Cruelty exists in the world, like bacteria. But it grows better under certain conditions, fueled by its fertilizers, intolerance and hatred.
–Eric Francis, Auschwitz Photo Diary
When I first read Eric’s work on Auschwitz, I thought it was such an important piece of historical journalism that I kept it close by, bookmarking it in my computer. At the time it was first published in Planet Waves, the Republican majority in Congress had just pushed through the Military Commissions Act suspending Habeus Corpus, reversing a primary tenet of the US Constitution: that you cannot be detained indefinitely. I keep the Auschwitz Photo Diary around like a personal Fe-911 fire alarm, as “In Case of Emergency – Break Glass.”
Listening to the national screaming match over a mosque in Manhattan last month, I was compelled back to that photo diary. There was something about the tone of New York City’s downtown mosque controversy — the near hysteria and xenophobia reminiscent of and even worse than the days immediately after September 11, 2001 — that sent a chill.
Nearly a decade later, Democrats are in and Republicans out but struggling to regain a foothold back into power. We are at a new period of economic contraction — a perfect breeding ground for fear, intolerance and hatred. Throughout the history of the world, periods of economic crisis and uncertainty are often marked with the socio-psychological phenomenon called the frustration-aggression complex: the violent acting out of group fear, usually against an outside group, based on economic uncertainty and powerlessness.
In America, we have been particularly adept at that form of group isolation, scapegoating and punishing of the other. There is now a spike in anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim activity, a rise in hate crimes and other acts of violence against Muslim groups and individuals, and moves to legislate intolerance against immigrants, gays and lesbians. The economy’s slow, imperceptible recovery is not loud enough to distract and drown out the noise. It doesn’t help that while reaching for power during this year’s midterm elections, the Republicans are doing everything in their power to resurrect the ghosts of 9-11, screaming anti-Islamic rhetoric and asking for the President’s baptism certificate to prove he’s not a Muslim, using lies and disinformation all in an attempt to reclaim control of Congress this election cycle.
The controversy over the downtown New York mosque spiraled out of control with the help of the media further fanning the flames: there was that wildly misled kid Michael Enright who slashed Ahmed H. Sharif, the New York City cab driver whose misfortune was to pick up Enright for a fare. Then the drunk guy in Brooklyn who urinated on a prayer rug in a local mosque, calling worshippers “terrorists”. The week the mosque controversy was at fever pitch, there was a mosque attack in California 3,000 miles from New York and nowhere near having any jurisdiction over what New Yorkers wanted built in their city. Bricks were thrown and a sign posted reading “No temple for the god of terrorism at Ground Zero”, left by members of a group called the American Nationalist Brotherhood.
Last weekend on the anniversary of Rev. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Fox Network television personality Glenn Beck staged the strangely named “Restoring Honor” event at the steps of the Lincoln Monument in Washington DC, co-opting the civil rights movement as their own own, at best a well-meaning but inappropriate interpretation of the history and meaning of that speech and the historic struggle for civil rights in America. Appropos to the demographic breakdown of the event, Mr. Beck’s rally was nicknamed “Whitestock 2010”.
Now as we approach another anniversary of the false flag event that brought down the World Trade Center, the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida plans an “International Burn a Quran” Day, to commemorate 9-11.
America is not in its finest hour.
Crisis, contraction and the accompanying conservative backlash is the astrological signature for Saturn-Pluto aspects, in this instance a square. We have been through three Saturn-Pluto squares since late 2009, and therefore, the events of today, including the mosque controversy, should not be a surprise. What is a surprise is that there is still some measure of stability and some civility in our society. To count on that stability to remain is not a certainty. Not without requiring us to stay vigilant.
The ascent of the Nazi Party began with a Saturn-Pluto opposition in 1931. In 1933 in the aftermath of an arson attack on the Reichstag, home of Germany’s Parliament, Hitler became Chancellor. At the time of the fire, Germany was suffering a post-war economic downturn and social unrest. The Nazis further consolidated their power finding convenient scapegoats — communists, homosexuals, gypsies and Jews as stepping stones. We all know what happened next: the scapegoating was ultimately so brutal that its cruelty became a benchmark for the lowest depth of modern-day human evil.
