Tag: humanity

Lived Experience

Does anyone else have the same problem I have? I am dumbstruck by the number of people who have lived and died on Planet Earth. Neil deGrasse Tyson says approximately 10,000,000,000 (that’s 10 billion for those of you who, like me, are numerically challenged.) Given the world population is hovering around 7 billion. or so, that represents some intense population growth in the past couple of hundred years.

All we can ever know of people who went before us are what we hear about them or stories we read about them. We make huge assumptions about who they were based on hearsay and material artifacts and what people of an earlier time wrote. Our imagination of the lives of our forebears is largely apocryphal.

Understanding how others live today is a lot like that, too. We make assumptions about people that are based on scant and usually superficial information. Or more likely, curated information. I have seen resumes that are the greatest works of fiction ever published. Scandal du jour joker and “alleged” felon George Santos is only the most recent public offender.

I often wonder what daily life must have been like in the old days. Television and movies are great for filling in holes in our imagination. In movies and on TV, we are served curated scenarios that allow us to imagine the lives and lifestyles of those who lived long before we did or very differently. And in astonishing variety. Courtiers, family farmers, aristocrats, or maybe the occasional itinerant pastor who roamed the countryside with his horse and buggy spreading the word of the lord.

What fascinates me are the assumptions we make from what we observe. We can only speculate what is going on intellectually or emotionally inside other people. Past and present. I sometimes feel this frustration watching Holocaust footage. It is not only what you see, that is horrifying, but what you can’t see. Broken, skeletal, barely-clinging-to-life bodies twisted in pain convey some of their reality. But not everything.

One can only imagine the terror and humiliation of young Jewish females shaved bald and stripped naked before being paraded in front of leering Nazi camp guards. What must those young women have been thinking? What questions must they have asked themselves? What panicky racing thoughts did they have? Was their imminent demise clear in their minds or were they actually lulled into the delusion of the gas chambers as showers?

In the Steven Spielberg movie Schindler’s List, there is a particularly poignant scene – among many – where an elegant and clearly wealthy young woman disembarks from one of the trains at a camp. She dismissively gives a healthy handful of Reichsmarks as a tip. Her Jewish compatriot is already wearing the trademark black and grey striped pajamas and humbly takes away her bag. We have only the sad look on his pained face by which to gauge his reaction.

I do not understand evil very well. I do not understand what causes a teenager to walk into a building full of precious human beings with a semi-automatic weapon and deliberately start spraying bullets. Worse, I do not understand how a creature like Alex Jones who identifies as a “broadcaster” could consistently call the Sandy Hook massacre of innocent children a hoax, let alone have anyone believe him. I cannot imagine being a bereaved parent of a child victim futilely defending against that level of evil insanity. Those parents were bullied by people who believed Jones! I often wonder how those parents have made sense of their lives.

The only explanation I can come up with is that when nature is out of balance, life goes out of balance. We are a society wildly out of balance. Important institutions that were nurseries for human souls like communities or churches or extended families and even steady consistent parenting or any kind of certainty have broken down. Combining that with the information overload of our current epoch and mass breakdown was all but certain.

How is anyone supposed to internalize enough sense of self to navigate the exceptionally murky water and future that is presented to young people today? My daughter tells me that is why “mid-century” chic is so popular. People are looking backward more than forward. She also says it is why young people spend sinful amounts of money on gaudy self-care such as colored hair and three-inch acrylic nails. It is a world of “Why not?” and “What does it matter?” It is also a world of addiction. a teen suicide epidemic, easy divorces. All are indicative of a nationwide – even global – and communal loss of direction and purpose.

All of this external frazzle puts the onus back on us to create a better way of being for ourselves and our loved ones. Find a healthy and productive path and walk it with like-minded individuals who want to live better, richer, saner lives. I have a mountaineer friend who cured her booze addiction by climbing on rock and ice faces. I saw many brave if tremulous individuals surrender their to take the white chip in AA meetings as a first step toward sobriety. I know single mothers who go without to give their children everything they can give them.

