The Great Divide: America's not-so-civil war

 "Not causing harm requires staying awake. Part of being awake is slowing down enough to notice what we say and do. The more we witness our emotional chain reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain. It becomes a way of life to stay awake, slow down, and notice."

 Pema Chodron

 

Divisions all around, family member against family member, friend against friend, presidential candidates fighting it out, acting out America’s daily dysfunction all over the globe.   

Does airing our dirty laundry make us proud, or full of humiliation and shame? 

Brain researchers say that conservative brains and liberal brains are different and I believe that must be true.  How they develop in those ways, we aren’t so sure.  

We can argue all day long about our values and our differences regarding a variety of topics: police killings of black and brown boys and men, allowing big money to control our elections, women’s reproductive rights, gun violence, mixing church and state, and income inequality.  All day long, I can talk myself blue in the face about these and other issues.

Would anyone listen?  Those who agree with me would nod and those who disagree would send me hate mail and instructive missives, asking me to come over to their way of thinking.  And, I would not.  We are such determined people, often sure that we are right, and that good and bad, right and wrong are black and white instead of murky gray.

Debating and arguing has its benefits.  We feel passionate and excited, our energy peaks and we jump into the ring time after time, sometimes enjoying the battle, wondering who will become the next American Idol (or President)?  Human beings like to feel connected and engaged with other people, either through loving, kind actions, through debate and controversy, or through reality shows and the news. We bond together against those others.

But, the arguing gets exhausting, and we tire of butting our heads against walls, weary of the rhetoric when there are usually no clear winners or answers, unless someone rules that the contest is over.  Then, the winner is praised, described as the best, while the loser may seem wrong and bad. And, that’s just not usually true.

We all have something to contribute to our world, to our families and our country. Why do we isolate so and look across the aisle with such venom?  Do I need you to agree with me about almost everything and only then can we be friends?  Differences can tie people together or break them apart.

We may be living in America’s 21st Century Civil War, including some of the blood. Now, a tiny few, less than 1%, wins big while the rest lose greatly.

Life is messy, not full of tangible, concrete answers much of the time. Life can be mysterious, uncertain, and confusing, and we hunger for guarantees and solutions whenever possible. We fight tooth and nail searching for certainty.

When a civil war occurs, people often gravitate to their opposite corners, just like in Rocky and Creed, glaring at each other with hate.  After the battle is won and lost, we wonder if we will continue repeating this destructive pattern that turns us all against each other.

Transformation to Equality and Community

"Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here. The spiritual journey is the relinquishment-or unlearning-a fear and the acceptance of love back into our hearts." 

 Marianne Williamson

 

How can we be truly equal if we are all so different in various ways: physically, emotionally, educationally; a myriad of races, cultures, genders, religions, spirituality, and more?

How can we be at one with other people with whom we may share some similarities but also find that some of our differences seem to set us widely apart?  If we are all really one, then to what level do we need to rise to find true human equality and sharing? To see each other in community and not only as separate individuals, fearful of each other?

I am quite positive that our history of patriarchy is partly responsible for so much violence in the world.  Maybe if women were in charge, the world would be more peaceful, much safer.  But, we may be moving into an era of not the opposite to patriarchy, meaning matriarchy, but into an era of androgyny, where both masculine and feminine energies intertwine along with all sorts of other energies that may not be defined in such black and white terms. No longer in binary opposition.

Perhaps one way to say this is that we are transforming from a dichotomous and dualistic culture to one that allows for more amalgamated, cooperative and collaborative ways of thinking, feeling and acting.  A culture where no one type (or any sort) is in charge but where we all play notes on the scale sometimes creating dissonance and at other times, lovely harmonies.

Giving up duality and rigid concreteness regarding our perceived informal rules of living and behaving is not an easy task for those of us who have become fully acculturated over time to the ways things are. We see young people thinking and acting very differently than we older people, and the generations often have trouble communicating.  But, what a blessing it can be.  How lovely to see a young person with a radical, new idea that we have never even considered!  Sometimes that freaks us out and sometimes we rejoice. 

We have been defined by gender roles since we were babies.  We have attended educational systems that give grades for what is perceived to be good, average or bad performance. We work at jobs that give us salaries from large to small and everything in between. Our self esteem is often measured by such criteria or by how we look, how much we weigh, how able bodied we are, how privileged we are without having done much of anything to receive that privilege.  How impoverished we may be.  Most of what we see and hear on TV and in most mediums is hierarchical, where one at the top wins, and several or most at the bottom lose. 