We felt the echo of these two planets again when Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980, ushering in the rebirth of the American conservative movement, much of which we still see today and for which we are now paying a terrible economic and environmental price — yet many present-day Tea Partiers still yearn for its return.
September 11, 2001 happened on the heels of an economic downturn in the aftermath of the dot.com bubble bursting a year before and right after the 2000 elections. Saturn and Pluto were in exact opposition throughout that summer prior to the event. Today, we are regurgitating xenophobic and racist sentiments stifled even under the Bush Administration and in some cases acting on them. We are backsliding right into our dark side.
Joseph Goebbels was chief propagandist for the Nazi Party and the promoter of the Big Lie, used to isolate and scapegoat a targeted enemy. It is described this way:
Never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.
Welcome, Big Lie, to the 21st century. We’re embroiled in a combination of our shortened attention span, impatience with detail, easy willingness to blame others for our current economic malaise, an opportunistic corporate-driven agenda ready to dismantle the justice we fought for in the 20th century and a media willing to use that for its profit and gain. We are ripe to ignore the lessons of history and need to pull ourselves from the brink of waltzing forever with our dark side.
History is there if we choose to utilize it — meaning study and understand it. History also has a terrible way of repeating itself if we insist we must forget. Even in the midst of our own economic uncertainty we can’t afford lies and misrepresentation of history to lose the meaning of what happened even in our recent past, or cloud our judgment in the present day.
1931, 1980, 2001, 2010. History marks these years with hard lessons, and even harder aftermaths. We have enough information available to recognize the patterns and mistakes of the past. We have enough media available to us to keep us awake and informed or to shut us down and lull us to sleep, if we choose to.
I know we are capable of great things, even at this point of economic crisis if, quoting Eric, we don’t let ourselves be limited by a prior concept of what is possible. This phase of multiple Saturn-Pluto squares ended last month and soon, Pluto will begin its dance with Uranus, the awakener. Maybe, if we find ourselves falling asleep, it might be a good idea to keep beside us a loud fire alarm to make sure we stay awake, preparing for and welcoming the big wake-up call to come.
Yours and truly,
Fe Bongolan
San Francisco
Transition Town US can be reached through the following website:
http://www.transitionus.org
It’s a great training. Also, I would recommend a film on Cuba’s embargo situation in the early 90’s entitled, “The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil.” Great film.
‘Follow the Drinking Gourd’ performed (and poorly recorded) in Woodstock by Jefferson Airplane I mean Starship……seems appropo for the moment.
‘Big Bear’ ahem ‘Dipper’ ahem codename “Gourd” viewing anyone?
Ah, another lesson in multi-tier syncronicity.
Len – is Grace still Slick? ;+X
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=56908755
Be and everyone interested,
Here are a couple of links regarding the Transition Town Movement:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_towns
and
totnesedap.org.uk/
Be,
You can Google Transition Town in Totnes, England. They have chapters all over the world. You can see where they are holding trainings in your area. You learn about where things are at this moment in time in regard to things like peak oil, global warming, water and all sorts of other pending concerns. I receive emails on a regular basis from the group in Montpelier, Vermont, where I took the training. They teach all sorts of things like canning your own food, for example. Each group focuses on the specific needs for your geographic area. My friend Michel, is doing trainings in Quebec and has written a book. Where do you live? Part of their training encourages using Open Space techniques to brain storm ideas and solutions to problems in your own community. They encourage you to pay attention in Open Space meetings to what you are drawn to and to pay attention if your enthusiasm for a topic is weak. It’s a sign that the topic may not be for you. It’s important to use your energy on what excites you, what you care about deeply. That enthusiasm will keep you engaged and moving your project forward. The idea is that people can organize within their communities to create grassroots sustainable solutions.
Great song, Shebear!
Thank you for the link. We do need an anthem. Something to think about.