Pain and obstacles are part of life. But so are joy and love. At an earlier time and maybe still in some places in the world, the interwebs of love in which people live function well enough to hold communities and each other together.

It wasn’t so long ago that a sense of community was widespread and dependable. Not without their own issues or problems to be sure. Where they don’t exist today, it behooves us to keep our counsel and to keep looking for one or create one that works for us.

Just Come Back

Mental illness – to somewhat understate it – is a controversial concept.

I accept there are biological conditions that throw the brain and body seriously out of whack. I accept that anxiety and depression are real. I know. I spent a lot of my life there.

But looking back, the source of my mental distress was completely traceable. I was carrying around so much emotional pain that it squeezed out everything in me that was valuable. I didn’t have engaged parents. For their part, as long as I “appeared” to be doing well, their job was done.

And while dragging my pain around, I still had to create a life. First, I had to scramble to learn enough to get a job. Later it was imperative to make a living. I had babies to raise.

If I ever had a clear vision of what I wanted in life, I wasn’t sure what it was. My mother had soured me on marriage. I would say she was pathologically afraid of marriage given how hers had worked out. Worked out being a euphemism for disastrous long-lasting personal consequences. For Mom and for her children.

For Mom and many of her peers in the Fifites, marriage was a trap that heavily benefitted men. For women then – especially the bright and ambitious – it was often a prison. Conforming to the social expectations of the day, marriage often not only eroded a woman’s self-worth but subjugated her own dreams and needs in service to her husband and family.

Selfishness was akin to murder, rape, and incest for Fifties housewives.

The tragedy of women’s repressed dreams was explored in the movie Revolutionary Road. Starring Leo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet, they play a nice, young couple living in a Connecticut suburb during the mid-1950s. Kate hates where they have landed in life. The lingering memories of the adventurous and freewheeling life they once lived and planned to again is lost. She pushes Leo to move to Paris while they still have time. Plans are well underway when he gets a promotion and pay raise. Paris gets shelved.

Moving to Paris is a prison break for Kate’s character. They struggle in their marriage to come to terms with the disconnect between them in their hopes and dreams. For Leo’s character, it was good enough for his Dad – a career long company man – so it is good enough for him. As was common for men in that decade, his avenues for relief and distraction were far greater and readily available than for her.

By times, the scenes in Revolutionary Road play on the nerves like fingernails scratching on a blackboard. The low-key struggle of the cookie-cutter lives of Fifties suburbia suffocated so many. The show achingly shows the emotional roller-coaster and internal torture Winslet goes through. She effectively goes mad.

And her type of insanity was a normal response to a tortuous situation from which she had no acceptable avenue for escape. She was not the first trapped woman who had to fight for her freedom and sanity. She was also not the first victim who didn’t make it out.

As people are regularly pushed to their boundaries of pain tolerance, life is deemed not only miserable but devoid of value. The message they must hear is to hold on. Find something bigger outside yourself to believe in. Never give up.

“It’s alright to go insane. Just come back.”

Thank You, Jeff Brown

I hadn’t initially planned to feature other authors on this blog, but here we are. When someone says exactly what you have been thinking about and wrestling with for years, why not? What’s not to like about a website that opens with this front page: “If you want to live a more spiritual life, live a more human life. Be more truly, fiercely, heartfully human.” From, Jeff Brown, Author, Teacher, Enrealment Activist & Grounded Spiritualist. https://jeffbrown.co/

When one of his posts popped up in my Facebook feed, I emailed Jeff Brown and asked for permission to copy it to my blog. He quickly replied: “For sure.” Those of us raised by troubled and immature parents know how easy it was to take all of their deficiencies on ourselves. Children would prefer to believe it was their fault that no one was consistently there to care for and protect them. It is nearly impossible for children to put the blame for neglect and abuse on their caregivers. Their sense of self is not strong enough or big enough. Also, by taking the blame on themselves, it gives children some measure of control. And so the seeds of people-pleasing are sown. It is easier for children to believe that they are the problem than to admit their caregivers are doing a bad job.

