The House of Representatives voted to repeal health care reform for the 33rd time today.
This is the same health care reform that was, for all intents and purposes, co-written by Mitt Romney. Its been called Obamny Care for Petes sake.
And this is the same health care reform that these same House members forced an individual insurance mandate upon, yet the outrage is that they somehow got what they wanted, yet not the way they expected it. Google John Roberts to prove this to yourself.
I look at just this one example of present politics, I take a deep breath, and I try to detach myself, knowing that this is just a passing phase.
I mean, this is what we say about teenagers who are acting out while they grow up, right? Our nation is no different. We are relatively young, and we are growing up.
It's a painful process, but it appears we're learning that politics, as life, is way more complex than the choice between two just different views.
Of course, by listening to the rancor we hear on the majority of our media, this appears to not be the case. There is good money in fear porn, and this is a great place to make money...and a great place to find fearful people.
But people are learning and evolving.
People are seeing past the scam. People are refusing to be manipulated and divided anymore.
Part of the way is that they are educating themselves. Thankfully the internet is useful for more than cheap goods and porn.
People are educating themselves on how easily they can be manipulated. With just a bit of research, they can find how EASY it is for a so called "authority" to convince a whole society that an imaginary reality exists.
Its like, considering the plethora of flora on the planet, (plethflora?) a few can actually convince us that the only fruits that exist, ever, are apples or oranges, and that in some kind of impending doom, the apple eaters and the orange eaters had better remain separate and in conflict with each other so as to prevent absolute effects of an inevitable global Armegeddon. Sound familiar?
Okay, maybe its not the best example. My back is hurting this afternoon, and I'm trying to finish writing this without too much pain reliever.
But you get the point.
The "conflict" is constantly pushed in our faces, and we are given but two choices.
Pro Life or Pro Choice?
Pro or Anti Gay Marriage?
Planned Parenthood---Sex Education and care provider, or Horrible Abortion Clinic in hiding?
Shirley Sherrod---Rascist or Not?
Liberal or Conservative? And who has the most "American values"?
All of these warrant extended dialog that allow for explanations of details which show a grey area, or a mix, so to speak.
Ahh...how can I say this another way?
The Curse and Blessing of Being a "Mixed Child"
I'm constantly met with this divide in one way or another, and the roots are early in life.
On several occasions I've been told, "you don't SOUND Black", and then I'm accused as trying to pass for white or BE white.
Believe me, I never knew life had so many rules!
Which makes me wonder what's going through their minds. What does a Black person sound like, and because Seal speaks with a British accent, does that mean he is NOT black?
I could say this mostly happened to me in Texas and Spokane, but I assure you, this has happened on more places in the US than I would ever imagine.
I have a great grand parents who are Choctaw Indian, Irish-Italian, Thai, and African-American.
Yet, what do 99% of people identify me as when they see me?
Black.
Once, in school long ago, I was even categorized as "just black" by a classmate. What on earth, pray tell, is "just black"?
I guess, by default, America is either White or Black, right? There is no in between. And God forbid being an "in-between"... One might just get sucked into hating everyone. Reminds me of what James Earl Jones said about his Grandmother in relation to the Tea Party Movement.
I think I figured out the Tea Party. Ithink I… I do understand racism, because I was taught to be one, by mygrandmother. My grandmother was part Cherokee, Choctaw Indian, part black. She hated everybody. She taught all of her children and grandchildren to be racist,to hate white people, and to distrust black people.
That quote made me laugh. It made me ponder that there are several avenues that can be used to divide one person, if they want to buy into it.
Our Divisiveness Is Taught
As we traverse this shift in consciousness, its good to remember that our racism or our "mind divide", in whatever form, is taught. In the right conditions of fear, the conditions of racism, or any divide, can be created with just about anything. The Tutsis and Hutuus were both "black", weren't they?
Just ask Jonathan Krohn, who is still defending himself from attacks from fully grown adults around his evolution as a person. Just an acknowledgment on the humanity of personal evolution has generated dozens of personal attacks against him.
Why? Because he is perceived by those whose priority is to "follow" as a traitor for now not being on "their side". As if our whole political process can be reduced to a game of elementary school dodge ball. There has been a huge effort by many to reduce it to just this.
The Crooks Can Play You...
Basically, the secret it this. Humans can be made to turn against each other by an outside force literally dividing their thinking in half.
They can be turned against each other by literally dividing the brain. By "creating" an enemy without from the human insecurity within.
This has been done for eons to us on this planet, and the 2012-2013 convergence represents a permanent planetary evolution past this game.
Think it's not easy to do?
Jane Elliot and the Blue Eyes and the Brown Eyes
Jane Elliott was an educator in 1968 when Martin Luther King was shot.
She asked her third grade class what they thought about the assassination, then asked if they wondered what it was like to be a "Negro boy or girl" to deeper understand what was going on. All enthusiastically responded with a yes, and the Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes experiment began.
She divided the class into blue eyed kids, and brown eyed kids (those that had brown or green eyes).
Then she told the whole group that one side was inherently smarter and more gifted than the other.
In her first experiment, with just the "pep talk" alone, blue eyed students being told that they were more intelligent than their different counterparts, normally bad a math, improved their math scores.
It worked the other way as well for the normally "good at math" students who represented the "other, less fortunate" side. A blue eyed girl normally good at math started to drag after the experiment switched sides with the blue eyed kids being the "other".
All of these kids were Caucasian kids in the middle of Iowa.
Yet they quickly found out how they can be turned against each other by a simple ideology...the "different" eyed people are slower and are somehow "bad"
The Standford Prison Experiment
A few years later, psychology professor Phillip Zimbardo conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment funded by the US Office of Naval Research. He, like the navy, wished to investigate the causes of conflict between military guards and prisoners.
24 students, all deemed to be psychologically healthy and stable, took part in this including Zimbardo himself.
You can watch or read for yourself, but basically, this setting was so powerful that Zimbardo himself got sucked into this experiment that ended up getting cut short because the abuse ran out of control.
The experiment was cut short after six days. They found out how easy it is to take reasonably balanced people and divide them based on authority and privilege.
We Have One Place To Go...
The lessons of the age include the fact that we are one people, and that no one person is better than the other one.
We all only have different gifts to bring to the table.
And now, it's more important than at any time to bring our gifts forward to each other in peaceful dialog, sans the illusion of duality and conflict.
No comments:
Post a Comment