Taking a Call to Arms to Heart
I've taken the above posted article to heart.
It was a rather sleepless night. A condition I've developed called "frozen shoulder" has made sleep difficult due to pain in the shoulders. Two months of physical therapy has not seemed to help much, although I am encouraged by the fact that this condition nearly always gets better by itself within 1.5 to 2 years. Nobody knows why about 5-10% of people (mostly women) get this syndrome, and the only treatment is a kind of physical therapy which is itself pure agony. I have visions of some cruel being saying "Welcome to the golden years." Oh well. So many people have such worse problems that I would feel ashamed to complain about my lot. One must endure.
The above article by Howard Zinn had a similar effect on me, and I have taken it to heart. After the election I was all of the things that Zinn mentioned: depressed, angry, frustrated, indignant and simply disgusted. I was depressed because of a deep sense of foreboding about what the next four years will probably bring. I was angry because it was clear that unscrupulous men had rigged the electronic voting machines, and frustrated because it seemed there was nothing we could do about that. I was indignant because the nullification of my and other's vote is a kind of political rape. And I was disgusted because it seems that the state of rot and corruption is now so total that it can never be cleansed or purified. And the lesson for me was the same as it always is: you cannot change the world except by changing yourself via a breakthrough on the spiritual level. My inclination was to turn away altogether from the worldly affairs and immerse myself in the great teachings. And it still is.
But Zinn's call to arms made me see that my despair and depression was something of an indulgence and one cannot give up the good fight just because some obstacles get thrown in the way. Steady persistence is necessary for all of us. The setback of 2004 must be met with redoubled efforts along the lines of reason and wisdom.
Zinn is correct, we must harness our anger and frustration in the service of future action to affect our collective destiny. Giving up is not in the cards. People will always fight for freedom, as they are doing in the Ukraine today. Whenever despots rise, eventually the people rise up against them, because the yearning to be free is eternal. The United States got rid of a despot in Iraq, and promptly installed itself as the new despotism, and the Iraqis immediately arose to fight the new despotism.
If our election system has become so open and vulnerable to corruption and rigging that unscrupulous people jump at the chance to change the votes, then we must fix it. If our own "reelected" despot intends to continue the immoral mass slaughter of innocent people, then we must continue to fight to stop him. If the so-called phoney "Christians" continue to advocate mass murder in Jesus' name then we must expose their false religion for the mockery that it is and shame them into returning to Jesus' actual teachings.
Despite the horrifying fact that some 58 million Americans stood up and consented and approved mass murder, thus becoming actual card-carrying mass murderers themselves, I do believe people all around the world are waking up day by day. A recent article pointed out the fact that people in Europe and elsewhere are now boycotting American products and American brands because of the disgust at American foreign policy. Once they wanted only American jeans and other cultural items, and now they refusing to buy them and sales are slipping. Perhaps if the American people cannot understand the world's objection in moral terms they might begin to understand in financial terms.
Zinn asked "Do we want to be reviled by the rest of the world?" Because that is what is happening. Is America to become the world's "sole remaining evil empire?" Ronald Reagan once boldly called the Soviet Union and "evil empire," but now the people of Ukraine, formerly of that evil empire, are now putting the U.S. to absolute shame in the matter of standing up for democracy and demanding elections which are not rigged. Sometimes these events of history are just dripping with irony. If it did not hurt so much or if it were not so serious one might step back a bit and simply laugh one's head off. Sometimes I imagine that perhaps God himself is doing just that.
So it's time to dust ourselves off and get back to work, as Howard Zinn suggests. No time for any more self-indulgent depression and despondency. Time for more action. Investigation into the vote fraud continues and will probably be proven, at least to history. The 911 truth movement continues unabated on the Internet and in various groups around the country and the world. Awareness is growing about the planetary crises of warming, pollution, and corporate takeover of everything. People are realizing that the single most powerful forces of evil on the planet are in the very nature of giant corporations, and that the world's people must rise up against them.
Things on a mass scale always take a lumbering long time. We are impatient for change, impatient for goodness to be implemented, but there is huge momentum at mass scales. Everything takes so much longer than one would wish. It takes a long time for stupid people to wake up. And we must live in this world which contains vast numbers of unintelligent people. That's just the way it is. It would be nice if everyone were smart, but they're not.
And in any case one has one's own spiritual path to tread, whatever form it might take, that is always on the table. So there is no lack of things to work on, worldly or extraworldly. Despite the fact that it often seems that humanity has not progressed much beyond the cave man in terms of real morality and insight and wisdom, that is mainly true only on the level of mass happenings. On the personal and "individual" level there are billions of wonderful people everywhere, and they are doing wonderful and inspiring things all over the planet. Again, as Zinn says, "Most Americans do not want war." The evil that men do is mostly concentrated in the elite ruling class, the so-called "powers that be." It is wise to remember that most ordinary people are fairly kind to one another, creative in many ways, helping each other when the need arises, and horrified by murder and other crimes which the elite find so attractive. The ordinary everyday acts of kindness, love and laughter do not make headlines, just because they ARE ordinary, so it is necessary to actively remember them. The headlines obsess with the negative, but if you stop to contemplate, despite all the problems humanity faces, most people are pretty good and worthy of love.
With all that in mind, Zinn's call to arms prompts me put my post-election depression on the back burner and see what's new to be done. The urge for freedom and a good society is undying in mankind, and so it is undying in me. One will always be yearning and fighting for these things. An upset is no reason to give up sadly. If evil men seem to gain in power it is time to remember the power of the seed of goodness that is in the common human heart. It is time resurrect one's faith in that seed in oneself and continue on to fight the good fight.