But for now, we can simply use:
“Keep your eyes on the prize, Oh Lord.”
miaferoleto,
Thanks so much for your input, and your spirit. If you can, would you give some examples of what plans TTT has regarding building sustainable communities? I’m very interested in this.
be
Hey miaferoleto, I’m with you all the way re collaboration……and it’s not just because of the Irish blood you have flowing in your veins! We are all one after all. So you’ve ancestors from the west of Ireland like my dad! There’s a great song from that part of Ireland that my father and his family used to sing at weddings called “The West’s Awake”. Might work as a theme song for all of us with a little alteration perhaps? — “Planet Earth’s Awake!”
Here’s a lovely rendition to get your blood stirred a wee bit — and yes, let loose those horses! I just love the notion that they will run on by if you stand in their path. That’s what we all should do with any obstacles we face. Run right round and continue onwards.
😉
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j-aCfgPg64&feature=related
“….Sing, Oh ! let man learn liberty
From crashing wind and lashing sea.”
Shebear,
I saw it was the Irish when I read a second article this morning. Thank you for making that distinction. My mother’s family was from County Claire, so I am Irish and a few other things thrown in. The second article said the Blair entered the bookstore with no stains on his clothings. Is this the media controlling spin on the event?
It would be a pleasure to collaborate with you and the other members of the Planet Waves community to sound the call and raise the vibrations for everyone on the planet. It is no time to be timid. We need to do it with as much joy as we can muster. Your image of running horses is a beautiful one. When horses are running at full speed, you can stand in front of them, but you cannot stop them. They will run right by you.
One foot in front of the other . . .
This is a really welcome article and wake up call, thank you Fe. To commit to being more active in creating an alternative way of living that is just and fair for all humanity. I am especially encouraged and inspired by your posts miaferoleto and I am right alongside you as you watch your beautiful and most fortunate rescue horses, running free and unbridled across the land, like each and every one of us attempting to live on this planet should be doing, each and every day.
Just to add, as an important point of distinction, that it was actually the good people of Dublin, some of my feisty compatriots, who yesterday pelted Tony Blair with eggs at the first public launching of his book and not some “Brits”! I know you will appreciate my need to clarify that point as I know that the people of Ireland and blacks of America have much in common in our shared fight to shake off the cruel legacies of oppression and hatred.
It definitely would serve us better to focus intensely on creating brand new arenas on which to build that better world than continuing to attempt to play them on their playing fields — they will forever frustrate and negate by constantly changing the rules of engagement along with moving the position of the goal posts. A continuous game of divide and conquer where they always seem to manage to have the upper hand. No, enough. Better now for all of us to channel the energy that surrounds us, to go courageously, step by step, where we have never gone before. Now is the time. We are in this together and we can do it. We simply have to, and I’ll bet we will all start to sleep better with fuller hearts just like Henry Hampton and his peers did if we commit ourselves to this task at hand.
I cannot wait to get my hands on that documentary and I thank you miaferoleto for the heads up.
Absolutely, Fe!
I’m with you and everyone else reading this who wants to participate. It is time for all of us to become co-creators of the world we want to live in. Begin where your intuition tells you to start. But begin somewhere.
“There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”
mia:
Great discussion here, and getting back to the astrology, fitting with the upcoming Uranus-Pluto squares in cardinal signs. Time to begin again, and not be tangled in the reaction to or against the past time Uranus-Pluto were lined up.
Let’s shake this place!
Hi Fe,
Or, we have been dumbed down by watching to much television and eating junk food.
Gandhi broke English rule in India by organizing a march to the sea to make salt. It broke the financial hold of the British on the people of Indian. Civil disobedience, perhaps, is another name for heralding in the new. Perhaps entangling what has been is not the solution. Perhaps the solution is simply to create something new. Even in the recent film, “Inception” DeCaprio’s character tells the others not to create from memories of the past, but to build new creations, new constructs. When we respond to the fact that we have been lied to, etc… we are still reacting, still caught in the polarity. We KNOW we have been lied to. The quickest way to break free is to put energy into something new that demands enthusiasm and our positive energy. United, we have the ability to turn the page and begin a new phase. We need a new message. We can deliver that message in the same way we have received all the past information. And we can deliver the message within our own communities. We are creative beings. We all need to find something we feel passionately about, and go out and make it happen. That activity engages our higher self, our co-creative ability and gets it working. Once we have established that internal link, we can go around creating till the cows come home. It will begin to work as a natural expression of our true selves.
