Last night, when we went over to my parents house for dinner & movie like we do every weekend, my brother selected the movie The Kingdom. I knew what I was in for, but I didn't say anything. I don't like veto-ing too many movies; besides, I don't like admitting I'm such a wimp. But, ugh...it was exactly as I thought it'd be. It was just too much.
It silenced me again.
The intro was amazing. The opening setup I'd love to show in class; it was extremely well done. But the movie itself... for one, much of the filming was done just like those Jason Borne movies, all shaky and faux amateur-ish. Makes me nauseous. But that wasn't the whole of it.
I don't even think I can explain what bothers me so much about these types of movies. I think it's partly the aspect of real life that's portrayed. This crap isn't fake to me. All the people involved; all those killed, regardless of reason or purpose. And I don't mean, "Oh, those terrorists; how dare they?!" I mean the death on both sides. The injustice on both sides, and worse yet, that each side acts with such a sense of justice. It's a disgusting circle. And these movies make me feel so helpless in the exchange. And at the same time, I feel like these movies also exploit the situation, the fear, etc. I get that the movie is trying to make a statement; but to what end? What can a piece of Hollywood film really do?
There can be nothing; there can be no hope, without forgiveness. And how can there be forgiveness when the blood is so fresh; when the anger and pain and hatred are so deep?
It reminds me of I book I read some years ago called The Burden of Memory, The Muse of Forgiveness by Wole Soyinka. In it, he tries to discover a solution to all the pain and suffering caused by so many years of colonialism and the results of time after such a mining of culture, language, people. He writes, in the essay “Reparations, Truth, and Reconciliation”:
“When a people have been continuously brutalized, when the language of rulers is recognized only in the snarl of marauding beasts of prey and scavengers, the people begin to question, mistrust, and then shed their own humanity and, for sheer survival, themselves become predators on their own kind” (80).
I think this is an important statement; but, I think it’s more important again to distinguish that I’m not saying this statement applies to only one side or the other: it’s both and all. It’s also important to distinguish this isn’t a binary. It isn’t ‘us’ versus ‘them’; or ‘them’ versus ‘us.’ It’s ‘us’ and ‘us.’ As humans. As living beings.
And this statement applies in so many different ways. D, I know you understand this in a completely different and personal way. The way in which a victimized and hurt child might take snails and cover them in salt, or throw them one by one at passing cars. Empowered through the pain inflicted on another. No matter how small; no matter how trivial.
But it’s the same: the father in pain inflicting pain on the child; the child in pain inflicting pain on another child or living thing. I know this is how it was for me.
But I don’t know where forgiveness starts. It starts perhaps in somewhere equally painful; where the one in pain cannot take more and must forgive in order to heal. This is what sucks. How can you tell someone, “Yeah, you hurt now. No, hurting another won’t make you feel better; you’ll only feel better if you say you’re sorry to those you hurt; if you forgive those who hurt you.” It sounds ridiculous. It is ridiculous.
Soyinka has more to say on the issue. He says that Truth must be admitted. That is, what really happened. Full confession. Full admission. On both, on all, sides. But he continues:
“Truth alone is never enough to guarantee reconciliation. It has little to do with crime and punishment but with inventiveness—devising a social formula that would minister to the wrongs of dispossession on the one hand, chasten those who deviate from the humane communal order on the other, serve as a criterion for the future conduct of that society, even in times of stress and only then, heal. Memory—of what has been, of acts of commission or omission, of responsibility abdicated—affects the future conduct of power in any form. Failure to adopt some imaginative recognition of such a principle merely results in the enthronement of a political culture that appears to know no boundaries—the culture of impunity” (81-82).
What kills me about this is that it isn’t some strange or foreign concept. We’ve learned the same thing time and again throughout history, but we always fail to actually learn and understand what it means. Bottom line: we remember our past, which is oftentimes that factor that dooms us to repeat it.
You’ve heard the phrase before, “We must learn about our past, else we are doomed to repeat it.” However, this is a many formed thing. If we use that memory to remember the wrongs against us, from our past, we are doomed to repeat them. But also, if we don’t learn and concede to the wrongs we have done others in our past, we are doomed to repeat them.
It’s like world war one. Germany got its ass kicked. It had no choice but to concede to any and all demands made on it, no matter how ridiculous and harsh. The end of the war put Germany is such a strain that world war two resulted. I’m not saying that world war two was Germany’s doing; I’m saying that much of the damage done during world war one caused much of the spark and fodder for the second world war.
It’s not a “If they forgive us, then maybe I’ll forgive them” situation. Nor is it, a “Forgive us? Screw you, we did nothing wrong” situation.
It demands an amazing change in consciousness and perspective. An amazing ‘humanism’ that I think ‘we’ as humans are capable of, but I’m not sure how this can happen. So many of us would have to change so quickly.
And the worst part of this, even if/when this great change occurs, and some great people navigate and invent this peace, there will be those who condemn this change and there will be those who praise it for the wrong reasons. After all, even peace is considered ‘suspicious.’ In all too much doctrine, the ‘one’ who brings ‘great peace’ is called the ‘antichrist,’ which brings open a whole new can of worms.
