Now that we are officially into fall, I find that my mind is more than occupied. Yesterday, I spent most of the day in an all day intensive that had me learning about the ins and out of clinical social work and therapy practice, I even learned about Narrative Therapy in-depth, which is a modality that I am very interested in practicing, as our brains make sense of things in story, and as we are fallible creatures, the stories we tell ourselves about our problems can often lead us down not so fun paths. I love the idea of helping a person figure out a new, healthier narrative that is separate from the problem(s) they have.
It was a fun day.
On top of all of my fun social work, therapy, and self-care training, I have been doing my last core class, an ethics requirement. My choice of the available ethics class was Propaganda, and wow has it ever been a trip.
What I am finding most concerning is that much of the demonizing propaganda that stained the last century and helped foster so much death and pain is gaining steam and being recirculated against many of the same groups dehumanized by it the last go round. I mean, I know our species doesn't change, but holy wow it's weird that it's happening since we can literally go read about it and the destruction of it in about 2 seconds on a myriad of available devices.
In fact, it was something that I looked at yesterday that led me to post this musing. As my name has generic in it, I try to keep this a place of fun and mirth, a welcoming digital front porch where you can get a cookie, look at something cool, or just feel like you belong. I leave the politics and debate to other much more eloquent and elegant writers than yours truly. However, there comes a time where even the most averse to conflict realizes what's about to happen. I'm always watching, taking in content, and thinking about the overall tone of things.
And my friends, the tone is screeching in distress.
The level of dehumanizing and dysregulation is nearing some sort of boiling point.
Part of my daily info reading involves diving into many different parts of the ideological pool. I am very curious about what people believe and where they are coming from. I wandered over to the main page of Reddit yesterday, and one post talking about "Nazis" really disturbed me. It had 56K comments, and as I wandered through the posts I realized that most of the people, if they were people, posting in that thread were justifying committing harm against another person as long as they were a Nazi.
Yet, the definition of what a Nazi was was never explained, it was an ever-evolving, feelings-based moniker applied to whatever ideological whim the posters had at any given moment. And they were talking about the justness of assaulting such people. So basically I intuited that whoever they deemed their enemy was a Nazi and they were justified in harming them. Because reasons.
And I am seeing that behavior and belief system everywhere. Neo-crusaders, fundamentalists of all flavors, anywhere there is a ideology held by a dysregulated being in a fight or flight state there is talk of justified violence because they feel righteous and believe themselves to be so in their held beliefs.
How the heck did we get here?
I mean, I know our mass malcontent is the result of a lot of contributing factors. But there is just so much pain, a starvation for the spiritual, an all out lack of the spirit of love. My heart breaks when I contemplate it.
Which is why I am studying as hard and as fast as I can. I am just one person, and I am not in charge of anything, and quite honestly I know Who is so I worry not about the world.
I just care about the people in it.
Several times this weekend I was told I was a natural therapist, and I am starting to believe that to be so. Each of us are imbued with gifts so that we can serve others, and my dear friends, I am so tired, and there are so many days that I just want to stop, but when I look at the face of my fellow classmates and realize that there are lots of us trying to do what we need to do to be part of a solution instead of bitching about the problem, I know that I won't stop.
It's so easy to get caught up in fervor, especially algorithmically curated fodder. It's much harder to train yourself to stop, critically think about a claim, note its source, and separate behavior from being. I fall into that trap too. Plus, we are wired to see and make enemies. I think that's part of the reason behind the Love thy enemy, verse, I mean, we see them everywhere, so if you remember to trot out the love you got no shortage of targets!
And I am by no means excusing harmful behavior. Part of the reason we are in this mess is because we swung the pendulum too far the other way, from too punitive to too permissive. If behavior is harmful to others we need to come down hard on it, swift correction is a form of love, discomfort is a requisite for learning. And dispensing justice when in a dysregulated state is never a sound form of behavior.
I don't have the answers, I just know that those of us who are quiet and steadfast in our service and endeavors are going to have to come out of our routines and get even more dirty. I truly believe that you can combat harm with good works. And I love people, everyone is valuable, and it's past time to start standing up to the dehumanizing with an tidal wave of love in the form of service.
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's prone to taking unexpected meanders along with her iPhone.