Last summer, I attended the Transition Town Training, a movement that began in Totnes, England and has spread around the world. People are coming together to build sustainable communities in the event that conditions on the planet deteriorate. The key to success in TTT is cooperation within communities. In many ways it reflects the ideal image of small town life. It also makes people aware of their responsibilities to be mindful in their own lives. And, connecting to the soul piece, the creative piece, is at the heart of the TT movement.
The 60’s may be over but human nature has not changed in thousands of years. Blacks were a source of free or cheap labor until the Civil Rights Movement and it had to change. There is little difference between then and what is happening with corporate America and corporations elsewhere taking advantage in every way they can. It’s a repeating pattern.
Yesterday morning I read that the Brits egged Tony Blair. He was going to a book signing for his new memoir, filled with lies about his relationship with Bush, and people threw eggs and I think shoes or slippers at him. So much is coming to light on a regular basis, people are being given lots of information to make their own decisions, to open their eyes and see what is really happening around them.
Our world is plastic, it changes with consciousness. When we clean out the polution in our own thinking, and our thoughts and feelings become clear, the world will reflect that. The planet itself is working with us, not against us.
Fe,
“Will we be able to fight again like they did in that era?”
Spirit surely felt different then.
I well remember what that time felt like for me.
But I was much younger – perhaps that is why (‘now’ feels so very different).
(Desire for change was not altered by toxic environments, chemical additives and pharmaceuticals so much yet either.)
Hi Mia,
Somehow picked up on reading not watching – thanks much for the further info and clarification. I look forward to watching this documentary.
Thanks again.
Mia:
Beautiful images of prayer in the midst of the bloodhounds and fire hoses. And the sense of what is humanly right on so deep a level that the fear the goons try to inflict has no effect.
Dangerous in that it inspires disobedience to authority.
We have had right is wrong, hate is love, war is peace that we’re still untangling from the mess that’s been made of our social conscience. Or we’re permanently enraged because we’ve been lied to for so long. Will we be able to fight again like they did in that era?
If anyone is interested in watching “Eyes on the Prize: The History of Black America” Volumes I and II (a total of 24 hours, I think) I would suggest going to your public library or a close by college or university library, to see if they have it and if they don’t, see if it can be borrowed from somewhere else. On occasion, libraries will show it. It is a Blackside Production, produced by Henry Hampton. And, you can write to PBS and suggest they air it again.
Fe,
Henry Hampton developed polio as a teenager and walked with braces for the rest of his life. He died from lung cancer at the age of 56. His legacy, his gift to the world, was this series. His sister Judi, is working to get “Eyes” into the school system. Not easy. Prominent black entertainers like Spike Lee, Will Smith and mogols like Russell Simmons should be backing this effort. We have a history we can be proud of. The Civil Rights Movement is a blue print for the world. We keep repeating the same patterns, but it is all right there, on film. It is impossible to watch it and not be changed. And the spiritual power that is caught in time, time and again in that series is overwhelming. To see the footage of Martin Luther King, Jr. kneeling in prayer when Bull Connor and his police force are about to come down on him and his followers and he turns around rather than allow these people to be beaten, or watching the transformation in Malcolm X as he leaves his militancy behind and embraces his spiritual life, is transforming. Henry does not judge or show biase, he lets the footage tell the story. We are living with similar issues and it is for us to pick up the torch, carry the light. We have such energy flooding into the planet right now. If we can shift from the burden to the joy of the work, we can carry the load. And the joy of the soul that was shared in the 60’s is the real thing. As hard as it must have been, these people went to sleep at night with full hearts. And I can tell you, Henry had a wonderful sense of humor. He loved to laugh.
miaferoleto,
I must look at this book; thanks for mentioning it.
