Self-Righteousness

Hola mi gente,
For the most part, I am taking a break from the news of the day. For one, I cannot stomach the likes of Rachel Maddow and the rest of the poseurs of the liberal punditry class and I refuse to read, listen to, or watch corporate media. I’ve had it.

An eye for an eye will make the whole world go blind.
 -- “Mahatma” Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948)

Gandhi practiced ahimsa, a belief in nonviolence as a way of life. He was assassinated, but not before he he became part of a process that liberated 600 million from British dominion -- without firing a shot. A teacher once told me the story that at the precise moment when he came face-to-face with his murderer, Gandhi’s first instinct was to bow to him in the spirit of forgiveness. Even when faced with his enemy -- his killer -- his last gesture was an act of forgiveness.

Amazing... 

As I attempt to write a piece for an organization seeking to empower families and their currently and formerly incarcerated loved ones, I think of Gandhi’s power of example. Gandhi was an influence on so many people including Martin Luther King, Jr. Both men were able to reconcile conflicting energies into sustained movements that changed the world. Both men met their demise at the hands of murderous violence.

How seemingly opposite ideologies sometimes share the same ethical/ spiritual concerns are captured brilliantly in Graham Greene’s masterpiece, ThePower and the Glory. Greene captures it in what is essentially a parable. The novel revolves around a revolutionary Marxist soldier who believes that he must kill a Catholic priest, even though the priest is a harmless drunk -- a “whiskey priest” -- because the priest represents a corrupt institution that has been complicit in his, and his people’s, exploitation.

The priest is a fugitive from this revolutionary, making his way among the peasants he once served, sleeping in their barns and fields. The revolutionary, in his exercise of revolutionary self-righteousness, is so thoroughly convinced of the necessity of the murder of the priest that he is willing to kill his “own people,” the peasants, as hostages in order to get at the priest.

But in the end, the drunken priest, representative of a corrupt Church, and the idealistic revolutionary, who murders in the name of self-righteousness, share the same spiritual values. The priest says to the revolutionary just before the lieutenant empties his gun into his head, “You’re a good man.” This is not merely a pitiful gesture of moral generosity. It is a simple statement of recognition: I see what is in your heart, and it is good. 

Tragically, in the fallen world in which they must act, neither can do anything but work against his own deepest and most passionate beliefs. The irony being that they conspire together in their different ways to defeat a shared spiritual and ethical vision. Both the Church and the revolution are corrupt, destructive, and murderous, but the desire for loving and just human relations is nonetheless embedded deeply beneath their failed institutions.

We are at our most dangerous when we are fully convinced that our positions are absolutely morally superior. Our biggest challenge is that we must question why we are most uncomfortable with the hard questions and why, in our rush to be certain, we kill one another.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

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Hatred

Hola Everybody,
I’m struggling, but I’m still up. Some of this springs from reflections of my recent work with the Alliance of Families for Justice. Check them out. Get involved. Don't react -- respond!

Anger and Hatred

Police attack peaceful water protectors with powerful water canons in freezing temperatures. Photo: Avery Leigh White

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd
 -- Bertrand Russell

Hatred has never conquered hatred. Hatred merely leads to revenge, and revenge leads to more hate. Hence, a cycle of suffering is set in motion that can go on and on. We only need to look at the world around us to see the sad evidence of this truth.

Hatred is an extreme form of anger. The teachings of the path I follow take anger very seriously because anger causes so much suffering. I see hate as being rooted in fear. Fear is a powerful core emotion.

Even when anger is not acted out and seems controlled, a person who is inwardly angry can instantly change the atmosphere of a room she enters. There is an invisible, but palpable chill and anyone nearby becomes more guarded and less spontaneous. This happens without conscious effort. It seems to be a response at a very deep (cellular?) level to the quality of energy that anger gives out.

You see this happen often in personal relationships, but the wreckage of collective hate is everywhere to be seen in our world. There is, for example, the ascension of a racist billionaire to the highest office in the known universe. Put there by millions who protect their anger onto blacks and Latinx. 

When anger is acted out and results in violence, the damage is obvious. Some years ago, I read the words by the Cambodian monk, Maha Ghosananda, who observed “When this defilement of anger really gets strong, it has no sense of good or evil, right or wrong, of husbands, wives, children. It can even drink human blood.” This was a tragic comment upon a bloody civil war that had torn Cambodia apart and killed almost everyone he knew. It is also, in my view, what fuels the long-standing and shameful US practice of racialized social control which has resulted in the devastation and enslavement of millions of people -- the vast majority Black and Latinx.