The American Dream is all about winning enough for ourselves and our families while many tend to suffer because there seems to be not enough to go around.  We are a culture whose values are too often based on deprivation and despondency about that perception.  Many feel hopeless and helpless when it comes to being able to change their circumstances in life, whether they are focusing on career success, love relationships, or on money and stuff.  And, maybe there really is enough to share if only we would shift our thinking and our actions a tiny bit.

When will we start acting as a community instead of as a solar system of one, myself first and foremost?  When will the common good be as good as the individual good, even though we see reality in unique and often conflictual ways?

The blending of races, religions, and cultures can all simmer together in a tasty gumbo, a stew of delight. But, we also bump up against each other in that bubbling mixture taking on each others’ tastes, textures and smells, not always liking the outcome.  Too hot, too spicy, or too bland and diffuse, not enough separate ingredients seen, or tasted? The vegetables no longer crisp but soggy, mushy. And, if you are so sweet, does that mean I must be sour?

Oh, the excitement of transformation when we fear the unknown, hoping that things can’t possibly get worse, when we know darn well that they can.  Why change anyway?  Better to stay with the old familiar chord, that same ole refrain that we have all memorized, deeply held in our bones.  Let's invite each of us to be more creative and play with all the notes of the scale, not focusing on only 2 or 3, which keeps us limited and trapped somehow.  Or, safe.  At least we know those notes very well and we can rely on them.

This is the way we do it.  We start by talking about the change, writing about it, singing about it and dancing to it, imagining the huge number of combinations that we can dream up, knowing that we have this life to live, these people to live with, and we hope not to have to kill off too many more people before we decide that we can truly accept and/or care about those who are not like us.

Violence is Violence

Whether a hate crime at a gay nightclub, or a legislature creating restrictive policies about women’s reproductive health, violence is violence.  Whether sexual assault or police brutality against brown and black men and boys, violence is violence.

Combine weapons allowing shooters to mow down scores of people in minutes with hate, fear and anxiety along with alcohol and drug use (or not), and we have a perfect storm.  Shooters playing judge and jury against people they do not like, with whom they disagree, or because of some ideological passion.

Violence without physical assault is also pernicious and destructive, like taking rights away from people.  We live in Tennessee, a state that is known for some ignorant bills and laws. Proposed and actual legislation wrenches away from people the ability to make thoughtful decisions about healthcare, privacy, and bathrooms.

Violence occurs while locking up people who can’t afford to pay for traffic and other violations accruing large penalties and interest charges, returning us to the days of paupers’ jails and prisons.

As the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., once said: “The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy… In fact, violence merely increases hate…Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

Spies among us, our lack of privacy

"The real voyage of discovery

consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having fresh eyes."

Marcel Proust

Did you know that we can be spied on and we can spy on each other? Even though I am not usually a suspicious person, I have learned that we are all vulnerable to our privacy being violated frequently.  Watch this recent Vice episode with Edward Snowden for more details: https://www.facebook.com/vicenews/videos/600211946805426/

We live in a country and in a world that once gave us the illusion that we had privacy, just enough so that we could act without immediate judgment or witness.  These days, however, privacy is a thing of the past.  The Golden Age of Technology, as wonderful as it is, has changed all that, and breaches to and betrayals of our seeming privacy and safety happen more often that we know.  

Any of us who use or carry cell phones, iPads, and computers allow the National Security Agency (NSA) and other groups and people to enter our worlds, not just our thinking and feeling worlds, but our worlds in action: where we go, what kind of music we like, where we shop, what we read, data about family, friends and romances, and other tiny details about our everyday lives that shouldn’t really matter to anyone but to us, and perhaps to our loved ones.  The NSA now has access to our lives almost all of the time.

Whether you call Edward Snowden a saint or a criminal, he explains how we no longer have much privacy whatsoever. By collecting metadata, our country may not even be able to process it easily, and if the producers of Vice can be believed, the NSA’s data collection has never once prevented a terrorist attack. 

Presidents and other political structures will not stop this spying on so many citizens because if they do and a terrorist attack occurs, they will be blamed. Some think this data collection is a way for us to be safer instead of its being a government process that can create more danger for us all.

No longer can we talk or joke aloud about how we feel because data is collected through our iPhones which carry two cameras and a microphone.  How do we live contently in a world like this?

What does not having privacy do to our minds and our hearts? We cannot develop our creativity without sometimes wandering through the darkness.  Adolescents can no longer adventure easily through their reckless years without being continuously watched. And, journalists can no longer assure sources that their valuable data will be kept confidential.

