I'm with stupid...
I am he as you are he as you are me And we are all together See how they run like pigs from a gun See how they fly I'm crying
I am the walrus goo goo g' joob.
I don’t want to write about politics or how I am being affected by the policies and actions of the current administration, but it is too much in my face and in my body to ignore. And I’m not even a brown-skinned person with a funny name. I’m just an old white lady living on a dirt road in the woods.
So much is being done, or attempted, by the current crop of crazies, that is harmful to systems, environments, relationships, institutions, and people. What hits me hardest, as a vivid sign and symbol of this regime’s clueless, lawless aggression, are the homegrown Gestapo, the KGB, the Stasi—the bands of roving men wearing and carrying all kinds of video game war gear as well as masks and sunglasses to hide their faces. Our very own secret police. This is not what I signed up for.
No mask will ever hide the shame of what they are doing. Who are these men and why are they willing to go around being the bad guys? Low-level bad guys. They are getting paid, which is a big incentive. People need money.
And they think (correctly at the moment, probably incorrectly, later on) that their bad actions are protected by the powerful people they work for. The people they work for don’t actually give a damn about them, and it is to be hoped that when this rotten ship of state begins to sink, which it will, they will be some of the first rats to leave.
It’s obvious if you look at the history of everything that we are hardwired to want to survive, and most of us, most of the time, will do whatever seems necessary to fulfill that imperative. There are fewer of us who will put ourselves into difficult and dangerous situations in order to facilitate and uphold goals and values that we deem more important than comfort and safety.
There have been many times, though, when circumstances are such that enough people, who would prefer comfort and safety, join together to protest, resist, fight back against what is actually messing with their comfort and safety. This might be one of those times.
The strangest thing about us, about humans, is the range of what we can be. We can be so stupid, wrong, and destructive, and we can be so noble, brave, and creative. We can be extraordinary.
I like to think that even all those guys struttin’ around, engaging in performative cruelty and brutality, could be different, better, redeemed in fact, if only they had the right circumstances, influences, environments.
I don’t know exactly what I mean by that. To some degree, it’s a Pollyana-ish belief that, given the right conditions, no-one is beyond redemption. The truth is that I can’t know whether someone is or is not beyond redemption. It is not my place to know. That is between them and their own soul.
As disturbing as I find the daily and hourly reports of evildoing, and often, just plain stupid-doing, my heart tells me that this may be a time when a new vision of what matters, what is real, what works, arises from a critical mass of us, enough to blast us into the next iteration of what it’s all about…
Stupid is as stupid doesn’t get it…
The stupid guys are so stupid. What they want is so stupid. They’re never gonna get it,
never, ever gonna get it. The whole money and power trip. Ugh. How do they ever have any fun, any real fun, the kind where you don’t have to be thinking, planning, scheming, worrying about how to get what you want, and how to protect what you have, or at least what you think you have—when you can just relax and ride the wave, knowing that there is an ineffable energy at work that is keeping the earth spinning, the stars in the sky, and the breath coming in and out of your lungs. When you can sing and dance with joyful abandon.
It continues to amaze me that this administration is so unable and unwilling to use any tactic other than force (whether financial coercion or shoot you in the head) to achieve their sad little vision of a boring world where everyone is white and no-one gets to do anything fun or creative because they have to keep sucking up to the empty shells of human beings who think they are in charge.
Any plan for living this brief life, even if you make it to your nineties, that depends on always having to be a mean bully to get what you want, is a sad little life, bereft of love.
What isn’t stupid
What isn’t stupid is working with reality—cause and effect—instead of against it.
What isn’t stupid is understanding the relationship between cause and effect.
What isn’t stupid is not knowing… not filling up the space of unknowns with fantasy, prejudice, or delusion. Leaving it open to be filled by time and new information.
What isn’t stupid is accepting the fullness of your own humanity, with all its joys and sorrows, without trying to protect yourself from pain by being a jerk, or worse.
What’s the difference between stupid and not stupid?
We’re all stupid, in that there is so much we don’t know, about everything, and especially ourselves. The difference has something to do with humility, with an openness to new information that comes through all one’s senses, with faith in love as a transformative energy, and with a willingness to be on the side of life itself.
As troubling as things are at present, I am so grateful for all the people who are making a difference in this world by aligning themselves with a vision that force-only types cannot see or understand, a vision of community and caring, of diversity as health, and individual creativity nurtured by a culture that understands its necessity and power. Keep up the good work, my dear friends!
Janina, you are very eloquent and say clearly what the rest of us feel only somewhat incoherently. Thank you. I am enjoying your Epistles.
Beautiful, Janina, thank you.