I wonder what Thoreau would say about today's political/environmental/social situation? Probably just what he wrote about the Mexican war and slavery in his own time.
"A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight." - Thoreau
Thoreau's writing of Civil Disobedience is what has led to countless non-violent revolutions around the world - Gandhi, King, , Apartheid in South Africa, anti-war demonstrations in the U.S. in the 70s...and it is what keeps the people camped out in tents at College Green in Iowa City in the Occupy movement.
This came up the other night because I was trying to explain to one of my children why we do what we do....it's a form of civil disobedience. We don't necessarily break laws, but we don't really follow them either, at least with reference to the farm and what is considered "normal".
I waffle almost daily as to where I fit in to the socio/political scheme of things. It used to be pretty simple....Democrat. Now.....not so much. The government has become too polarized and I don't think that enough of my ideas of what is right and good necessarily fit completely into only one category....nor should they. For entirely too long we have tried to keep the two party thing working for us, but clearly it has ceased to work in any sense of the word. For all intents and purposes, I am a free thinker. I don't even like the word "independent" as it implies too much of a party and either the Democrats or Republicans work to coax the Independents into their camp to help achieve the majority. I want the Independents to be the majority. A majority of people that think for themselves and find someone electable without the input of corporate money and lobbyists. Is that even possible anymore?
I saw a research study recently that was very interesting. It examined the brains of members of the different parties and analyzed what part of the brain was used with relation to their political affiliation. Liberal thinkers tend to have a larger anterior cingulate cortex, a region of the brain linked with monitoring uncertainty, which could help them cope with conflicting information. Conservatives, on the other hand, have a larger amygdala, an area linked with greater sensitivity to fear and disgust.
There seems to be a lot of "fear and disgust" being thrown around out there lately. Turn on any T.V. talk show or listen for a few minutes to Fox news and you are made to feel the doom and gloom of the current administration. I refuse to be this paralysed by fear.....but I am disgusted. Disgusted that we are a people that are so quickly influenced by people who know how to use our fears to their best advantage.
So, I stew about what to do. Move away? - become an ex-patriot somewhere less stupid....less fearful? Or, do you dig in and try to make some kind of difference, however small. So far, we have gone with the latter of those two options.
My daughter was expounding the other day about what she wants to do when she grows up. She wants to "do something" not just sit around on a farm all day. I tried to picture what she visualizes me "doing all day" from her 12 -year-old point of view, and granted....it didn't seem like much. I go to work, I fix animals, I come home, weed things, write, read books, clean things....in short, a pretty quiet existence to a thrill-seeking tween.
But, in the bigger picture, my husband and I are very busy....busy raising kids. Kids with the knowledge and understanding to be able to see what is going on around them in the world and possibly do something about it to make it a better place. It is a very slow process to be sure, and often fret with more trials and tribulations than I like to recount, but we try to model for them what we hope will help them to "do something" later on in life- work ethic, patience, perseverance, deductive reasoning, equality, boldness....it is a tough job indeed.
Of the things that we try to teach the kids, one of the hardest that I have found to teach is fearlessness. "Don't be afraid." How many times on dark, stormy nights have I said that to my kids and then found myself laying awake at night with the fear of what the world will eventually become for them. But fear begets fear and it only paralyses, and it makes us unable to look at a situation rationally and act appropriately.
I remember being a kid and being afraid. I was afraid of the bogey man that my brother swore lived behind the garage. I was afraid that the house would catch fire at night and we would all be burned to a crisp in our beds. I was afraid of being kidnapped because of my mother's constant warnings against "stranger danger". I was afraid the world was going up in a blast of nuclear energy. As a kid, you learn fear early and well. The hard part is un-learning it. And the even harder part is trying to help your kids unlearn it as well. What I have come to understand through all the un-learning, is that the opposite of fear is not bravery - that is facing something despite the fact that you are still afraid. The opposite of fear.....is knowledge.
So, maybe we are hard wired to be what and who we are, or maybe it is learned from years of our parents teaching us not to talk to stranger danger. The research study itself wasn't so sure which came first - the fear and then the conservatism or the conservatism and then the fear, but I don't think that we can stand to be stuck in this muddy government anymore, which brings me to another thought...
"...let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
Personally, I wish he could address that speech again to this nation of prime time, news program zombies that believe every horror story that they hear and then take that fear to the bank and proceed to tear the country asunder with their hatred of all things new and different.
I think the main thing that has conservative people upset about the whole occupy and civil disobedience thing is that it is out of the norm, it pushes the change forward, and for many people that movement of change is a frightening thing. But it doesn't need to be if the fear can be un-learned. Civil disobedience requires fearlessness, it requires trust and it requires critical thinking. I am hoping that maybe, by practicing as Thoreau suggested we can help our kids achieve a sense of fearlessness in this crazy world. A little less of using the amygdala and a little more of using the anterior cingulate cortex would be good for us all.
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