Taking it Personally
This conversation happened on the second level of the Eiffel Tower Sunday night, waiting in line on the way to the top. What an amazing sculpture, by the way. I had no idea. It's so much more magnificent than the paperweight versions you get in the States. Anyway, I am not sure how it began, but a big man from Texas and his little wife from Mississippi were in line next to me. With the city of lights at sunset as our backdrop, a few light-hearted jokes about terrorism were exchanged, one thing led to another, and I mentioned how the former Texas governor was making a mess of things.
The Texan's reply was: "Oh, you're one of those Fahrenheit 9/11 people."
I was at long last some kind of certified conformist.
He went on to state his view that the Sept. 11 attacks were caused by the fact that Bill Clinton was too busy having sex in the White House to do his job properly. Which is interesting, among other things, given the rather long delay involved. He added that Bush had, as well, only been president nine months at the time of 9/11, and he didn't have the opportunity to deal properly with the threat.
I asked him if he'd read Against All Enemies by Richard A. Clarke, written by the counterterrorism chief who had served continuously under Ronald Reagan, George Bush I, Bill Clinton and George Bush II, which basically nullifies both of his theories. He had not. I asked if he knew anything about the history of Vietnam; he said he was born in 1965 and thus did not. Honestly I was not expecting him to say yes but I thought I'd ask.
His wife, wearing an elegant black dress and wrapped in a black fishnet shawl that could have only had the most vague psychological value keeping her warm up there, asked me if I'd heard about Linda Ronstadt being escorted from the stage at a recent concert for mentioning Michael Moore's film. I had not, so she told me the story. Here is a clip from CommonDreams.org by Andrew Gumbel, which I quote in part, so you have a version of the events she was referring to:
The scene was the Aladdin Theatre in Las Vegas last Saturday night. Linda Ronstadt, the fifty-something folk-rocker, was just coming to the end of a concert backed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the crowd gave her a standing ovation.
Then she offered one last song, the old Eagles hit 'Desperado', and dedicated it to Michael Moore, the rabble-rousing filmmaker whose Bush-bashing documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 has polarized the country like no other cultural event of the early summer.
Suddenly, all hell broke loose. Depending who you believe, either the audience ran out of control or the Aladdin's management did. Either way, the upshot was that Ms. Ronstadt was hustled off stage and out of the building and told she would not be welcome back, now or ever again. She was not even allowed to return to her hotel room to pack. Hotel employees checked out for her instead.
"We needed her off the property," hotel spokeswoman Tyri Squyres told local reporters. "She wanted to incite the audience, and she incited them to the point where they were very upset."
Hard though it is to imagine a diminutive middle-aged woman with a bob haircut and a honey-sweet voice starting a riot in America's very own Sin City, the Ronstadt Affair seems destined to go down as the latest surreal episode to mark this contentious, jumpily hostile election season.
She did not provide this level of detail in her description, but her take was close enough for discussion. I asked her if she felt what the hotel did was right. She said she felt it was, because people had paid for entertainment and they were getting political grandstanding. I love, by the way, how the management didn't let Ronstadt go back to her hotel room to collect her things; they must have figured she would make another 9/11 speech and incite her bathrobe and linens to riot.
I suggested that she think the episode through like Thomas Jefferson or Ben Franklin might, considering the issue of civil liberties. No, she said, same opinion; it seemed a simple and inconsequential matter to her. She wished me luck, and excused herself politely to "enjoy my husband."
The discussion felt, in hindsight, really, really creepy, and I escaped to the top of the tower and stayed there for a while, giving them plenty of time to leave. At one point she expressed concern that we were under surveillance and might get in trouble for talking that way. She saw no contradiction between that and the 'freedom' for which we're supposedly fighting.