Having grown up in Detroit in the 60s with civil rights in every breath I ever took, I am dismayed to see my children taught about Hitler year in and year out – same points over and over – in history class/es.
I think that this is a thinly disguised way to point to “them” (nazi germany) as the perpetrators of hate crime, rather than look to home and into the mirror – such that real disscussion could take place about the world our children live in.
Anyway, you’ve already spoken; so thanks again for mentioning “Eyes on the Prize”.
Patty, good point re: distraction.
Fe, glen beck’s brazen attempt to change history is understood as well.
Personal experience strongly suggests that MOST underhanded stuff is not well planned and much is not planned. But liers and shysters are keen and quick to utilize an opportunity – not going to wait around and consider if it’s part of a plan – as the planning is probably mostly week at best.
I think we we see is synergy in the side of things we would prefer not to see.
But when it is in the (however faint) glow of Light; isn’t that the time to grab it and change?
xo
Fe: Bravo! Thanks for this writing; publish wherever and however often you can until it gets through the sleepy haze of ‘enough’.
Mystes: Agreed a thousand fold aka “history”. Especially when visioning past times/events/people – I often do not know “who” the perpetrator of the pain is (or who “I was” as it were, whose energy I am attached to)……for example, the Nazi officer or the young woman he is torturing? I am unable to separate the energies because they are forever entwined ‘in history’ as two sides of the coin. My perception then, is that my “job” is to heal both.
(Batman and the Joker. One cannot be (have existed) without the other.)
xo
Fe,
You pulled the subject matter together beautifly. Thank you for serving as an excellent example.
Mia:
I understand about the need to write about “Eyes on the Prize”. This is a crucial bit of history we cannot afford to misrepresent. I keep hitting my head against the wall when it is, or when it is co-opted by people who have no idea of what it meant. That this misrepresentation is sometimes deliberate fills me with fury.
I have been thinking about writing about Henry Hampton and “Eyes on the Prize: The History of Black America” all week, ever since Glenn Beck held his event on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I was fortunate enough to know Henry. His sister Veva was one of my closest friends for thirty years. She died of cancer over two and a half years ago.
“Eyes on the Prize” documents the entire Civil Rights Movement, beginning with the death of Emmett Till, the 14 year old boy from Chicago who was visiting family in the South and happened to flirt with a white woman. His brutal murder, and his uncle Moss standing up in court against the two white men who killed him, was really the start of the Movement. “Eyes I” and “Eyes II”, two six part series originally shown on PBS, bring you from the mid 1950’s up to the mid 1980’s, showing time and again the power of an idea and the strength of grassroots organizing. Henry Hampton took all of the footage he could find, from the beginning, and spliced it with then current interviews of the individuals who particpated in the movement. It is, in my opinion, the most important documentary film of the 20th century and should be air dropped all around the world for all people who are oppressed to use as a primer for instituting change. The faith, courage and conviction of everyone involved is inspiring to the point that when I owned copies of both series,I would watch both on an annual basis as food for the soul. I encourage you, if you have never seen it, to find it and watch it.
It is unbelievable to me that the children of friends my age get no information in school on this shameful period of America history. The teenage son of one friend who went on to Vassar, had no idea as to what I was talking about when the conversation came up over lunch one day. We, America, have a tendency to whitewash our history and our motivations. And these films are a perfect example of information that should be shown ALL the time, and isn’t. If we owned our prejudices and our anger, we would more easily recognize our behavior over the New York Mosque and lots of other things as well.
The air has cooled considerably where I am. It’s been extremely hot for more than a week. My dogs and horses are delighted with the change. As I write this, I look out my window and watch my chestnut thoroughbred and spotted white appaloosa running, jumping and playing. All my animals are rescues, so they know the good and the bad life can offer. Seeing them, there is no doubt it’s a beautiful world and one that is worth our efforts.
