"If America and the world should have learned anything from the first Gilded Age and the fascism that began growing like a cancer in the 1920s, it’s that gross inequalities of income and wealth fuel gross inequalities of political power — which in turn lead to strongmen who destroy both democracy and freedom." https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-anti-democracy-movement?
My family and friends are sick of me bringing up the word "Power", as well as my theories about politics. I love my family and friends and don't wish to sicken them but I still feel the need to express the emotional and intellectual struggle inside.
Now I don't have any special insights and knowledge to enlighten the world but I have a passion which drives me to keep writing and speaking.
Stay strong I tell myself but I am sickened by news of young men carrying guns to supermarket where customers are predominantly African-American. On a previous occasion I was sickened to view a short video of a woman struggling to walk with a walker when a younger woman came up behind and pushed her over.
The basest message in that video: whoever is weaker than you just push them over.
When I was at school 60 years ago there were kids who would run up to you and push you over just because they felt like it. The advice given was: Just hit them back, you must not be soft or you'll be a target forever.
Forget being top of the class or pretty or popular, just be the best fighter. Britain had survived centuries of invasion by worldly bullies from larger countries but it also became a bully itself. Training its sons to fight back even when they were not attacked.
When I first came to Canada and started work my focus was on winning the war on success because wherever I felt vulnerable or afraid I was a failure. Every day in my early life I worked on that binary. Was I a winner or a loser and every event where I felt vulnerable I had to shape up. While I didn't know it, I became a bully, determined not to let anyone get the better of me.
My ego was my world and all it's "truths" were filtered through my sad, lonely internal voice. I suffered rage and depression trying to navigate a personality who only wins and never loses. One minute I was winning and the next, losing.
One day I recall feeling my blood boil, I went out for a walk, and for the first time in my life, I felt I needed to hurt someone or something. This really frightened me because I never had the courage to go out and hurt someone purposely, just to hurt them. I had lived my life trying to get along wherever I was.
However I couldn't see how my thoughts and opinions hurt those I loved or liked or needed. A toxic broken ego eventually realized it was not success but vanity and I changed my values. The world I needed was of loving kindness even though there were examples of kind gentle spirits being disregarded. I had to learn and do things differently.
The wealth of community, friends, curiosity was my wealth, my reward. So rather than seek "achievements" I began to seek fellowship where the fear of losing was replaced with support. I became part of something larger - humanity.
The trick is to find enough information to connect your mind and heart. My power is to feel, to see, to think and to care about all who live in this world on this fragile planet. You are the power you seek - to write, paint, give birth, organize, listen, think and sometimes to weep.
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