As each of us trolls and surfs the evidence, questionable and unquestionable, regarding the compromise of our national security, integrity and legitimacy as a nation-state by the current administration, I believe that it is still important to maintain a mental checklist of the simple principles we have allowed to be violated by our government, its membership and its individual citizens.
I ask this indulgence not be reductionist, overly-simplistic or dismissive of the complexity involved in actual thoughtful investigation of matters of state. Rather, I ask this indulgence because on occasions too numerous to mention, the sheer vastness of the insanity the evidence indicates seems almost designed to push the limits of the human nervous system to process information, disturbing or otherwise.
The tendency to lapse into "either/or" or "black and white" thinking under such stresses is very strong and should not be discounted by researchers and journalists. Staring into such blackness, such vacuousness, for extended periods can suck any normal human being in and cause them to conclude that only evil and darkness rule in this life. Faith in the goodness of people, faith and trust that others can and will reciprocate kindness for kindness can and will disappear anytime a human being finds themselves looking into the present evidence for any extended period of time. This despairing will not seem to be reconcilable with goodness or with the joy of living and being alive.
The antidote to this traumatic insult to our sensibilities is a reasoned one based on my experience thus far: joy and goodness surround us at all times and threaten us not. For no reason should a normal human feel threatened by the abundance and overwhelming joy that has always surrounded us as an omniscient background, even as we descend into the blackness of the pit suggested by what we're looking into.
In other words, for every overwhelmingly dark revelation, there is an equally overwhelming joy that, too, blinds our perception and causes us to think in warped and distorted ways. We value joy differently because we can share it with one another. Despair can not be so readily shared: it is based in fragmented thinking and fragmenting emotions.
When blackness overwhelms us, it is because we worry – we fear – that this utter cold aloneness is more true and more universal than the daily joys for which we grew quite accustomed. The smile of an infant, the majesty of a sunset, the embrace of a loved one suddenly and shockingly find opposition in their shadow: the wail of a baby for its mother, the utter pointlessness of surviving one more day on a terminal journey and the utter despair of unrequited love.
It is because of how human perception operates that we require opposition in sights, sounds, tastes, smells and even feelings. Perceptions that have no contrasting agent, then, can not be perceptions at all because we can not be consciously validate their presence through our senses.
What I am suggesting, as simply as I can, is the acceptance that there is more to the totality of life than any one human being can grasp in a single snapshot, or even a single motion picture composed of many snapshots. Because of this fact of human experience, it is possible to overwhelm the senses in either direction: too much light or too much dark.
What is it, then, that causes us to seize-up over darkness and despair, yet completely overlook lightness and joy? What is so threatening about the perception of an overwhelming darkness?
Well, death, obviously, but it is even more than this. That the ultimate ruling authority over all things could be the death that reclaims them all haunts and drives our behavior in times when we are overwhelmed by darkness in either ourselves or others.It is a sickening thought: that all of life is but a cruel joke played on us by some mystical, magical cloud being who is intent on murdering us at the moment of our greatest joy.
And yet how absurd it is to allow ourselves to believe, even for an instant, that our very presence does not mean that we are alive, that life does not go on and beget increase after increase as it expands and fills our limited thoughts and perceptions with light, joy and love. This was the Good News, the Gospel, brought back from 40 days and nights in a desert of sensory deprivation by a Jewish rabbi of reputation served both ill and well for over 2,000 years.
Award winning poet, writer and refugee from the educational testing industry. Richard agitates, supports and motivates activists of all kinds, the most well-known being Cindy Sheehan. Web developer and designer by day, writer by night, Richard has the disposition of an observer and essayist. Richard has fallen in love, one day at a time, with the writing of Raymond Carver, while sparring, verbally, with the flying monkey right since 1998. Richard built his first computer from scratch in 1977 and had his heart broken for the first time in 1980. It has been stomped on and dragged behind a Chevrolet for many miles since that time. Thanks in no small part to Republican partisan politics and internecine policies.
