Misbehaving Little Boys Take Over

We are watching it happen

I can no longer hold my tongue as I watch so many things being methodically dismantled right before our eyes, things that have the most value in sustaining human life among the teaming flora and fauna of this miracle of a planet in a magnificent universe.

Scared little boys have gained more power than they can handle, and feeling accountable to no one, they have become playground bullies.

I read an article a while back that addressed the question: Why have homo sapiens not only survived but come to inhabit pretty much the entire planet? The writer studied the history of the various species in the development of humans, including many that became extinct, leaving only homo sapiens. The writer saw cave paintings, burial rituals, as well as indications of clans and tribes connecting with one another in communities. Those communities worked together to survive in hostile environments, even doing things that would benefit people that would come after them. Apparently the survival of the fittest went beyond simply the power to defeat the weak.

Dr. Margaret Mead is credited with saying “that the first sign of civilization was a healed femur. In humanity's earliest days, a broken femur was a death sentence. Even if the victim could survive the injury and possible infections that might follow, they could not gather food for themselves. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts.”

Our humanity is being threatened. The mechanisms through which we have sought to care for one another, including those with the least power, are under attack. Those with a metaphorical broken femur are to be sent away or left to die.

This is far beyond party politics in the US. It is an existential threat. Putin and Orban, Milei and Meloni, and their ilk in various places on the planet, as well as the current leadership of the US, are forging a cadre of bullies bent on taking the power to rule purely for their own benefit. Like playground bullies, their tenure will only last until a bigger bully comes along.

What is so tragic is the collateral damage as they wield their power.

Those who have amassed the most money, or at least the longest string of ones and zeros in a database somewhere, get to rule those with less, with fewer ones and zeros. Those who write the most sophisticated strings of code are inserting them into systems that impact our day to day lives so that they alone can control them. They do so for the sake of gaining that control without reference to laws or moral codes or empathy.

It is painful to see various world religions spawn hate and disdain for whomever they determine to be the other: them, as in, distinctly not us. It is particularly difficult to fathom the degree to which some who grew up in the same faith tradition as I, have chosen to accept harm to others in the name of that faith, the opposite of what it teaches. Other religious traditions in the world also have groups within them that justify hate and harm to others claiming their faith justifies it, each convinced that they possess the ultimate truth.

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I am fully aware that as an old white male of Northern European descent, having grown up in the richest nation in the world, my challenges have been a mosquito bite by comparison to others. I worked very hard, through long days for decades, and saved enough to survive, but I have done so without having to fight against the roadblocks women and minorities of any sort in the US have to deal with. When growing up I had a healthy family full of support and approval. But I also have the ability to empathize with others and recognize that I could just as well have grown up in and be living in unbearable circumstances.

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I feel overwhelmed by the plight of so many in the world. Some people I know and care about are struggling just to survive, to be able to afford a place to live, to provide for their children, to have food security. The problems in my corner of the world and the problems on the rest of the planet are too much to bear. To keep from being completely overwhelmed and becoming of no use to myself or anyone else I turn to spirituality and science.

Access to those two dimensions of reality use different terms, contemplation and mindfulness. For me, they are the same. Both take me to the basic essentials of my existence. I have heard survivors of the Holocaust speak of what kept them going during the worst of times. I marvel at the wonders that lie beyond the tangible, that lay beyond the limits of what we know, what we have yet to learn. It is only in the intersection of my breath and the context of the moment in which I am inhaling and exhaling that breath that I find a secure place to stand. There I find hope for the future.

I have traveled in Europe, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Baltic and Scandinavian countries, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and a bit of Central America. That represents only a portion of the planet. I have not traveled in Asia, Africa, Indonesia or South America, but I have stayed in hostels and Airbnbs in which I have gotten to know people from those places. What I have learned from spending time with people whom in the past I might have seen as the Other, is that we are the same. We are made of the same stuff. We have similar needs and goals and concerns, all of us.

I especially enjoy spending time in places that are not homogenous, but have a variety of ethnicities and skin colors and languages. Often that has been in urban settings. Choirs of young people are a favorite of mine to listen to and watch. The young have a purity of sound with less vibrato than those of us who are older. They express their feelings in their faces and voices and body with fewer of the layers that come with age. Some of my favorite videos are done by a choir called Musicality covering songs from “The Greatest Showman.”

They provide a visual tapestry that is for me a metaphor of how I see the world:

The bullies are currently creating chaos in hopes we will not notice as they break down the structures that limit their power to rule without any accountability to the rest of us. They are hiding behind wealth and technology and weaponizing it to force us into submitting to them by turning us against one another instead of standing up to them. They are terrified of becoming a minority because they fear that they will be treated the way they are treating those they perceive to be weaker than they are. What they fail to see is that the very thing they fear is what will empower us to survive. These young people look and sound different, sing different pitches and rhythms and tones, but they make beautiful music when they do it together.

The only way we will survive is to work together with one another and with the planet. It is the capacity to see beyond ourselves and build true community, community that sees our differences as strengths, that offers us the possibility not only to survive but to thrive. It is only then that humanity will be able continue to exist without destroying one another. I am angry beyond words. Along with so many others who care, I cannot allow the overwhelming pace of the destruction to steal hope for the future. The bullies need for us to run away in fear. We need to stop, turn around, look them in the eye, and say, “No more!”

The Destination is Now,

Peter