It does hurt me a little that people think I'm silly. I rarely am, actually. I'm pretty hard on myself about all of the ways I am illogical, and have developed a quality of scanning for a greater truth. I heard a TED talk about this, about the different operations of a "scout" personality as opposed to a "soldier." I shy away from military metaphors but see this more as an explorer scenario. You walk into an unknown woods on your way to an unknown future home, and the scout is looking at all the plants to see if some are familiar and might be food or building materials. The soldier is thinking about the miles walked or to be walked, about a tent site, about enemies, and wondering when the scouts will come back with the needed information about what lies ahead.
The soldier trains to follow leaders and rules, to do what is written in the book. The scout looks at the leaders to get a sense if they are leading in a helpful and honest way, to get to the destination intact and healthy. She looks in the book to see if there is some guidance that might apply to the current situation, although she keeps in mind that it might not apply and might need a little revision or variance. She knows the rules, but won't follow them to her peril, but rather decides repeatedly what the next step might be, according to the gathered impressions, facts that are available, and ways to interpret the facts that might be questioned or shifted to be seen in a new perspective.
Simplified, but I had the insight to see that I am a scout. Of course I still struggle with the good girl and rule follower that I was raised to be, but that scout spark was always in me and caused me a good deal of trouble as the second child in a family of five children, four of us girls. We were raised Catholic with reservations, indoctrinated but with plenty of seeds of doubt sewn as well. We worked together for the family goals, notably on Saturdays when we all cleaned together while we sang.
We also fought for dominance in hidden as well as scratchy and bitey ways, but that felt bad and at some point I stopped competing with oppressive forces and started going around them. Parents only have so much attention and approval to dole out in the capitalist consumer society. Dad had to go sailing to deal with going to work, Mom had to keep everything shiny. Both of them were scouts. We were supposed to be soldiers, like all little kids, but you know how those things go. Or went, in the 1960's and 70's. The Fifties were soon over.
Nothing was idyllic, but it was functional and my scoutiness was satisfied through science and nature, as I spent most of my time in trees, on trails, and on the water, when I wasn't inside a book. I was good at school so made short work of it and gained the skills to use my mind to articulate and evaluate. I loved diagramming sentences, writing lab reports, and creating a system of order, but at the same time I was thinking about other possible results, other facets, other versions of what I thought I was observing. I scouted my way to here and still kept looking back, still try to see that inner landscape that helps illuminate the outer one.
Who knows what parts are nurture or brain patterns that were instinctive or inherited, what parts are damage and which are gifts? I tired of analysis with professionals after years of it. It was productive but when it came to changing myself my stubborn resistance didn't respond to authority. As soon as the therapist assigned a task, I was on the way out of the relationship. I would comply to a point. I am really not a follower, though I can certainly cooperate and have a sister loyalty that comes in handy. If your mind is large enough to question things, I'll want to see inside it. If it is too small to allow any shifts in perspective, I'm not going to bother trying too hard.
I'm a natural complier, since I like peace and space to create, but I do not submit well to authority. If I comply, I still resist inside. I will, intentionally or not, subvert and find a way to do what I feel is best, based on what I know is a wide range of gathered detail and a solid perspective of "what if?" I'm not going to act based on your assumptions unless I have also come to those same conclusions, or can allow that they might be as valid as mine. At least until we can gather some more relevant facts.
Which is not to say I am not gullible and coerced, because nothing inside my brain is so neat and tidy that I can't be fooled. So I am often fortune's fool, or someone's victim, and it does hurt when I figure it out. I actually have a very developed process around it and do many steps of analysis each time it happens. There's a brain pattern and a behavior pattern and I feel that it is a human's duty to other humans to recognize our inner workings that way. If you try to run your control and domination fantasies on me, I will resist, call you out if I can, and work around you with all my might, unless I can avoid you altogether. I don't need it and it damages me to deal with it. It's one of the things I am most sure about in a shifty unsure universe.
To be evolved humans, we first must recognize the patterns that trip us, and the ways we allow them to be set up or set them up ourselves. We have to find ways to stop ourselves from making the same mistakes, scan our woods for better solutions, clearer paths, ways to gain skills to avoid following the wrong leader or the flawed rule. Then we have to have some courage about changing course, communicating if we can, forgiving those who were in error, and ultimately, forgiving ourselves and moving forward with an improvement in functionality if one is available to us. If we can grow that way, which we usually can if we are willing to apply the effort.
Humans are so small so often. I include myself in this. It's easy to complain, to blame, to feel outrage and anger at perceived injustice, to make a judgement. These fall-back emotions come when we are not sure where we're going, not sure if we have a clear way forward, and we get scared. We all get scared. We generally make the mistake of going into a defensive stance...like a soldier. We prepare to fight, and when we fight, we must win. We must dominate.
Yeah, no. Domination is everything wrong with what is going on in our world right now. People making choices for other people based on lies, poor fact collection, biased observations, and illogical assumptions, will make choices that will not serve us. They will pull back the scouts and pick a fight with the people who are cultivating the berry bushes right there, because the soldiers are simply hungry right now. They won't find the communal patch that everyone is welcome to pick from. They won't even think that there will be one.
Reading about the slave-breeding history is still my dominant field of study, and I happen to be reading about Andrew Jackson, and as a scout I certainly see the spin of racism and where it wants to take us. It's all about profit and domination and we are mired in it again, despite the advice of the many scouts out there looking for ways to treat each other better, to not repeat the mistakes of the past, to not go down a flaming hole to hell in the next few years. We may have to live in hell someday, but we don't have to go quietly, and we can drag our feet the whole damned way.
It's my feeling that there are many more scouts than soldiers in my generation, due to the lies we were told in our formative years and our subsequent explorations for a better version of some truth. I would venture to say that this is true for every generation, as each has had some galvanizing experiences that helped them see lies and spin. Maybe the younger people are the most clear of all of us...that could well be true. I hope it is. Lots of them are watching, and lots of them are speaking up too.
I have gone from despair about politics through that shock and awe campaign and am there, solid, in hope. It might be somewhat foolish to base my future on hope. I had a hard time trusting Obama about that, but it makes for a lot better path forward than any other motive. In my smaller worlds, I am not so sure hope will serve, but actually am placing my faith in education. I want these scouts to have all of the available knowledge and accumulated wisdom of our human existence to help us stay on a path that will keep us alive, and with a modicum of happiness and joy, and keep us holding a bit of faith for the future, a core of hope that will convince us the hard slog is worth taking.
Like the pioneers or Lewis and Clark, there will be some self-serving interest in there and inevitably some greed to assuage our deprivation, and it won't feel balanced for a long time, if ever. But all of the scouts are out there, on the edges, looking with their sharp eyes and applying their sharp wits and learning, learning, learning. Taking notes. Doing research. Asking hard questions. Speaking truth to power.
And many of them are making art, some privileged few with Jell-O. I know, it's food (kind of) and an animal product (but made from the things that are thrown away) and you think it's silly and a distraction from other more important kinds of art. But bend your mind to the idea that it's the essence of what is true. Clear, colorful, wiggly and alive, made to bring only
joy and delight, made for you, made from our hearts, and really really not what you used to think about a showy commercial product made of industrial waste and chemicals that destroy health and life that is owned by a major corporate dominator out to kill us all. Some people even think it tastes good (I don't eat it if I can possibly help it.)
Let's not die from it. Let's have a laugh about it. Thanks to all for the Ides of Trump, that was fun and exactly the kind of thing that is super effective on a soul level. Our souls are hoping we will keep our heads under control, and the weapons locked up. See you on April Fools.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.