Month: March 2015

Someone has no doubt come up with this term, but it’s new to me.

I was reading about efforts to implement Sharia courts in, of all places, Irving, Texas.

Sharia is misogynistic.  Women are not treated equally, or even, to a great extent, decently.  Men can legally beat their wives.  They can marry and rape 9 year old girls.  They can rape any woman who is not a Muslim.  This is legal.  Not considered wrong.  Neither is slavery.

And I got to thinking about the psychodynamic roots of all this.  What is the psychological condition of Muslim women?  They are kept apart from men, not allowed (in most traditional societies) to be educated, not allowed to live independently, not allowed opinions, by and large, although I assume Muslim women, like all women, find ways to have their say.

There is something traumatizing about all this.  One can assume, I think, that most Muslim women know someone who has been beaten, and know it can happen to them too, and there will be nothing they can do about it.  Even in America we have had quite a few honor killings.

How do such women deal with the latent anger and rage, and fear, and humiliation?  Well, in part they likely internalize it, the same way that battered women refuse to put their batterers in jail, and stay with them, knowing it will happen again.  They rationalize the Hijab and restrictions on their movement and education as someone appropriate.

But they have access to little boys, and little boys can be punished.  They can be made to feel fear.  They can be humiliated.  They can be hurt.  Yes, these are their own children, but surely most of these mothers must feel some ambivalence, looking in the eyes of their men in their children?

Obviously, there are many happy homes, and many good mothers.  But I would argue that this outcome is made much, much less likely the more seriously the men take the fundamental contempt for women which pervades their holy text, and accounts of the deeds of its author.

Separate but equal, I think we can all agree, is not equal at all; and most Islamic apologists are being excessively generous even in granting equality in principle.  Women are a step below, maybe two.

I used the term Rosebud, or Rosebud moments from time to time.  The meaning should be clear enough to all who have seen Citizen Kane, but I thought I might clarify a tad.

All of us carry within us “moments” which are primitive, childish, and of vast, existential importance. I  was reading the other day that Sartre’s parents divorced, and if memory serves (the details don’t matter) his mother remarried when he was 12.  Somewhere in there was a childish need that was not met.  He was crying with every ounce of his being for something–for maternal love, for his father, for a return to how things used to be.  But his cries went unheard.  His needs went unmet.

And what do you do with such things?  What did our portrait of William Randolph Hearst do?  He carried on.  He put it behind him, so he thought.  He suppressed it.  What good does keeping fucking hurts in your fucking memory fucking do?  Fuck it.

But here is the thing: they don’t go away until we own them, not really.

Christ taught both that we should be as children, and as wise as serpents.  Both.

Here is my emerging view: anyone unable to access the spirit of a child likely has major unresolved Rosebud moments.  Anyone STUCK in childishness, likewise.  You have to be able to move back and forth.  You have to be capable of what I will call “appropriateness”.  This is a very Taoist term in the sense I am using it. It is mutable, and its exact meaning will vary constantly.

All stupidity, repeated long enough, must be regarded as intentional.

Those who want to learn, do.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/knights-templar-maps-plan-fight-130000317.html?soc_src=mediacontentstory&soc_trk=fb&fb_ref=Default

I read this article, and was reminded of an idea I had I will propose again: someone involved needs to create an organization funded by public donations–and governmental money too–to fund a mercenary/volunteer army to fight ISIS.  Hell, Blackwater could float a trial balloon by announcing a money-gathering venture to fund the fight.  They could put a Donate button on their website.  People could sponsor soldiers, like people used to sponsor kids in Africa.

Churches could get involved.  This is in no small measure an anti-anti-Christian campaign.  Christians are being slaughtered: crucified, raped, buried, beheaded.

And I think he’s right, too, that it might take a Non-Governmental Entity to fight one.

Some days I get to admit I’m crazy.

Some days I can only attest to the craziness of others.

I prefer the first.

I have many dreams.  It is my belief that I often touch the energies of systems and people, but it is also my belief that I can only see what I can identify and manifest in myself.  I never see any evil or good that is not in me, too.

I was watching the British last night.  It has devolved into something like a feudal system which lacks the dignity of work.  Many, many lower class Brits sit around all day, waiting, helpless.  The initiative is gone, the gladness in work is gone.

And guns are fundamentally empowering.  I wonder if some do not seek out ISIS just to put a gun in their hands, to feel that power, that authority.  Access to them is hugely psychologically important.  They are agents of goodness and responsibility in the hands of decent people, and a CRITICAL element in a healthy democracy.

Finally: in hard times, commandments are much more useful than suggestions.  Keep the Ten Commandments is much easier than “love thy neighbor”.  True Christianity is much more advanced in some ways than the Mitzvot diet of the Jews, but it also requires a much more refined sensibility, which is why most Christians are not particularly loving, and in the case for example of the religious wars and witchcraft trials, have committed quite grievous sins in the name of “love”.

I think the height of mastery is giving nothing, but asking that people steal everything they can.

I read here http://www.truthandaction.org/iranian-military-calls-emp-attack-america-killing-90-population/
(by the way, I know how to connect the link to the word; I just want people to know what they are clicking on) that it would only take $2 billion to harden our energy grid against EMP’s.  If true, it is beyond stupid–I would argue it ranges into the criminal–that this has not been done.  We have probably spent more money videotaping koalas fucking than this, and almost certainly more on Obama’s vacations.

Why does everybody have to be so fucking stupid? 

It’s in the air,
          this feeling:

the dragons have fled from
    my plastic sword
and my tiny arms

the lizards have fled, with
  their flickering menacing tongues

and a rainbow. . .

Walking my dogs this morning, it occurred to me that we follow nearly the same route twice a day, year in, year out.  But every day is different.  Something has changed.  The grass is greener or browner.  There are a lot of clouds or no clouds.  Sometimes the neighbors dogs are out, sometimes they are inside.

Every day is a season.  This  hit me.  Every day is a flavor, a color, an opportunity, a chance, a soon-to-be-gone.

This is a healthy thought.  Mental health is in part looking forward to each and every day as an opportunity to experience, to grow, to learn, to enjoy.  You know that challenges are a part of it, but you also know even the very worst ones can’t last past this lifetime, and very few last even a fraction that long.  Most are forgotten in a week or two.

I have been living in hell.  As best I can determine, I have been in a more or less clinical state of depression since before I could speak, but it is healing.  I am getting flashes of hope and engagement, and cessation of those relentless attacks of self disgust, pessimism, and sense of impending doom and helplessness.

Doom may be impending–there are lunatics in this world even now trying to bring it about–but I think learning to face that possibility with the best attitude possible is the way to roll.

And I will be far more effective in creating and propagating creative alternatives as someone who is engaged with the world on all levels.