There is one question children should not have to ask: “Who is going to take care of me?” I remember wondering that often. When Dad crumpled in a heap to the floor, weeping uncontrollably after losing his businesses, money, and marriage, I put my arms around his neck: “Don’t cry, Daddy. We’ll be all right. Everything will be all right.” At the time, I remember casting about wildly in my mind for what I might be able to do. My mother was in a mental institution at that time so could not be reached, let alone expected to help. I was 11.

Here’s what Jeff Brown writes about what children raised in that situation often do: “In order to deal with the feelings related to the absent parent, children often make the assumption that they are to blame. This is the only way they can make sense of it – if the adult isn’t loving, it must be because we are ‘unworthy.’After all, “Rachel’s father spends a lot of time with her”, and “Michael’s mother always hugs and kisses him in public.” So if yours doesn’t, it must be because there is something wrong with you, something not enough, something not worthy of love. Thus begins the internalized shame and self-blame cycle, often reflected in the disdain we feel for our bodies, our creations, and our very existence. Of course, our unworthiness is entirely untrue, but it is experienced as deeply true for the child self. And if the bitter parent actually told you that you are unworthy, or bad, or a mistake, or anything that undermines your sense of self, then you have literal evidence of your own valuelessness. Who do we believe if not the parent? Who defines us before we are ready to define ourselves? It then becomes very difficult to recognize and call out abuse and neglect, because you move through the world certain of only one thing – your inherent unworthiness. If you are constantly seeking validation and approval, if you are not yet at an egoic stage where you can recognize your own value, on what basis do you stand up to those who abuse you? I think one of the reasons I didn’t call out my mother in my early adulthood was because I had taken her negative message to heart. If I was a bad person, how could I demand she treat me with respect? If I was ‘persona non grata’ on Mother Earth, on what basis would I fight for my right to the light?”

Mr. Brown, you speak my mind. You also mirror my experience. Parents coping with addictions are absent de facto. It took an astonishing number of crises large and small in adulthood based on low self-worth for me to learn to live crisis-free. I wandered too far and too often down wrong alleys in pursuit of love and stability.

Finally, the penny dropped in that I realized to attract love and support, it was up to me to create it inside myself. You cannot drink from an empty well. I finally came to a place where I could see myself as worthy of happiness. Only then, was I able to open up to the possibility that I was capable of giving and accepting love. How I got here is the main message of the book I am writing. Jeff Brown’s take assures me there are others out there who get that type of journey, as well.

The Book Thief

Last night, I watched the movie The Book Thief for the first time. As an unrepentant film junkie, I don’t know how this gem escaped my notice. Talk about resonance.

Liesl, a young German girl, finds herself at the beginning of World War II about to be separated from her birth mother and grieving the very recent death of her little brother.

It turns out she has been given up for adoption to another German family who needs the labor. At school, Liesl’s illiteracy is revealed and she suffers the humiliation of her classmates. All around her, Nazis are pushing forward with their evil agenda.

The film reproduces the horror of Kristallnacht: “(German: “Crystal Night”), also called the Night of Broken Glass or November Pogroms, [refers to] the night of November 9–10, 1938, when German Nazis attacked Jewish persons and property.

The name Kristallnacht refers ironically to the litter of broken glass left in the streets after these pogroms.”  https://www.britannica.com/event/Kristallnacht

It was chilling to see the deliberate destruction of people’s homes and businesses and the abuse heaped upon Jewish Germans. As we all know now, it got much, much worse.

Equally chilling was the scene where books were heaped in a huge pile in the middle of the town square and ignited in a sickening symbol of cultural and intellectual annihilation. Liesl begins a subversive journey to not only learn to read but to write.

