our entreaties to “forgive and forget” often come out of our fear of anger and our desire to smooth over conflict.

Forgiveness is powerful, but only if the forgiver finds that forgiveness lightens, rather than diminishes, the soul.

Day 19 Lenten Meditation: Resistance

In movies, we root for the resistance, the underdogs who fight unjust systems — Star Wars, for one shining example; The Matrix, V for Vendetta, The Help, Hidden Figures, Remember the Titans, Erin Brockovich, for others.

It’s a popular trope, yet we do not often resist the unjust powers over our own lives. We lament, we grouse, we vent, but do we resist? Resistance requires us to stand up to the power, whether overtly or covertly, and that means to step into potential danger.

There are many understandable reasons why we do not resist. First, because we don’t perceive ourselves in enough potential harm to take the risk. Second, because there are people in our lives we want to protect. Third, we’re just plain tired and it just can’t get any worse, can it?

It most certainly can get worse. Think of Nazi Germany and any parallels to the current state of America. I will not say we’ve become complacent, yet the Democrats squabble over their candidates and the Republicans believe that Trump is their best choice in the primaries. Yet we do not move.)

Resistance, in my opinion, needs to be non-violent as long as possible, so I’m not going to advocate the Star Wars solution until or unless we’re facing destruction from star destroyers.

It can be protest, which may accomplish something if enough people do it for long enough. I think about protests in Poland, which have prevented some authoritarian actions there.
It can be subverting the paradigm — I think about the Norwegians in WWII and their use of humor against the Nazis, destroying their morale: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/during-the-nazi-occupation-of-norway-humor-was-the-secret-weapon
It can be refusal to take action, but this must be clearly because the action is wrong and not because the person doesn’t want to do it. And the action has to be clearly wrong. Civil disobedience is my favorite example: occupying buildings and other public spaces, risking arrest to protest war, violence, disruption of rights, and corporate irresponsibility.
It can be social media, which is the resistance I see the most in America. The issue, though, is the swell of resistance is pitted against conspiracy theories, Russian bots, and other misinformation. We must prove our assertions with truth, even when accurate information seems useless — the truth will out.
It can’t be offensive — which encompasses everything from riots to mailing dangerous materials to bomb threats to violence. Resorting to violence makes the resister look like an extremist, which means they’ve lost.
It can’t have worse consequences than what the resister is fighting. I think about people who refuse to vote if their presidential candidate isn’t nominated. By inaction, they may be choosing the greater of two evils.

There will always be injustice toward people. So resist injustice, even if the injustice is not aimed toward you.

Bleak futures

I’m in Kansas City on the Plaza at Kaldi Coffee, drinking a cup of Ethiopian coffee. In coffee tasting notes, this cup has big berry with a tart lemon acidity. I’m enough of a coffee connoisseur (read: snob) to appreciate differences in tastes, and Ethiopian coffee happens to be one of my favorites.

In some of the futures I write, this coffee would no longer exist in the US. In one of the futures I’ve written, Country Club Plaza itself lies in ruins bombed in street riots, crumbling and teeming with the destitute. It’s weird to sit here with double vision, questioning the peace I sit in, the calming electronic music, the superlative coffee, the pastry counter tempting me with its wares.

But isn’t this the double-vision we all face when hearing about climate change, poverty, injustice? We know these things are in the world, yet they seem unreal when we’re sitting at leisure in our favorite places.

I try to extricate myself from the spiderweb of comfort, to do something more concrete than to write, but I don’t know what to do. The president of my country signs executive orders to mine and log the natural wildlife reserves and parks, guts the Environmental Protection Agency, and emasculates the regulations that have brought the US back from the smog-filled days of my childhood. I feel powerless.

Recycling doesn’t seem to be enough. Driving a compact car seems paltry. I need to get out of my comfort zone to do something, because I’m the one who can afford to. What can I do? I can write about the difficult futures and their seeds in the present. I can write about the evils of the present. I can write these deftly enough that they’re readable.

And I can vote, and encourage others to vote in ways that choose nature over profit. Maybe that would mean fewer coffeehouses like this; I don’t know. But I’d give up some of my comfort for that world.

Day 13 Reflection: Search

Humanity searches.

The poorest search for sustenance and shelter. The disenfranchised search for justice. The lonely search for love and belongingness.

We all search for meaning in a harsh, capricious world.

It’s hard to live in such a random world, where one’s life can be turned upside down by a natural disaster or a crash of the economy. It’s harder to live in a world where the wicked game the system and come out on top, where structures that disadvantage people by race and social class keep people down.

We all search for something beyond ourselves, for comfort, for meaning. Some find it in a Supreme Being, others find it in nature or music, still others find it in service to higher ideals. Sometimes our attempts to order our world yield injustice, as when we decide that those who are advantaged deserve their status by order of a deity. Sometimes, when we realize that what we thought was natural order are actually the structures of injustice, we make meaning of the need to right wrongs.

We define ourselves as the seekers of the Mystery — followers of the Book, calling ourselves Christian, Jew, or Moslem; Hindu or Buddhist or Zoroastrian; seekers of Truth. No matter how far we travel on our path, the Mystery of life will always be just beyond us, hiding in a random world.

Day 9 Reflection: Acceptance

“It is what it is.” This phrase has always bugged me, because I want to fix things. I want to make things happen. I want to be in charge of my destiny. All I need are some affirmations and I can —

Sometimes, it turns out, I can’t.

Sometimes I don’t have the energy to put more effort into something to influence the outcome. I give what I can, and then I accept that I’ve done the best I can, and I take my needed rest. I find this with my writing career, which thus far has not taken off. Because I have a full time job which supports my family, I cannot devote myself to full-time writing, so I write as much as I can and then accept my time and energy limitations.

Sometimes I don’t have the power to change reality, and I have to accept it. I cannot bring a loved one back to life. I can’t reverse a layoff. All I can do is accept and mourn and adapt.

Sometimes, though, it’s dangerous to accept things as they are. Injustices may be too large for me alone to solve, but that doesn’t mean I should dismiss them with “It is what it is”. I have limited power to change others’ minds or to change society, but I must address what I can rather than accept. I accept that I can’t change the world, but I try, and I listen to those who face the injustice so my energies go in a helpful direction and are not wasted.

At the end of the day, “it is what it is” … for now.