Patty,
I agree that SSI is not the best, but it is a great rallying tool to get the oldsters out and voting against the Republicans and their corporate and banking masters.
The reality is that SSI is not a very good retirement program. If it were a private insurance program you would be filing lawsuits. I have two sister in law who make less than $500 per month on SSI – barely enough to cover medicare. One of them is 80 years old. Some of the original tea partiers are correctly looking to a complete overhaul, but the way some of the politicians have attached themselves, it is dilluting the agenda. There is no clear leadership.
Glenn Beck is a Morman. There are some Christians who do not think he is a Christian and that his God is not their God. What a mess.
I thought of Polpot too but didn’t mention him. You were right about the veterans becoming attached to the people. My husband has done a lot of Vietnamese art, and loves the Vietnamese people passionately, which has nothing to do with the war, aka ‘conflict.’
I blame the bankers. Overthrow the banking cartel, then we can talk real change. Thomas Jefferson warned us about allowing a central bank to control the money, and said our children would be homeless if we did. I read someplace that there are now 40 million americans on foodstamps. My 84 year old mother said the times remind her of the 30s. You are exactly right that fear is the thing to fear right now. Put the wrong preacher in the pulpit or leader in the white house and we will all turn into a thundering horde.
I wonder why the Dems and Libs are not opting for some slight dis-information of their own? Many Repubs and most Teaparty folks want to abolish ALL social programs like Social Security and Medicare; if the Liberal Democrats were to blast the media with a blitz of ads about that, the old vanguard would make sure they don’t get into office. Something along the lines of “the Republicans want to take away Grandma’s Social Security, after she worked and paid her whole life into that; Grandma will be back to eating dogfood!” Or, “Republicans want to end Medicare and leave Grandpa with no health care at all! If Republicans have their way, Grandpa will be having to choose between starving or dying.”
I hope they are waiting for the right moment; like right before the election maybe?
The whole mosque thing is a smokescreen; what are the folks in power doing or not doing that this smokescreen is covering up? Keep the people all riled up about this issue and they will not be riled up against big corporations anymore. Right.
Patty:
Lets add to the mix of tyrants Pol Pot and the Killing Fields of Cambodia. But since our bombing of the militarily blurred borders between Vietnam and Cambodia allowed destabilization, we don’t really bring it up that much. Which brings us back to mystes point about what is chronicled in history versus what actually happened, and in whose interest is history written?
Saturn-Pluto happened. The Reichstag fire happened. As Eric chronicled in The Auschwitz Photo diary, the Holocaust happened. The correlation was, as Richard Tarnas puts it regarding Saturn – Pluto squares and oppositions, made to the phases and patterns of history characterized by crisis and contraction, and similar to what we’ve gone through these last nine months in America and other parts of the world.
So Patty, to add to your comment, its been a weird early spring, summer and soon-to-be fall.
What concerns me is that it seems everything is up for grabs, including facts that should be a given. There are people who believe that only a few select sections of the Constitution are acceptable. Glenn Beck’s “reclaiming” the mantle of Martin Luther King feels to me to be a corruption of history and an act of pure cynicism.
There are people who are willing to keep paring away at history and reality to conveniently fit their narrative and closed view of the world. And there are enough people who are terrified of the changes around them that they’re willing to believe anything other than accept the fact that they need to change as well.
Hitler was mild compared to Mao, Stalin, Nero, and a few others. Mao killed 50 million yet he is celebrated in some circles. Seems to me these men (if you can call them that) were entirely anti-God and anti-religion, and that does NOT describe any of the republicans I know. The mosque argument seems like a charade, a distraction. What is hidden from view? Did anyone see the films on the huge (hundreds of thousands – maybe millions) fish kill on the new Jersey shore?
This has been a weird summer.
Fe,
So appreciate your clear vision of past as well as present, and your desire to share it with us. It might be impossible to get through to the people alive today that express this hatred, aka fear, but perhaps their children as yet unschooled and/or unborn in this behavior pattern will break free from it. I doubt words alone will convince most who have already been inundated with the poison of hating the “other”; perhaps some cataclysmic event might get through though.
