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writing for godot

Robbing Children

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Written by Beth Carter   
Tuesday, 07 May 2013 14:09
Racism in America is to be expected. All the racial tension between other nations comes with immigrants who eventually become citizens. Racists tend to be overly concerned about their vulnerability, paranoid about their security as an individual, as a nation, and as a race.

The question of nature versus nurture, genetics or environment, is a hall of mirrors meant to deflect real inquiry as reality is not either/or, but yes on both counts. A stimulus rich environment can overcome and surpass genetic failings, yet racists base acceptability strictly on physical genetic markers. Dichotomy feeds a negative loop when both extremes are operable. However, there is an aspect of learned behavior, a kind of homage which simply repeats behavior of a trusted predecessor. In this way, racism can be a form of ancestral worship.

The passing down of scripted behavior happens voluntarily and involuntarily. It was once totally acceptable to do things in a peculiar fashion as ______ did it that way (insert your preference where appropriate). Then the 60’s happened. It seems a lot of folks who lived through it are still bewildered. The oft-repeated phrase of “What’s wrong with these kids today?!” is heard more and more with a widening reach, a larger cast reeling in a larger catch—it’s not just the kids now. The world becomes incomprehensible this way leading to a deeper sense of insecurity.

Paranoia is the fear of vulnerability. Children, by and large, have little sense of insecurity as vulnerability is the basic state in which we all arrive here, human or not. Children have boundless energy which society helps to mold and shape, but also to limit and harness. It is the latter by which we as adults can lose our joi de vivre. We watch children and with loving, tired smiles wish we could bottle what they’ve got. These regrets we develop, often as our lives go from being a dependent in the family home to adult can sap our strength and creativity. This can even occur much earlier in life. If life goes strongly awry, judgment of us by ourselves and others close or distant can compound disappointment, disillusionment, and discontentment into a tangled knot. One need not be cognizant of the specifics. A consistent discomfort can lead us into addictive behavior to ease the nagging restlessness, the unease of our quicksand agony.

Memory is the tangle and its’ release. Explicit memory may be stored in the brain, but implicit memory resides in the heart. Changing data intellectually is one thing, but changing emotional meaning is far different. Children have to learn how to guard their hearts as we wear our hearts on our sleeves early in life. Judgment, opinion, and condemnation are imposed upon our hearts. Euphoria relieves the pain of imposition. We all remember how we were initially limited by social convention; coming-of-age movies show this consistently.

It is speculation on my part, but it makes sense to me that psychoactive compounds put us into a childlike state without working out that tangle. It is difficult to maintain guards, to manipulate situations while in a state of euphoria. Adult defense mechanisms are stripped away. We have a reprieve from our regret, the disconnect with life. Instead of recognizing our true state, innate euphoria, we relegate it to a lamented past, a childlike Garden of Eden of boundless discovery and adventure, accessible only through a substance crutch thereby tacitly declaring the tangle fixed and permanent. Addiction takes hold locking us into ever increasing diminishment. In the West, psychoactives have an as yet unrecognized place as medicine, yet it is only that as long as it treats a malady, balances an imbalance. Once the dysfunction (the tangle) is remedied, medicine is rendered unnecessary. Further utilization crosses over from medicine to poison.

Eastern spiritual practices warn beginners off of intoxicants (therefore psychotropics) as the experience of meditation needs to be clear in order to develop conviction in one’s own experience. Lama Anagarika Govinda (German/Bolivian) said, “a bridge is revealed which connects the everyday temporal world of sense perceptions to the realm of timeless knowledge.” The brain will be unsuccessful in finding the bridge without connecting to the heart as the heart regulates the systems of physiology including, but not limited to, the brain. (See The Biology of Transcendence by Joseph Chilton Pearce, the author of The Crack in the Cosmic Egg.)

When a human being untrained in emotional processing (brain connected to heart) experiences trauma stacked on trauma stacked on trauma stacked on trauma, the calluses on the heart combined with the lack of trust and disbelief in recovery make psychotropics capable medicine. It has been reported that hardcore drug addicts have kicked their destructive habits after a course of psychotropics as therapy. Asians consider Westerners kind of crazy and for good reason if the above scenario is a norm which it is these days. However, it is unnecessary for every Westerner.