However, technology can be extremely important when our phones record crime, like when police attack brown and black boys and men.  Or, when college students record rapes of drunken, adolescent victims. But, life gets insane when our government and businesses intrude so far into our lives that everything that we do or say might just be observed.

Some speculate that we will be living in a police state soon.  I hate to think that.  But, I wonder how we will evolve without knowing clearly that we can share some confidences safely, especially during times of crisis or distress when we need discreet and careful support and guidance? Without this possibility, few of us can remain healthy.

Counseling discrimination: the dark ages have descended

The dark ages have once again descended upon Tennessee.

To summarize: “Gov. Bill Haslam on Wednesday signed into law a controversial bill that says no licensed counselor or therapist must serve a client whose ‘goals, outcomes or behaviors’ conflict with the counselor’s ‘sincerely held principles’ — a measure the American Counseling Association had denounced as a ‘hate bill’ against gay and transgender people.” (http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2016/04/27/haslam-signs-controversial-bill-giving-therapists-protections/83509448/) This law is not controversial.  It is a travesty.

Imagine that you are a LGBTQ child from a low income family living in the Tennessee hills.  Imagine that you are depressed, even somewhat suicidal, and when your good Christian parents find out about your distress, they send you to the only counselor in town.

When you enter the counselor’s waiting room, you notice books about Jesus, positive thinking, faith and will power.  Counseling is supposed to be a supportive, safe space where you should be able to say anything that comes to your mind, where you can build trust with a confidential counselor who can help you understand yourself and the world around you so that you can find healthy ways to live, even with depression.  

However, if you tell this counselor that you are gay, bisexual or transgender, she may want you to embark on a journey of conversion or reparative therapy for your LGBTQ issues, possibly neglecting your depression and suicidality as secondary to the issue of homosexuality. Such a counselor should be reported to and reprimanded by the Tennessee Health Related Boards but you don’t know that as a child.  You aren’t even sure you want to live, and this lady is telling you that homosexuality is a sin and in order to feel better, you must change who you are. 

If you as this child asks that the counselor to treat you in a gay-affirming manner, the counselor,  who should be your thread of hope, can now tell you, because of this legislation, that she has decided not to work with you because of her “sincerely held principles,” her thinking that your sexuality is problematic.  Some might say if you are suicidal, she has to work with you, but not unless you are in imminent danger of hurting yourself or others.  Irregardless, who would want to work with this kind of counselor anyway? Someone in trouble, that’s who.

So imagine if you had begun counseling with this person and had worked with her for a year already before you told her that you are LGBTQ - after trust has been built, after you have depended on her for so long, a lifeline for you.  Then, she may refer you to another counselor because of the same issues.  Such a betrayal by a counselor is traumatic and tragic to an already struggling child.

A young LGBTQ child may not have the resources or the transportation to find any other avenues for mental health counseling in rural Tennessee.  And, if the child reports to their parents what the counselor  has said, they may agree with the counselor because they also don’t like the fact that their child seems to be oh, horror of horrors, LGBTQ.  They, too, may be uneducated about any other healthy alternatives for counseling assistance.

All this because some Tennessee legislators and the governor have proposed and passed this disgusting bill into law. 

One mental health advocate, Sita Diehl, Licensed Advanced Practice Social Worker with the National Alliance on Mental Illness, states,“This legislation flies in the face of professional ethics. Helping professionals make considered decisions about who they can serve - and who they should refer to others - based on their areas of professional competency, not their personal beliefs.  Referral is a skill that requires sensitivity and professional judgement. The law is a blunt instrument that has no place in this delicate process. I’m truly disappointed that Governor Haslam has seen fit to besmirch our state by signing this bill into law.” 

What’s a child or even an adult to do? Some counseling not only reinforces the shame that the child or adult may already feel but can add to their depression and suicidality, figuring that if even a counselor says they are a sinner and need to change, or go to hell, then life is not worth living.  They may die.

Is this what we want for Tennessee and its citizens?  Absolutely not, most of us counselors say.  But, hardly anyone is listening. 

Not only is there no need for this law, it is a disgrace to Tennesseans.  

Sexual harassment against women continues: “Confirmation,” the Movie

 "I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their prejudice and hate so stubbornly is they sense that once hate is gone they will be forced to deal with their own pain."