On the contrary, what is often not understood about hatred is the harm it does to those who cultivate it. The first person hurt is always the one who is full of hate. An mind full of hate is a suffering mind. An angry mind is agitated and tight, constricted and narrow in its thinking. Judgment and perspective vanish. All good sense disappears. One feels restless and driven. Nothing is satisfying, everything is tension. And this is what happens at the collective level. The vast majority of white people in the US, for example, are so angry, that they are easily manipulated into projecting their anger on the most vulnerable of the population.

What happens during anger is that the sense of self becomes very large, and so does the sense of “the other.” A major reason anger is so very painful is that it instantly creates a sharp distinction between self and other. An imaginary line is drawn that cannot be passed. For example, if I make the statement, “Any friend of those assholes, is not a friend of mine,” I am drawing a line (more on that later).

There is also an intoxicating effect to anger. There is a strong feeling of self-righteousness. Thoughts rooted in justification take over: “She abused me! Look at what she did to me!” This is combined with feelings of defiance and rectitude: “I am right!” However, underlying the intoxication of anger is the pain of a mind so narrowly constricted that it closes itself off from human connection. This also plays out on the national stage.

Whites, many of whom have been shut off economically, turn their anger on the false perception of hordes of undisciplined, immoral, unintelligent Blacks and Latinx who have destroyed “America” -- the same America that needs to be “great again.” In the 1990s, it was the specter of black and Latinx “super-predators” who had no conscience and needed to be “brought to heel” like animals.

The results of such hatred can be devastating. Hatred is like a poison in the mind. It generates an unhealthy cycle of cause and effect. Every thought, word, or act, or social policy has an angry after-effect. Like throwing a pebble into a pond, an act or thought rooted in hatred sets into motion a series of ripple effects that go out in every direction. Caught in the grips of hatred, we can come to feel that we are stuck with what we have done, and with the effects that we have caused.

I believe that the majority of harmful patterns of behavior are rooted in unconscious anger/ hatred. People will gossip about others, spread false accusations about others as a way of maintaining this angry state of mind. Existing in an environment of fear (lack of faith), hate, and anger, they lash out at others and create policies in order to maintain their inflated egos.

I guess the answer is not to respond in anger, but to generate love instead. However, one can choose to love from afar. One can choose to minimize contact with harmful and negative influences. Yes we can disagree and still love each other. However, if your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and the denial of my humanity and right to exist, then I can’t do the kumbaya thingee. Still, my response must be rooted in compassion (of self and other) otherwise I will have become the face of hatred. Cornel West reminds us that we should, “Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.”

And so it is with my own decisions about the difference I want to make in this life. I think what makes decisions skillful or not has a lot to do with intent. If one has an angry or hateful intent, then, like the ripples in the pond, we all suffer the consequences. However, if the intent is based on compassion and an attempt to create, or be a part of, a social justice movement, then we can live knowing that we’re walking our path to the best of our ability.

For me the answer isn’t so much on closing down jails or prisons, or even undoing mass incarceration. I see mass incarceration and racialized social control as symptoms of a deeper problem. Rather, I see the work of envisioning and creating a world where there is no place for dehumanization, the real work. Everything else is still dehumanization.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

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Sunday Sermon [F.E.A.R.]

Hola Everybody,
This election cycle is, among many other things, a reminder how fear-based living creates suffering. It also embraces authoritarianism and I’m not talking about the Orange One.

Feeding the Demon

Fear: Fuck Everything And Run

The following is based on a true event, but it reminds of a story I read about a long time ago... 

I took the train one night and, as is often the case on weekends, the NYC mass transit system (MTA) is a complicated mess. Most of the construction and structural upgrades occur during the weekends, so trains are re-routed, stations by-passed and it’s almost impossible to keep track. As a result, there are usually mobs of clueless tourists moving about aimlessly in our transit system. As a result, part of being a New Yorker is often adopting the duty of a de facto tour guide.

And so it was that night, when a tourist (don’t ask, you can tell) approached me for assistance. I assured her the oncoming train would take her to her destination (she and I were getting off on the same stop) and, as she struck up small talk, the train began to roll into the station.

