Family behavior could be imagined similarly to the genetic lineage defined by the DNA molecular form. It is customary in this age of “Child Rearing for Dummies” to emphasize a single generation of child rearing, when in fact any learned parenting style is derived from several generations each applying some blended variation from preceding themes. For example, family constellations wherein the father is a remote disciplinarian and the children are encouraged to fear him as a threat; it is very likely the grandchildren will perceive some level of danger from older authoritarian males regardless of how loving, or nurturing that grandchild’s birth father might be; sibling hierarchies too, will reflect patterns found several generations removed - echoes in a canyon where the original sound is no longer distinguishable; Multigenerational patterns of behavior become dangerous when it interferes with the vitality of humanity’s trunk. Our inherent biological imperative to replicate is confused by social systems antagonistic to the greater good when they blunt or manipulate the intrinsic human urge to learn into a distorted demand to believe. The branches of our species have begun to wither and die due to a lack of existential nutrition - the intangible comfort that comes from living a fulfilled existence manifesting in cultural foliage reflected in the higher attributes of civilization - art, literature and music. Today we are told the dreck that constitutes commercial success is the apex of our capabilities when all it represents is that which is sold.
We’ve become so removed from our roots, that we believe that a handful of wealthy citizens are the best representation of human capacity. Nothing could be further from the truth that every child born is capable of doing their best, and that the single best effort of any one child is the most noble, vital and worthwhile objective of any social system, much less by a group as complex as humanity. Imagine how differently our world might be were our forest populated by trees at war with themselves as we seem to be with each other. Could a Sequoia have ever reached it regal stature had it burned itself to the ground continuously for no other reason than destroying its enemy? Or is the Sequoia more of a reflection of divinity than all of our human clerics combined? The Sequoia organized itself cooperatively enough to transport moisture from lacy roots up through thousands of feet of dense pulp strong enough to support tons of mass and then out to remote vesicles of chlorophyll which are delicate enough to blow away in a strong wind. Is there any part of this magnificent living organism that would withhold nutrition or moisture from the rest just to be wet? Do you see roots choking off water or worse polluting the trunk with adulterated water? So why have we, a supposedly advanced creature, allowed a minuscule portion of our kind to seize our very prerogative; to distort our vision such that we are willing to murder our own kind for the benefit of a handful of profiteers? How have we allowed one skin tone to ascribe malevolence to another, or better yet encouraged one skin tone to prey on itself?
Like it or not humanity is born of a handful of hardy beasts that found ways to cooperatively coexist in a violent world full of climate extremes, ferocious creatures faster and more wild than we and still possess the grace to achieve the finesse of the “Mona Lisa,” or complex arrangement of sound created by Mozart. It is because that was a time when we were closer our trunk; there was less dead wood from senseless excess; wars, believe it or not, were fewer and farther between. It wasn’t before WWI when civilian body counts became numbers used to inflame passions of the homeland. Prior to that time armies unaided by the “industrial revolution” required willing laborers eking out a living feeding warriors and arming professionals. Today the ruling class has you paying “The Military Industrial Complex” for the privilege of being defended from without, but murdered and betrayed from within. The only benefit of war - profit - now belongs to a handful of people from any country; at home or abroad. It is a shell game without the pea. You will never be safe and you will never find an end to war by fighting one another - not with them, not with your family, your homies or your spouse. As long as we acknowledge superiority of any other human being more than that honor you do yourself by making the highest contribution to the greatest number of people regardless of your own personal benefit, we as a species are doomed.
We have been indoctrinated to believe others are more important, therefore they, the big shots are entitled to possess more. We have been schooled to believe that violence is the natural order of the universe which is true, but if you believe a collapsing star is peaceful, imagine a mother’s fury at the death of a child as a razor’s edge and ask yourself how constructive that edge is gonna be before it is dulled. There is nothing that could compensate for the pain of loss from a loved one's death for any reason, much less murder or war. So why have we arranged ourselves as a society to lavish fantastic sums of wealth into the laps of a handful of people who have done very little but perpetuate more war? How is it healthy for us as a species to give our consent to be governed by those riding in limousines, helicopters and warships without an iota of return, except to those materially benefitting from the arrangement. Is it the fantasy that if you are loyal enough, or quiet enough or crooked enough, that somehow you will claw and scrape yourself up out the muck where you have been assigned as a root to provide moisture to those upper limbs of the organization; you’re a root and no pine cone is ever gonna give its seeds to you; or is it that your lot in life is being stuck out on a limb, when all you long for is the intrinsic coalescing identity that only a root can know; but if you suck up enough moisture and endure enough seasons, somehow your cone will produce a magic seed and get blown on to a fertile patch of the forest where with enough luck, your seed will sprout and if you’re not devoured as a seedling by a passing fawn or culled as undergrowth by the timber industry, after a few thousand millennia you too will be a towering Sequoia?
One of the most tragic results in the ruling class war on learning is the loss of imagination to appreciate just how rare our existence is within the barely quantifiable vacuum of the universe - to fully understand how odd our predicament is as a species so reliant on moisture to stay alive, or how vulnerable our lives are to extremes of temperature. We are something like the bumpkin at the county fair seeing a hall of mirrors for the 1st time and unable to orient as our forebears had to in order to motivate through to the next valley before winter set in, or lake dried up. Our concept of cooperation is so stifled and deformed that we imagine a CEO or celebrity as a reflection of ourselves and confirmation of our hopes and dreams for love and caring rather than a cruel mirage by a bloodless carney who understands if he works it right, you might just pay him for a 2nd trip thru the hall. The irony of a tree metaphor in this essay is that we are now eliminating forests of trees to furnish some delusion of taste to some human being whose hunger has become so enflamed by addiction to sugar that all s/he knows is hunger - just so some snot born on “Third Base” can bullshit you into to believing he’s a home run, and if you play your cards right - he might let you kiss his ass. When in fact the woman sweeping the empty cups from the Super Bowel stadium after the game is closer to the dignity and nobility of the spirit which gay-Leonardo da Vinci was able to fathom from sitting in quiet with Señora Gioconda for many long years, respecting her without ever once having to grab her kitty.
Leonardo da Vinci — “Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- @
not-family - the sonnet
Not-family is an oxymoron;
By saying “that is your problem - not mine”
You blunt your ability for compassion
Thinking what is lost is easy to find.
If alone, are not all you meet the same?
Yet, as part of many are you too, not one?
Could a child know fierce without parent tame,
Where violence can only maim when done?
Is anyone not brother or sister?
What old person is not your own parent?
Harm a child is to kill your own future,
So what good is thick blood with bad intent?
Learn to communicate with animals;
It'll be their history after ours falls.
jts 012017
http://http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com
∞