To do so, she must stoop to theft and subterfuge on several levels that include hiding the fact that a beloved Jewish neighbor is now a refugee living in the basement. The evil and inflicted agony and base stupidity of Nazism oozes from every scene.

Not without significant losses and heartache, Liesl prevails and survives the war when many of her loved ones don’t. She grows up, marries, has children and grandchildren, and, as her legacy, leaves a lifetime of books she has written.

It is a beautiful story of survival, the triumph of love over evil, and a demonstration of the power of books and stories to help preserve our humanity. It stupefies me that promoting humanity as a fundamental value is still so threatening to some who have more materialistic and baser beliefs about what really matters in life. Without others, we ain’t much.

Yesterday was April Fool’s Day. It was a day of significance for me this year least of which was that it was a day for pulling practical jokes.

The NaNoWriMo Challenge began yesterday. The entire month of April is to be devoted to producing a 50,000-word draft manuscript by the last day of the month. For a person who thrives on deadlines, that’s a pretty strong incentive.

It was also the beginning of a 30-day blog writing challenge that comes around annually every quarter: https://30dayblogchallenge.com/start-challenge/

I have been writing this blog for 21 days. What’s another 30? Yet another carrot at the end of a stick. I celebrate the expanding community of writers and writing that I am finding online.

As a learning junkie, every like or comment on my blog or a new bit of information that comes my way is like salt on my supper table.

The problem is, I like to repeat, there is too much information out there. So, just like salt, I must be mindful of how much to ingest.

I am determined to tease out the insights gleaned from all this information. I’m finding guideposts for my own life, my writing process, and perhaps, occasionally, an insight or two that may resonate in readers’ lives as well. High ambition.

I Ain’t Afraid of No AI

The interweb is drenched with horror stories about the looming prospect that our brains and very livelihoods as writers will be overtaken by AI (artificial intelligence), accelerated by the recent release (November 2022) of user-friendly ChatGPT.

One short hop – the horror-struck assert – to total world domination by HAL’s (of A Space Odyssey fame) technological descendants. “Humans will be replaced.” “Writers will lose their jobs.” “Humans and writers will become redundant.” Great sci-fi plot drivers but, in reality, I’m not so sure.

I’m heartened by Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker’s take. “Fear of new technologies is always driven by scenarios of the worst that can happen, without anticipating the countermeasures that would arise in the real world.” Ref: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/02/will-chatgpt-replace-human-writers-pinker-weighs-in/

Ego-driven, self-preservation-mandated lot that humans are, Pinker doesn’t think the worst-case scenarios currently being bandied about will happen. Neither do I. We are famous for bringing ourselves to the edge of crises without actually going over the falls to eradicate humankind. Ergo, saber-rattling around World War III. As objectionable as Vladimir Putin is, I doubt he is seriously inclined to wipe out the world as we know it in order to reclaim sovereignty over a small piece of Ukraine. That would be the most unfortunate Catch-22 ever.

Unfortunately, this does mean I won’t rely on AI to write the book I have committed to this year. Sigh. Pinker anticipates considerable pushback from our collective ego and common sense to allow that to happen. He cites this example: “Another pushback will come from the forehead-slapping blunders, like the fact that crushed glass is gaining popularity as a dietary supplement or that nine women can make a baby in one month.”

The speed at which technology can do damn near anything better than humans since it arrived in popular culture some thirty years ago has hornswoggled us all. Quantity trumps quality. Bling trumps class. Speed of output has won out over deliberation and thought. Technology is so pervasive we struggle to define or even remember what it is to be human.

So we suffer. En masse. And self-help book publishers, therapists, and a great swath of pill pushers reap the rewards. Even if there was no other argument to make for the value of writing, what matters is that it captures for us what is essential for us as humans. There is a crucial role – and one might argue an essential role – for humans that focus on human stories and issues now more than ever.

So, AI, honey. Hold my beer.