I saw Rick Steve's show on Fascism last night. The Mussolini, Franco, Hitler triad that shocked the world awake for a minute or two, sent chills up my spine and raised my hackles. The feminine snarl can be a more powerful device than the slogan,"don't tread on me." As she is protecting the well
being, the health of the future and puts herself on the line, fierce and loving at once. This is the "she" the ancient Greeks feared! (okay is theory, but makes good sense)
being, the health of the future and puts herself on the line, fierce and loving at once. This is the "she" the ancient Greeks feared! (okay is theory, but makes good sense)
Please see this PBS Special yourself. Rick did an elegant job of portrait painting. The show, the script, the details are at:
https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/video/tv-show/fascism
Using old footage and current monuments, showing the past, illuminating the patterns, this special was an elegant reminder, a poignant show and tell.
Exposing the twisted
charisma of what has been called a Godot, a Deus ex machina, a "powerful" character, these dictators donned the masks of shape shifters, illusionists. They took
advantage of the fear and discontent in the 1930s. It is not difficult to lay this script over the current era and see common threads. The what to do now is where the change can manifest.
Just in case that "be the change you want to see in the world" is not trendy enough now, it is from Gandhi. Back in the late 90's it was printed on backpacks and hoodies, another era of naive activism. But it was/is a step none-the less!
Cut to the personal impact experiment of fashionRIP now!
Yesterday, i
heard a man tell his friend, "it's texting, us old people have a hard
time with technology" repeating the meme of voluntary diminishment. Next time i
see him, i plan to ask him why he wanted to tell himself this sort of
thing. If it opens a space, i might suggest a rethink like, "Oh technology has it's place, i use it and make sure it doesn't use me" or "it's good to learn new things, keeps our brains alive"..something!
Earlier in the day, i helped a woman stow and hold her cart, after lifting up a seat
to create a niche, at the front of the bus. I had wondered about her and
her cart of large pack toilet paper, but when a man yelled at her for blocking the aisle,
creating a trip hazard, to "move up front like other's do," and she
moved, i realized she wasn't trying to be a princess, she just didn't
know the etiquette. My offer to help was really appreciated. She told me her daughter
used to pick her up, but she was ill and she had to get some necessities. A lovely lesson in assume NOT!
I said,
"I think we are here to help each other help each other, tho many of
us have forgotten " She and i both beamed, felt like an energy flow in neon!
And yes, i said it loudly. Because we can "remember."
I'm
telling you because i think specificity sets the individual, the unique space/time relevancy that is as important as the whole in that it is integral to the whole. It's what
reverberates, ripples and makes changes in consciousness, like water through mountains, new thoughts to neural connections, it is interrelated, connected.
Okay this is part of my theory of everything, mentioned a year or so ago and i'm still finding it difficult to attract, solicit, generate feedback ....nevermind:-)
Anyway, if this is
true, if it sets up a simple positive reaction that transforms negative
emotional energy, then the pattern is altered and if it is altered in the micro, it alters the macro. Thoughts are energy, thoughts put to action are actualizations. Now as beliefs become actualized, (A Goswami, the Quantum Activist) then the reverse is also true.
Consciousness expands as beliefs change and then "we change what we actualize" Therefore being the change is instrumental and Gandhi like other great thinkers, leaders of movements, artists and activists, was right minded at the space/time of his action.
I
am busing to work until the weather says "car time." I enjoy
the serendipity that arises in public spaces. Opportunities
to connect in meaningful short term ways is part ,of my practice, my experiment in trusting life itself. (I am pulling from the life spark idea that resonates with the biological event of sperm hitting egg, love it!) There is a health/joy benefit
in these moments.
I
know our busy goal-oriented templates have corroded our collective awareness. The noise, odor, all the pollutants and toxins of contemporary existence are easily filtered out with headsets and apps. We are adept at filtering out what we have been taught to think of as irrelevant. This too has a history and comes from stoicism and a work on ethic, however working through the pain can be really detrimental. Blocking the emotional, physical, spiritual stresses with X, has consequences.
We can continue this crazy ass version of "growth progress" or we can question the "authors" the thinking at the time of the "set-up" and all the babble, the smoke and mirrors that we erect to fool ourselves and each other.
Aren't we due for a real change here? A change from the pattern repeating default story, that story full of dictators, data miners and prophets that "see" the evidence but do not understand the crime.
Let's put our naked truth on the table, let us be brave and vulnerable, strong and humble at once! After all, we are humans and we deserve a better story.
Let's put our naked truth on the table, let us be brave and vulnerable, strong and humble at once! After all, we are humans and we deserve a better story.
Love,
deborah