The History Channel was airing, once again, programs on how the world could end. On one pass through the TV room I heard the question asked of several folks, “what would you do if you knew you were about to die” or words to that effect. There were cute and funny answers of course, as the program didn’t feature the rabid, fanatic and fear-saturated folks who perpetrate the crimes you have named. But isn’t that exactly what they fear? That their world will end if the “others” are allowed access? Won’t they, the fearful ones, lose control and therefore everything that is of value to them?
I’ve heard and read that men in the military, after serving in a war side-by-side with the “other” lose their hatred/fear when their lives are saved by someone of another race or belief. It is possibly the only way to change/destroy that attitude. If wee ones don’t experience the fear that grips their parents, they will be open (at least most of them I believe) to the idea of loving the “others” or at least tolerant, and willing to share their space with them.
Bless you Fe for your efforts and your talents to make it a better world. Thanks too to you mystes, for sharing your words of wisdom, and for the funny Mercury retro story too!
be
Thank you for this article, Fe. The witch hunt energies are escalating in some really ugly ways. I’d like to recommend too that we keep trying to peer behind the curtain on some of this. For instance, I’ve seen several recent articles about the Koch brothers, billionaires who are funding the Tea Party phenomenon, and here is another recent reference to them which I just ran across:
http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_15993066?nclick_check=1
(excerpt:) “According to Forbes magazine, brothers David and Charles Koch are tied as the 24th richest men in world, each with a net worth of about $17.5 billion. Among beneficiaries of their bankroll is the Tea Party movement.”
My question is, why would they even care? What’s in it for them? How much more money and power do they need, and why do they think they need it? Something about that whole scenario does not add up, for me.
The other question that always arises is, of course, how to empower people NOT to be manipulated by their baser instincts.
Mystes, I think you make a great point. What is the true internal experience of the players in these big dramas? And how is it possible for us to influence events such that some of the mayhem and cruelty gets halted, so that the supportive ground for growth and self-responsibility and mutual caring gains effectiveness……
Good Morning myst!
Good point. I thought about the credibility of history as soon as I scheduled this article for “publish”. It is written by the victors.
Though I wonder if because we have access to the intertoobs, we can complete the facets of the events in question and keep the full picture and the full meaning of the world as it happens. The wikileaks phenom is an example, as well as a rabid investigative blogosphere, and a still open internet. For now.
I actually worry more about current day history than I do the past of decades ago. We’ve seen the effects, too far in hindsight to prevent catastrophe, but at least to understand a major part of the symptoms and patterns. Are we still working on bad information? Is there enough testimony out there that provides the alternative? Why is it being suppressed? Who suppresses it?
Can we pick up the similar patterns in current day and prevent the old bad things from happening again? How badly are we being dis-informed?
Nod in agreement about Saturn-Libra. Has been a real good grounding agent. Helpful these days.
Fe, beautifully-turned article (think ‘lathe’). You write: “We are ripe to ignore the lessons of history and need to pull ourselves from the brink of waltzing forever with our dark side.”
Lessons of history. Hmmm… “History” implies that we can have some kind of correct view of ‘what actually happened.’ As I have remembered quite a bit about other lifetimes, my data often comes into direct conflict with that of historians, who may have the ‘facts’ right, but the interpretation is wildly at variance with the experience of those who were present at the events.
This has made me, to some extent, fairly skeptical of most third-party accounts. Especially those separated by decades or centuries. While I realize we have to dance with other people whose attention *is* firmly attached to the rearview mirror, when dealing with them one-on-one, the environment and communication can be quite fluid. It helps to remember that ‘history’ can be as mutable as the present.
Uranus/Pluto sounds a barrel of laughs. But I’m thinking that having Saturn in Libra in this square isn’t such a bad thing. Saturn –unlike the lightweights– is qualified to work with Pluto in a fairly direct and creative way. Saturn in Libra has some lightness where we might not expect. Feels like a good prelude to the Uranus/Pluto square.
Lovelove,
M