James Baldwin

Confirmation, the new HBO movie about Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court Justice nomination process, reminds us vividly that sexual harassment of women was not only rampant 25 years ago but still occurs today.  Perhaps the glaring details and structures are more subtle and covert these days but such abuse of women and support for the good ole boy network are still very much alive and well, even here in Tennessee.

Just look at the status of women’s reproductive health in Tennessee, another form of sexual harassment. Look at the amount of sex trafficking.

As I watched the Confirmation debacle, I tried my best to view the men with compassion. Being someone who advocates for peace and justice, I still could not calm my anger and disappointment about the unfairness and injustice that were so rampant in those years, and now.

I try very hard not to stereotype, and I don’t hate men, but have loved and respected many men in my lifetime.

This movie also displays the problem with those white men on the Senate Judiciary Committee passing judgment, some of whom had exhibited much worse behaviors than Thomas in their treatment of women. Some of these men coined Anita Hill’s sexual harassment claims as fiction, fantasy, or a psychiatric disorder. Not needing to look as far up as Supreme Court justices, we view in today’s news frightening statistics about domestic violence, incest and rape far too frequently.

(Mostly) white men have been in power in this country for so long that we have taken patriarchy for granted. And now, that is gradually but thankfully changing.

Women used to be so frequently sexually harassed in their jobs that this behavior became a social norm. How do I know?  Because it happened to me.  Women learned to expect such behavior from powerful men and some women played men for gain.  Whether they be politicians, bosses, ministers, fathers or husbands, men have learned to disrespect women for far too long partly because of this culture that has raised them. And, we all have a part in this while we raise our families.

During my early 20’s, a local college professor in his 40’s offered a scholarship for graduate school work, so I went to talk with him.  He wined and dined me but when he tried to have sex with me during that first meeting, I refused.  Needless to say, I didn’t get the scholarship. When young women experience this kind of behavior, they learn not to trust or respect men, making for messy relationship dynamics throughout time.

The good news is that women have now expanded their presence in politics and leadership, organizations require training about sexual harassment, and women’s rights have increased.  But, make no mistake.  Sexual harassment still occurs today, perhaps less frequently but just as perniciously.

We continue to have much work to do to change our culture regarding crimes against women.

An Open Letter to Gun Advocates

Dear Gun Advocates,

Some of you want pistols to protect yourselves and your families.  Some are vigilantes, like George Zimmerman, who want to keep neighborhoods safe.  Some are police, some of whom need to use weapons more responsibly.  Some shoot defenseless animals for sport or food. Some own military weapons that can mow down large groups of school children or movie goers.

I am writing to this last group.  Please: help me understand.

It may be a constitutional right to bear arms, but the Constitution said we have the right to bear arms in a militia, those arms being muskets at the time, guns that you could shoot once, taking much time to reload. Not AK-47 weapons.

Please help me understand.

Why assault weapons?  Are you waiting for a used-to-be rare but more frequent mass shooting or another shooting so you save the day, planning to kill the “bad"guys? How many times might you have that opportunity in life?  Is that your plan?

Have you listened to police chiefs who say that they don’t want their staff entering an active shooting scene where “bad” shooters and “good” shooters are battling around innocent families and children, unable to discern who is bad or good? Do you think you can shoot your AK-47 and hit only the bad people instead of innocents as well?

Please, help me understand.

The police might mistake you for a “bad” shooter. The might shoot and kill you. The investigators will also need to determine if your bullets killed the innocent. Are you asking to be imprisoned?

Maybe you just don’t feel very good about yourself or your life, and you need to boost your confidence and self-esteem by openly carrying a giant weapon, perhaps fearful, angry and/or psychologically distressed. Maybe you think Muslims are taking over this country and if not Muslims, then perhaps Black and Brown men and boys are wreaking havoc, frightening you.  Maybe you have been severely traumatized and need help.

I still don’t understand.

Who makes you God?  Even if you were in a challenging shooting situation, are you the judge or jury?  Can you sort out facts in the heat of the moment instead of using our justice system to work through an agreed-upon process for determining innocence, guilt, and sentencing?

I, for one, am extremely frightened of you because you are holding me and my family’s lives in your hands when you carry your weapons of mass destruction around our schools, parks, and churches.  Tiny children can sometimes find your weapons, thinking they are toys, forever ruining or ending their own or others’ lives.  Who gave you the right to endanger so many people?

Please help us all understand your thinking, feelings, or logic.  And, then, maybe we can have a safe and honest conversation about your fear, your anger, and perhaps your obsession with power, control, and violence.