{"id":66292,"date":"2013-04-20T04:17:42","date_gmt":"2013-04-20T08:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=66292"},"modified":"2013-04-20T09:38:51","modified_gmt":"2013-04-20T13:38:51","slug":"crisis-management-from-chaos-to-fancy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/crisis-management-from-chaos-to-fancy\/","title":{"rendered":"Crisis Management: From Chaos To Fancy"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Horror in Boston, a craven vote to defeat modest gun safety measures, toxins in the mail, a factory explosion in West, Texas that rocked the Richter. Lord knows, this was a week that demanded pleasant diversions, if one could find them. I wasn’t overly picky. While watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory<\/em> for the umpteenth time, AMC’s version with story notes, I discovered that one of Willy’s wonky yet profound asides — “Where is fancy bred, in the heart or in the head?” — is from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice<\/em>. Who knew? And you’ve got to give it to Will, the Bard knew how to get to the point. Too bad we don’t.<\/p>\n

\"PoliticalWe keep peeling the onion of our dysfunction, but never quite get to the core. Our collective fancy — our desire, our aspiration, our vision — continues to be thwarted at every turn, blocked by opposition and marked by violence. Here in the United States, the majority seems to have a decidedly liberal bias, hungry for economic fairness, reforms to immigration, gender and gun control policies, an end to war on drugs — to war in general, along with its crippling cost — and a return to the kind of government that helps rather than hinders. We worry for our environment, our retirement and our children, but evidently not enough to blast through the confusion and power mongering to establish a renewed commonwealth.<\/p>\n

If we’ve made it through to the 21st century with most of our faculties — essentially, if the majority of our BBs are still tightly packed in their tube — then we’ve begun to question everything, aware that PR disinformation campaigns have come to drive the machinery of our times. We grind our teeth over religion gone out of the parlor and into our private lives, over provincialism masquerading as morality, over educational standards gone to hell.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

That last is key to all the others, but we have to peck away at the layers of repression and regression piled on those others before we find ourselves able to yank jealously-guarded educational reforms out of the hands of local school boards. Allowing educational standards to sit out modernity is still a matter of states’ rights, instead of federal sovereignty, more’s the pity (unless you don’t trust government, of course, and there you have it: the challenge of our times and our most petrified example of us vs. them thinking).<\/p>\n

I had a defining moment this week — on the day Boston exploded in misery, smoke and screams looped on all channels — as I stood waiting for a young thing helping me at the local deli counter. Her hands were busy working but her eyes never left the TV hanging on the wall by the lunch tables, her face twisted in anxiety. “That’s how they’re gonna get us,” she said to no one in general, slapping cheese slices onto waxed paper. “They’re gonna blow us up ‘cuz they can’t get guns any more.” It was as if the long years between the Towers falling and the marathon explosion had melted away. Unnamed terror nibbled at her soul and delusional end-of-days rhetoric shone from her eyes.<\/p>\n

She was too worked up to notice my perturbed wince, too preoccupied with the images of people running from — some toward — the explosions, to take in my reassurance that nobody was after her gun, or her daddy’s. I didn’t even try to calm her fears that somebody was going to “get us.” That would have taken not just a real conversation but an epiphany of social, religious and political awareness — perhaps all three — hard come by in these parts.<\/p>\n

This was a girl not long out of school, a woman-child still forming her relationship to the world at large, and I could almost hear the errant thought-forms collide with one another: her pack of BBs spilled out on the floor, bouncing frantically in her muddled brain. I’d like to have quoted one of Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ — a romance author she might have read and considered credible — fictional characters to her: \u201cI finally figured out that not every crisis can be managed. As much as we want to keep ourselves safe, we can’t protect ourselves from everything. If we want to embrace life, we also have to embrace chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n

I’d like to have convinced her that chaos was not the end of the world, that the ability to embrace life takes a bit of fearlessness, stepping out into the unknown, but she was well past commentary of any kind. I took the package she handed me,\u00a0thanked her\u00a0and went home.<\/p>\n

Granted, this was a week of utter chaos. One thing after another, striking sparks off the anvil of our hearts. And as we struggle to process both the loss and the meaning, we have to ask ourselves a question: is this a duck and cover moment, or one in which we can find common cause? There’s another way to see it, illustrated by the actions of brave Bostonians: are we those who run away from the smoke, or toward it? Do we pull back to safety? Or do we plow forward to discovery, to possibility, to answers?<\/p>\n

The black\/white way to look at all this — us vs. them, in terms of terrorism and political maneuver; a punishing and\/or disinterested god in terms of natural disaster — leads us back to the loop of default human response A Course In Miracles<\/em> calls attack\/defend. One follows the other, follows the next, in endless rounds of tit\/tat, tribal in nature, unforgiving in practice and therefore unending and unwinnable. And in black\/white thought-process, winning is paramount, but the cost is astronomical: our emotional health. In the simplest possible terms, we can never be at peace if we cannot transcend our constant need to war (attack\/defend.)<\/p>\n