I know people who are excited about that terrible crap going on in the world, because to them, the world is closer to its end; and to them, they are closer to entering the gates of heaven. I can’t believe that. I won’t believe that.
We need a strong dose of humanism; a mighty dose of humanism. And this dose requires more than its fair share of forgiveness. A willingness to forgive; but equally important, a willingness to take responsibility. Only then is true change possible.
How can we do this with more than words?
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6 comments:
First of all, I adore you.
Second of all, I have got to seriously contemplate this for a while. It is awesome.....and deep....and I am going to think much on it......
thankyou-and I will return-after a good nights rest.
Good night. Or should I say, Good morning.
Ok, rested up. At the beginning you said, “I was silenced again.” What exactly did you mean?
While I was reading this, I went back to Patricia Nelson Limerick’s, “Haunted America” The injustice to the Indians by the Europeans, the injustice by the Indians to the Indians, the injustice by the Indians to the Europeans. A vicious cycle like you called it.
It seems to me that human nature is to survive at all costs and when that is threatened, morality and right/wrong go out the window, and it’s survival of the fittest. When a “righteous” cause is put in the picture and the fundamental brain is added, then all hell breaks loose and we’ve got war after war after war.
To me, the answer is simple, like you said. We have to take responsibility for our own actions, yes forgiveness is important, it can help the individual heal, but it can’t stop the cycle like taking responsibility can. How we do this as a society is beyond me. I know that I can do it and that’s a beginning and I have to work on it daily.
The part I don’t understand is why some people can do that, and some can’t. Some people can be rehabilitated and some can’t. Some people stop the cycle of abuse and some continue it and perpetrate even more.
For me, personally, it’s been an ongoing process. And if I can work on stopping the cycle, then my children will hopefully be able to continue to stop it and their children and theirs…..and so on.
I love this saying, (mantra) from AA:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
This is my truth…hard to do…but my truth..
I think the question becomes, where does compassion originate? and then, how does responsibility and forgiveness enter in?
If all we do is take responsibility, this could lead to only guilt, which cripples. We lose the ability to act. Our inaction allows the cycle to continue because those overwhelmed instead with anger and rage to continue their action.
As to how things affect different people, I don't know. Again, I think it has something to do with compassion (which I think must require forgiveness), and the need to act on it. This movement to positive action is crucial.
I saw an amazing video yesterday about an Iraqi boy. His father and uncle, and even a brother or two, had been murdered in the chaos of all the crap over there. His response: to put messages of unity into large plastic bottles, and drop them in the river that stretches all through Iraq. He's even enlisted the help of 30+ friends to take up the cause. It might be a small act, but that doesn't make it any less amazing, or any less possible of affecting change.
Regarding "silence": I mean exactly that. There is much that affects me; that makes me unable to write, at least immediately.
Even yesterday's headlined death has had its affect.
I guess when you said you were silenced again, I thought somehow it had to do with the family…I tend to go right to family dynamics. Yeah, compassion, forgiveness, responsibility. Interesting, maybe they are all tied together.
I know for me, growing up, I was taught that forgiveness was above all. You have to forgive, first and foremost. So when I would get abused, I would go right to forgiveness. I would try to understand why this person acted that way, giving them the benefit of the doubt; they couldn’t help it, they did it to teach me a lesson, I was in the wrong, they know better. I would forgive them and beat myself up emotionally for doing what ever I did, and especially if I felt anger-I would quickly get rid of it-anger is of the Devil.
When I wouldn’t let myself feel sad, or anger, or hurt and would go right to forgiveness, I was denying the very thing that could set me free, which was my feelings, something I innately have to protect myself, to heal myself. Many years later, in therapy, when I let myself have the anger, and directed it to the person that hurt me, (I would hit pillows for hours, screaming at the top of my lungs) this is when my heart softened and opened up to loving and forgiving the person that abused me. And I have to say the person that abused me the most was myself. I had to forgive me, and when I did I was able to forgive everyone else. In fact, once I let go of trying to forgive, I actually could forgive. And it came from deep in my soul.
However, before this could happen, I had to grow up, and realize that my life was falling apart, and only I could change it, I had to stop blaming myself for everything, I know that sounds opposite, most people have to stop blaming everyone else and look at themselves, but I was raised thinking that all was my fault, I had to put blame where it needed to be, make them accountable in my own mind (cause they never owned up to any of the abuse, even to this day) and then take responsibility for what I had done to myself, and change.
Compassion had to start with me, for me, and then I could forgive. They seem to be puzzle pieces that all fit together.
Fascinating what I just read in A Language Older Than Words:
"Our violence has reversed the rule of cooperative natural selection, such that those who fight possibly survive, and those who don't fight will most likely die. The inverse is true as well: those who survive learn how to fight,or more precisely, those who survive learn by painful experience to deafen themselves to their own suffering, and the suffering of others. The deafness facilitates the perpetration of extreme violence since extreme violence and survival are now associated. The violence leads only to further deafness, each furthering the other in a spiral of attenuated feelings until at long last we mimic "beast-machines"-horribly frightened, and not so very rational after all."(121)
I am on the "Breaking Out" chapter, now. Maybe he offers some options for our universal dilemma.
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