Prepare yourself for a decade or two of such moments of clarity. When the U.S. really begins to polarize -- it hasn't yet, it's way too early in this crisis, and the long-promised second wave of terrorism has not hit -- it will seem to divide the universe between two completely different realities. Even now, the divergence of opinions is slowly infiltrating communities, and threatening to pull apart relationships, as people make an effort to grapple with the values of their neighbors that may differ wildly from their own. And I am sure that Fahrenheit 9/11 has made for some intense pillow talk.
My encounter with these Americans keyed into something I was reading, a book called People of the Lie by M. Scott Peck (author of The Road Less Traveled). A client had long ago recommended this book to me, then I forgot about it, and when I got to the place I'm staying in Paris, it was on the shelf. Essentially, it's a study in the psychology of evil. Evil manifests, says Peck, in people whose lies and denial create the perfect breeding ground for it to take hold and flourish. This can include an entire society. Mostly it includes self-deception.
Peck is a psychiatrist; the book examines evil as it expresses itself in several of his patient case studies, including parent-child relationships, marriages, and finally the MyLai massacre of March 1968 in Vietnam, in which U.S. troops raped and murdered hundreds of unarmed civilians. Peck had, In the 70s, worked on a government panel that made recommendations for how to prevent such atrocities in the future.
He expands his study of MyLai to include the enormous denial trip that the United States was taking as the Vietnam War built in intensity through the late 1960s, and the fact that the whole endeavor had to be supported by lies. Lies are generally evidence that people (such as President Johnson) know they are doing something wrong, and, he reasons, are the essential basis of evil. More frightening than the fact that MyLai happened was the fact that numerous Army personnel refused to speak up about what they witnessed; the cover-up was not blown until a full year later. Finally there was one successful prosecution.
From reading this book, I recognized the psychological lines along which this couple was thinking: the refusal to consider anything inwardly; his projection of another man's sexual sin as being the cause of the terrorist attacks; no compassion at all for the people to whom our country is causing enormous suffering; no sense of guilt or remorse; the voluntary ignorance; and most of all, the convenient, self-righteous simplicity of their beliefs. I don't believe these were evil people as individuals, but they were partaking in a kind of lie without which collective evil could not occur.
Peck reasons that the denial people exhibit in situations like the Iraq war is as much a matter of maintaining one's personal pride as it is anything else. People need to be right and they will defend being right at about any cost, including destroying (or being complicit in the destruction of) an entire culture or civilization. But what about being "right" even in the face of the kinds of atrocities of which we've seen so much evidence?
I keep wondering how much worse the situation in Iraq can get before the majority of people will decide there's a real problem -- a problem worth dealing with. Or, for example, what would happen if a death camp were opened in the middle of an American city. Would that be okay too? Would that be seen as something necessary, if it fell under homeland security? It just might. I remember visiting the ruins of the first concentration camp in Ilvers Gehoffen, now Erfurt, in Germany. People there just bought an extra pillow in which to bury their head.
But then I forget that it's the very depth and darkness of it all that is leading to the denial; that people tend to use denial as a means of not dealing with what is so obvious, because to deal would be too painful. Denial is an easy way out, and very appealing to weak people. It's probably the best litmus test of strength that we can apply.
As I have written before, the "pro war" and "anti war" positions are not equivalent in any sense, and they are not really a matter of opinion. For example, one position requires dismissing the situation; the other requires embracing it and taking a measure of personal responsibility. These are not equivalents. One allows you to get on with business as usual; the other requires looking inwardly at our own darkness, making changes, making commitments, risking personal relationships and looking honestly at the darkness of the world. One requires hiding out in one's worldview and the other requires making radical changes to it.
What many people seem to do consistently is set situations up in which pain is the only available teacher. I have seen this again and again as an astrologer, and I've experienced it personally quite a few times. Societies do this as well. Obviously, pain is a very effective teacher; it forces us to hold consciousness around what we might ordinarily ignore. But generally there are a lot of options we're presented with before we wind up in the court of last resort, faced with the final, wrenching thing that will compel us to grow.