Regarding the background-check legislation whose filibuster the Senate was not able to break, the Pubs will surely call it a win for the Second Amendment and a gun owner’s right to buy — own, bear, carry, trade, sell, manufacture and wave in the air — any fire arm s\/he wishes. The President, uncharacteristically emotional on the topic, had a few choice words<\/a> for the NRA-inspired win and the lobbied Senators that supported it, but those who think in black and white can’t be shamed. The win was all that mattered, feathering their political nests until, and hopefully past, the next voting period. There is nothing admirable about their position. There is much, however, to be anticipated from the unyielding determination of those whose hearts have been swept up in this battle against violence. I think we can believe Obama when he tells us that this is not done, but instead, well begun.<\/p>\n

The ever-present current of chaos we’re learning to live with is, I suppose, at the behest of the gods. We’ve made the leap into a new baktun, made an authentic shift into a new era, one that will determine humankind’s ability to survive. The Uranus\/Pluto machinery of change has swung back around to rattle our cage, to push us into — albeit reluctant — action. More, the massive failures of governments, world-wide, to protect and nurture their own people can no longer be ignored, let alone the urgent stewardship of the planet. The need to change brings with it the cold wind of chaos, upping the ante, outlining our problems in bold relief, creating us anew in search of solutions.<\/p>\n

Necessity is the mother of invention, or, as Mary Shelley — who gave us the mythology of a fractured and frightening Frankenstein — tells us, \u201cInvention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos.\u201d That’s just the way of it. It’s always the pain that prods us forward, isn’t it? Aren’t the boldest, brightest remedies born of anguish and disaster? Don’t our finest moments often rise like a Phoenix from the ashes of our failures?<\/p>\n

Perhaps we’re looking at this chaos thing wrongly. Perhaps it’s the idea of chaos that stumps us, turns us into addled puppets running for the exit. The actuality of chaotic circumstance presents an opportunity to re-think, preferably outside the box, and recharge our determination. If we think of society as walls, surrounding us, we can see them one of two ways: as keeping us safely in, or keeping trouble safely out. When those traditional walls begin to collapse, fresh air is waiting on the other side to give us a glimpse of new options.<\/p>\n

Radical philosopher Terence McKenna told us uncomfortable truth when he said, \u201cChaos is what we’ve lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.\u201d It’s uncomfortable because we’re anxious to feel safe, because we want to remain in control. But at any cost? Ego, intellect, says yes. What do you say?<\/p>\n

So, back to the question, posed centuries ago: Where is fancy bred, in the heart or in the head? Our fancy — our desire as a people, our aspiration for ourselves and our children, our vision for a healed commonwealth and healthy planet — cannot be birthed in our head, if we’re to actualize it. It must spring naturally from our heart, the seat of our soul.<\/p>\n

It must build itself in compassion, much like those who have become gun safety advocates, allowing their hearts to break (open.) It cannot count the cost, like those few legislators — including my own — who bucked their constituents because they felt the need to do what was right. It cannot seek for itself, like the politicians who have covered their asses and whether they know it or not, lost their self-respect.<\/p>\n

If we want to win a war, that desire can be charted and planned, plotted and manned. We have the military intellect, the history of strategy, the schematics and technology all figured out. Same with an election, all words and one-up-man-ship, political playbook at the ready. But if we want to win back the 21st century for the restoration of Gaia and her climes, the common good of our brothers and sisters, and an experience of ourselves that transcends the limits of those who seek to control us, then that journey must be born of our hearts’ desire to do what is right. We’ll know it when we feel it.<\/p>\n

When Willy Wonka mentioned fancy bred, it was just after bratty Veruca Salt (belting out I Want It Now<\/em> like a mini-diva) got sucked up in the (bad) egg sorter. That was commentary on desire gone wrong, selfish and cold. Toward the end of the musical’s dark tale, Wonka again quotes the Merchant of Venice<\/em> as young Charlie voluntarily surrenders his Everlasting Gobstopper, simply because it’s the right thing to do. Says he<\/a>, “So shines a good deed in a weary world.”<\/p>\n

The entire quote, from the fifth act of Merchant<\/em>, begins with this sentence: “How far that little candle throws his beams!” There are billions of us shining that Light now, throwing those beams. Millions of us would rather choose peace than war, equality over privilege, moving energy into our heart-chakra in response to what we’re learning in our chaotic hot-pot of a 21st century. We’re offering Light to a weary world, one smile, one kindness at a time. There are enough of us now, so they say, to turn the tide. It’s simply a matter of time before\u00a0all\u00a0that has been\u00a0drawn in darkness falls apart.<\/p>\n

Until then, don’t let fear distract you, don’t allow the very thought of chaos to confuse your intent to remain steadfast. In fact — from you to me as we wait for the tipping point — if you fancy a little heart massage, hold your breath, make a wish, count to three and open this link<\/a>. You just can’t argue with what feels this good. A world that can create this — that can put a song in our heart, that can light our imagination — can do anything!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves Horror in Boston, a craven vote to defeat modest gun safety measures, toxins in the mail, a factory explosion in West, Texas that rocked the Richter. Lord knows, this was a week that demanded pleasant diversions, if one could find them. I wasn’t overly picky. While watching Willy Wonka … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1744],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66292"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}