As we entered, I immediately sensed something weird in the car. Everyone seemed tense and, sure enough, there was a person talking very loud, using profanity, and it had everyone ill-at-ease. As a New Yorker you learn to ignore such outbursts. Paying too much attention, or being obvious about one’s attention, often serves to encourage unwanted behavior. So being able to ignore unusual behavior becomes second nature to most New Yorkers. 

Unfortunately, Tourist Lady wasn’t a New Yorker and she committed infraction no.1: she made eye contact with the individual, who seemed especially belligerent. I took her by the elbow, guiding her to a transit map with the outward intention of showing her where she should get off. My real intention was to try to deflect the unwanted attention she was unwittingly inviting. I hoped that this would help sever the connection between Belligerent Subway Dude and Tourist Lady. 

No dice... 

Belligerent Dude, who was apparently drunk, sidles up to us and asks Tourist Lady if she needs some assistance with directions. Tourist Lady (who’s not drunk, merely naïve), answers, in what could have been construed as a snobby dismissal, that no, she didn’t need help (and I believe she even threw in a little eye-roll to boot).

This, of course, sets Belligerent Dude off who starts in on her, making comments about her that weren’t too nice. Naïve Tourist Lady, instinctively edges closer to me and realizes, too late, that she probably shouldn’t have paid any mind to Belligerent Dude because he’ drunk. Belligerent Dude thinks she is a snobby bitch and expresses that sentiment for all to hear.

Belligerent Dude begins talking about Tourist Lady's breasts, her legs, I mean, he’s just going off on her, and I know she’s embarrassed. Out of the blue, from the other end of the car, a man yells out, “Shut the fuck up, already!” and Belligerent Dude, as if on cue, goes off on that individual. In fact, he threatens the individual, who I shall call Fake Brave Guy, with a severe “beat down.” Once Fake Brave Guy realizes that he will have to exert more than bravado in order to handle Belligerent Dude, he backs off a little, but Belligerent Dude, who’s also a big dude, gets right in Fake Brave Guy’s face and challenges him -- actually calls him a “fuckin pussy,” adding that he will “kick his motherfuckin ass” for good measure.

Fake Brave Guy suddenly remembers the next stop is his and quickly makes his exit. Of course, I’m sitting there hoping Belligerent Dude finds something else to do, but fuckin Tourist Lady is still staring at him. So, Belligerent sits right across from us and continues his running commentary on Tourist Lady’s physical attributes. And I’m sitting there thinking that reading my ebook is all I want to do. And now, he’s starting to get on my nerves.

Finally, I tell Belligerent Dude, “Listen man, why you gotta disrespect me like that? Can’t you see she’s with me? I mean, how would you like it if someone talked about your woman like that right in front of you? That shit ain’t right... ” I added a few choice words of my own and stared right into his eyes, hoping that my once vaunted psycho-I-don't-give-a-fuck-look hadn’t softened from lack of use, but it wasn’t working. Tourist Lady also chose this point in time to move away from me a little, apparently undecided whether I was the pan or the fire. In other words, my psycho look worked on her rather than on Belligerent Dude.

Belligerent Dude responded by informing me that he was, in fact, on his way to meet his woman, and if anybody spoke to his woman in the manner that he was speaking to Tourist Lady (now my woman), he would kick that motherfucker’s ass. It was an obvious challenge, but one I was determined to ignore.

I looked at him as if I was tired and before I could say anything more, an older man sat next to Belligerent Dude and, in a soothing voice, began talking to him. At first Belligerent Dude was hostile to the old man, but because the old man was non-threatening and seemed genuinely interested in him -- asking him about his girlfriend and how she was -- Belligerent Dude directed his focus from me and started talking to the old man. 

In a loud voice, Belligerent Dude began talking about his woman, in the process enumerating all her great qualities, and how he couldn’t wait to see her. The old man continued in this vein, asking more questions, and generally managing to communicate the feeling that he was interested in Belligerent Dude’s story -- in him as an individual. Eventually, as Belligerent Dude continued to vent and he disclosed more and more, he revealed that he hadn’t seen his woman in a long time, and that he wasn’t sure that she would see him, and with the old man’s prompting, Belligerent Dude’s tough facade cracked a little as he continued to talk.

He had just come out of jail, he told the old man, and he didn’t really have anyone. All he had, he said, was that he was headed to the last known address of the woman he loved, but he was afraid that she wouldn’t be there, or if she was, if she would even accept him.

As the train arrived at my stop and I got off (with Tourist Lady close behind), the last thing I saw was the old man comforting Belligerent Dude, who had completely broken down sobbing like a child... 

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…