Hello Peoples,
If you have been reading my blogs of late I believe that you can see that I have been wrestling with some rather significant quandaries. I am attempting to grasp the concept of inflexibility, also known as stubbornness, being strong-willed, or pigheaded, straight up difficult, and the contrariness of human nature. It isn’t that I cannot distinguish inflexibility in a person’s astrological chart, or that I cannot recognize this from the behavioral affectation presented me upon simple human interaction (is that possible?). No, what I am trying to accomplish is to understand the motivations of these actions.
These behaviors have evolved from what many scientists argue was the need to survive the harsh environments that our ancestors had to endure in a savage environment. I can understand this once primordial function of perseverance and preservation, but haven’t we as a race or people progressed beyond this instinctive reaction for survival? Have we not learned from past experiences that it is this inflexibility that causes us the most damage not only to human relations, but also our connection to ourselves spiritually? What is it that we simply will not allow an adult to question their response to a political, or philosophical position?
How many of us find ourselves repeating the very same words we cringed at when our parents spoke them so many years ago? Is it the revolution of youth that eventually submits to the devolution of adulthood? I mean, apparently we cannot even jump start ourselves out of the complacency and comfort of living in the richest and most powerful nation in the world. Perhaps this is where our bravado is born, from the ease of a Barcalounger or bean bag when we speak of provoking other countries into war, or other nationalities from crossing our borders. Regardless from which side or perspective one comes from, is there not a responsibility to at least question our beliefs?
Maybe it is the wear and tear of life, and the disappointments we all experience that shakes us into an increasingly and profound state of somatization. Then there is the inability to empathize with what someone else may be experiencing. It is through our media it seems that we learn our most intimate rationalizations and philosophies about our neighbors, both literally the house next door, and the country next door. How is it that we can know what someone else is feeling or thinking when we do not know them at all? How can we crucify a legal migrant worker or an illegal immigrant just because they want a better life. Have you ever asked yourself who is providing the jobs to “these people?”
Then, if we expand our minds a little more we can find that there are countries thousands of miles away that literally live in abject poverty but are being bombed back into the “stone-age.” These people do not make foreign or domestic policy decisions, but we do by voting in our representatives. Yet we condemn and kill them from literally an arm chair, using a game-boy control in an air conditioned room. What is happening here is the creating of hate and fear against people just like us. People that hurt, and celebrate, cry, and laugh. If we all spoke the same language would that help? Or would it make it harder to hate them, or dislike them?
If we used our intellectual abilities to question, and to seek out knowledge about each other in a global sense, I think that we would find that we are debilitated with ignorance and apathy. This does not apply just to us or the western world, no, it applies to the entire world. It is misunderstanding that is our division from one another, not hate, hate comes later, after we keep thinking and believing what others falsely tell us. If we simply try to stretch our minds and imaginations it might hurt at first, but like with any exercise one will need to develop some flexibility. Once we achieve this flexibility, we grow stronger, and we find that it doesn’t hurt at all.
Aho
Curtis Williams MA, A.P. D., CRMT