Readers might be blustering about the purview of this article. Maybe it is just a bit too broad for some, yet these are the exact challenges we are facing as a nation. Like it or not, the 60’s were a major turning point in America and the world. Student protests happened worldwide. The assassination of John F. Kennedy revoked the shining future of Americans finally living up to their oft-quoted, lofty ideals. Kennedy was willing to dismantle the CIA. His United Nations address is something that should be played to every sophomore high school history class nationwide in perpetuity, not that it will mind you. Lyndon B. Johnson inherited a controlled demolition and remanufacture of American social structure, kind of like Obama except the current moment seems something of a photo negative of the 60’s. The Civil Rights laws were a way to put a cold compress on the neck of a feverish nation, but at that time it was the liberals and progressives getting radical. Now it is the conservatives, the under-educated, and the traumatized.

Beatniks and Hippies once looked at their parents, who believed that their government could do no wrong, as mewling sycophants—mindless cogs in the establishment machine. No one wanted to emulate their parents. Kids were embarrassed about their parents and the feeling was mutual. Eisenhower’s warning fell on deaf ears, dumb hands, or both. It seemed that the Baby Boomers were bent on breaking every possible rule and were quite successful, but only to a point. This bred in the environment of the subsequent generations a disregard for prior generations, for authority of any sort, and a penchant for breaking things. This hardening of the heart separated the generations from one another making the roots of our heritage and ancestral wisdom weak, flimsy. Our desire for security makes us weak. We strip our children of this natural euphoria earlier and earlier under the mistaken idea that we are teaching them safety when we are unsafe even with all the defense mechanisms currently available. We rob our kids of their childhood riches even as we deny our own recovery.

Strength is not invulnerability. Power is not force. Vulnerability is powerful. It gives every moment rich meaning, but our own self-importance must die. Adults largely dislike feeling like a child again, but only the body has finite growth. That which enlivens the body, consciousness, is still a contentious mystery for scientists. The breath that inhabits the body is as timeless as it is formless. The body is simply a temporary representation of our choices, conscious and unconscious. The programmed constructs of security are fictitious and holographic, revealed by the existence of anomalies and the decrepitude of physical form. How does one recover after decades of cognizant and subconscious learning and consequence? How does one move out of blind loyalty?

Misunderstanding is often a disagreement in semantics. The steps between philosophy and application are often varied and sometimes hotly disputed. These are causes of paranoia, bigotry, and an immediate guarding of the heart. The bone chilling fear of vulnerability is derived from the propaganda that the only way to live is to be safe—another word for sterile. Vulnerability is fecund. Life grows vibrant, enthusiastic. Sterility is a blank slate without movement, impulse, volition, or awareness.

America’s greatest beauty is the innovations derived from its’ fecund melting pot of cultures. Associations built on tolerance and common basic need allow for the broadening of reference; the abstract becomes personal through direct contact. Fallacies are discovered and eliminated. Perimeters of definitions are expanded, nuanced, and in some cases completely rewritten. What once meant “strength” (lynching a successful Southern black businessman) becomes murder (a bomb in a black Birmingham church). “Visionary” may become “lunatic”. “Wack job” may become “genius”. Both Hitler and Mao were dearly beloved of their people in their time. Emmanuel Velikovsky was blackballed by the scientific community, but posthumously acknowledged. America’s melting pot brings us close together, much closer than prior centuries. This is uncomfortable from time to time, but the circumstance is very constructive. As humans learn by parables and tales I use popular culture to underscore reality often overlooked or skimmed over. To illustrate the constructive uncomfortable American exchange I point to the movie Monsters Inc. (Yes, really.) The character Sullivan is at the top of his career in a social structure that benefits from frictional contact with the children of another space/time continuum—humans. The accepted view of human children in the beginning was that they were untouchable—an infectious scourge. Sully confidently engages his work without concern or thought. However, when he encounters the child he would nickname “Boo”, his world is upended, inside and out. In the first few hours of Boo being in the monster world, they discover her joy is far more powerful than her fear. The insulation which allowed for predation on children is challenged by greater vulnerability to the “other”. The reality overthrows the theoretical and the presumed.

Children all over the world deserve their childhood. The age of the body is a deluding illusion. Security is a fallacy meant to commandeer the individual’s power-to-change through vulnerability to the “other”. America’s innovation is a direct result of this uncomfortable constructive re-evaluation of reality blossoming out of tolerant vulnerability. The entire world has had to relinquish insulating, prejudicial cultural factors just to keep up with us. We must remember and hold on to the truth of that for many inside this country are attempting insulation to avoid terrorism even as they are terrified—a world of diminishing returns.
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