Last week I was sitting in the car parked at the curb near a store in Jamestown while Beth was inside shopping. As I perused a road atlas a black woman walked on the sidewalk nearby with a white teenager on a bicycle, the boy about 15 years old in my estimate. As the woman stood near the store, looking away, the boy approached the car and motioned for my attention. As the engine was turned off and the power window was inoperable, I cracked the door open a few inches and asked him his business. He replied,“I have something for you” as he reached into his jacket and withdrew his middle finger. He smirked as I impulsively said, “you are a stupid shit and don’t even know it”, then closed the door. He continued to provoke me, saying he wanted to fight or some such words. I opened the door and exited as he backpedaled down the sidewalk, telling him to come back, that “here I am”. The always silent black woman continued to walk away as I reentered the car, telling the boy to “get out of here punk” as I also called to the woman, “ and you hang around with this guy”? As I returned to the atlas, the boy returned to the opposite side of the car trying to provoke me further. I shook my head and continued reading, and he left.
...Now we have a president who uploads crude videos of himself dumping 'sludge' on protesters, and a vice president who excuses the vile, hateful comments of adults as “boys will be boys”, and a speaker of the house who does his best to delay the release of pedophile files. Yes, boys will be boys and grown men who have no moral compass will do all they can to justify and perpetuate their juvenile, corrupt behavior. What is particularly disturbing is the legions of supporters who refuse to acknowledge the character flaws-assuming that the good things the administration is attempting, such as peace in the mideast- justify all the other lapses. Bill Maher stated recently that “not all Republicans are racist, but if a person is a racist, odds are that that person is a Republican.”
...I have lived long enough and read enough history to know that human nature is a complicated beast and that civilizations come and go as despots and less selfish people fight for dominance. Mr. Putin has sacrificed a million men on his delusion of empire, never fighting on the frontline nor recognizing that humanity is one species floating on an island in space and that national borders are an unfortunate fiction. History is full of such violent, egotistical men and their enablers forging the course of history. When there is no recourse but for tolerant, peaceful people to fight-as I was provoked-the reasons they fight are wholly different from the people whom they oppose. There is something inevitable about the present polarization among Americans and among many people around the world; human nature repeats itself. Even Hitler and slavery had their committed champions, and people endorse all manner of oppression and violence in the name of God or some other chosen reason. Good versus Evil we say, each side defining the terms as they see them. Jane Goodall even hypothesized that warfare may have been instrumental in the development of our brains, requiring cooperation to annihilate all competing species.
...Readers of this blog have heard me say that humanity is a very immature species, and I define maturity as recognizing the unity of all of Creation and the intrinsic loving, tolerant nature of what we call ‘God’. Anything other than acceptance and reverence for the tremendous diversity of Nature and all organisms and people removes us from the ideal that represents the spiritual ‘Godhead’. I look around and see many people, even many good people so far as they
are able to see, show their blindness and inability to embrace ideas larger than their immediate world. Propaganda and peer pressure and manipulation and xenophobia direct them, a disregard for truth directs them, conflict over resources directs them, unknown influences direct them, and the cycle of peace and war, of prejudice and inclusion, of civilizations rising and falling describes our human existence. Genetics, cultures, childhoods and all of the above make us toddlers to teens to adults, striving towards that which we imagine, yet always ignorant by deliberate choices and unconscious omissions. All of us.
...This awareness, or lack thereof, reveals the profound responsibility we possess to save or destroy ourselves and the planet, but as the current divisions show, I am not convinced we are up to that challenge.
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