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Light and Dark
By lindamuralidharan on 2009-12-25 23:35:40
Thankfully, many people these two weeks are really enjoying family and and friends as well as both giving and receiving.
Still, we know that in this holiday time when cultures adapt to the darkness of the winter months with celebrations of light
and the hope of spring to eventually come, there is still a grave mixture of the light and dark in our natures. In Schenectady
this holiday week a member of the armed services in town for the holidays shot another man dead. Both were in their
twenties. It is presumed at this point that jealousy and the need to control other human beings affected the nature of
a romantic triangle. It is thought that the shooter killed the man who was dating his ex-wife. As we talk here about ways to
reduce violence in the world, I am reminded of the saying that "All politics is local." If, as individuals, too many of us see
violence and killing as the solutions to the stresses of our personal feelings, how much more difficult then to resist turning
to violence when group passions are stirred up between one category of people and another? How do we reach more
children (and even adults because I believe people are teachable until the moment of their dying breath) and teach them to
value each and every human being? How do we teach at home and in school that emotions are powerful but that they do
not need to drive our behavior? How do we teach, from a young age, that feelings of loss are constructively manageable no
matter how painful and threatening to our egos? How do we teach the difference between real threats to our life and
fundamental well being and threats that just "seem" too horrible to bear? And going from the local to the global, which
threats to our country itself are serious enough to have limited resources directed at them and which are actual "existential"
threats that require more extensive deployment of resources? Again, I think a lot of this has to do with distinguishing
between "feelings" of loss and real, usually tangible, losses. If my mate chooses to leave me, I may feel very hurt and my
sense or feeling of control over my life may be at stake. However, practical decision making and actions are likely to
minimize the impact of any physical or financial loss, and the undesirable loss of a companion and that person' s affection
will not kill me. If I can't make these distinctions, perhaps I will do a lot of foolish, even severely destructive things to
maintain the illusion of control. I may act in antisocial ways to chase away the feelings of abandonment or powerlessness.
So I am left to guess that the serviceman who shot a rival dead thought he had to wrench back a sense of control by any
means he could think of, and unfortunately physical violence was the one that came to mind. Paradoxically, he now has less
control over his life than he did before the use of violence. He has been arrested, and the courts will be in control. Quite
likely a prison of some kind will be controlling his life for many years in the future. If too many people in a population or
power structure think this way, it may be that wars get out of control. Wars that represent a wrong done but not an
existential threat. Thus I come back to how we teach people to make useful, not counterproductive, distinctions and
decisions about courses of action. I can think of a couple of ways not to teach the positive approach. A friend was
substituting in a public school class of middle school students with special needs including behavioral issues. The students
were unruly and disrespectful of authority and of each other. My friend was very distressed when one of the aids threatened
to "whup their *****" if they didn't cut it out. There were three adults in the room and 6 students. It seems elementary to
me that one or more of the kids needed to visit the principal while the other adults had a discussion about what was going on
and what better ways each student could have used to deal with their own frustrations. For all we know, one or more of
them may come from a home where threats and neglect and rude behavior are the only role models they have. Surely the
school personnel need to model something different. There are, fortunately, increasing opportunities to intervene with people
who have low self esteem (which can lead to destructive attempts to control others) and poor decision making skills. A
group of professionals in the field of law enforcement were talking about the recent decline in both juvenile and adult crime
(I believe they made reference to national statistics), and they said one of many causes may be the increasing numbers of
programs that involve interventions with at risk youth and families. I think we need a lot more of these as well as more
people taking responsibility to intervene in caring and responsible ways with their own families and with their
neighborhoods. I also don't think that the ease of obtaining guns, and the promotion publicly that gun ownership and use are
the "norm" are helpful social, cultural values. What is a gun for if not to use? Who is to decide what is self-defense?
Apparently too many people out there these days think that lovers or property are worth killing someone for. Now that there
are so many guns out there, I don't have an easy antidote. However, I think teaching and modeling the priceless value of
each and every human life would be a good place to start. If the serviceman in question had truly valued the lives all those
involved in the triangle, he might have made a bit of a fool of himself trying to avoid the inevitable, but I doubt the
outcome would have been fatal. Observation of both nature and spiritual experiences suggest that both the light and the dark
are valuable to the promotion of life giving forces. Seeds are nurtured in the darkness of the soil. Later the shoots will need
sunlight. As humans, we need to respect moments of genuine anger and accept our sad times and sad experiences when
they are unavoidable. We don't need to surrender, however. We can embrace the little rays of light that begin to shine
through our pain in the course of time . The light of human emotional growth and respect for each other comes with the
process of suffering not in spite of it. As more of us are empowered to grow in our personal, read "local" lives, we can also
grow as societies and as nations. The wishes we offer each other for peace and joy at this time of year can be put into
action. We can solve more and more problems through nonviolent means when we truly nurture both the light and the dark
sides of our nature. I wish all our readers more moments of true peace of mind in the coming days.