It's true that many people will not recognize, or let themselves recognize, that (for example) the war is potentially some kind of injustice or deception until they personally lose someone they know and love: a son, a husband, a mother, a best friend. Then the lie becomes obvious for what it is. If a draft is initiated, this will help spread the pain out far enough that it makes a difference as well. Under the current setup we can blame everyone fighting in Iraq for being a volunteer.
But spreading pain and devastation is not an especially efficient way to learn, especially for a whole society. If ethical teaching needs to reach the extremely personal level to be effective, we will 'need' tens of thousands more Americans to die before we begin to get the message collectively. And honestly, it may take just that. Yet if one does not understand something until it is about 'me', that's pretty bad news for the rest of us. And if America is anything, it's all about 'me'.
While you and I might have a pretty good idea of right and wrong, and be willing to act on that, we will have to wait until the world crashes into everyone else's living room. By then it may be too late.
This is what is meant by the political is personal. There can be no actual political movement on any level but the most private; progress always involves deeply individual, emotionally-charged choices that have personal repercussions and require personal commitment. Until then, for most, it's a lot easier to believe lies. ++
Leo Birthdays Part Two
The Aquarius Full Moon emphasizes the unusual nature of your relationships this year, and how much everyone has to learn and share. Leo is a sign that possesses a special relationship to groups, which in part accounts for its strongly individualistic qualities. While Leo may be an individual, it always sees itself as part of a group and serving a distinct role within that group. Most astrology books categorize this as "leadership" qualities. Yet these qualities are earned one at a time no matter how natural they may seem to everyone else.
Over the past few years your relationship to groups has certainly taken on some interesting characteristics, and in particular this year you've likely become aware of some strange dynamics that arise where people gather. One question is: why do groups seem to be less than the sum of their parts? And another is what are you supposed to do about it?
Another dimension of this question involves your relationships to individual people. People are individuals, which may in some really bizarre way come as more of a surprise to them than it does to you. I think what's happening is that people are accustomed to being treated as a herd or as their bar code number, and you are someone from whom people receive the benefits of their humanity, because you see and experience them as one of a kind. Of course you can afford to. You know that you're one of a kind.
I know, this is a lot of work, and you may not necessarily feel like it's fully appreciated. But I also sense you feel a calling to serve your friends and maybe even the larger society this way; I don't think you quite perceive it as an option. After all, your friends are your friends, no matter how weird they are. And you live in the times you live. We are facing a lot of problems and most of them are collective problems. Somebody has to get people together, and politely remind everyone that the rest of the world exists.
The first group that any of us encounter is our family. Families have extremely weird dynamics. All of them; it's just a question of whether we get out of those patterns well enough to see them in operation. Something that is showing up strongly in your anniversary chart is your relationship to the energy contained within your parents' marriage. This has had a powerful effect on you and it is, I feel, at the heart of any health issues you may be facing.
Please forgive me for sounding a bit New Age here, but the psychic conditions of childhood have nearly everything to do with our health situations as adults. It may well be that orthodox methods of healing, which you are likely to prefer, are not working especially well, and your personal story is something of a challenge to that orthodoxy. I'll come back to that in a moment, but let's focus on the quality of your parents' relationship.
Think of it this way. How easy is it for you to deal with their stuff now? It's probably a significant challenge, or at least one that requires some strength. Now imagine a two year old in that same situation, minus all the ego apparatus that helps us get through life and navigate everyone's personalities.
Can you identify any of the following qualities in your parents? I'll make a list and you can circle the ones that apply. Possession. Power struggle. Forming an institution. Unquestioned reverence to their parents. Scorekeeping. Jealousy. Presumed infidelity. Being stuck in the past. Talking more than doing. An unusual degree of staying power; that is, persistence. Male superiority. Female ambiguity or two-faced behavior.
Any of these qualities have formed what you could call prejudices or energy patterns from which you are attempting to free yourself. And you are doing it in your own way, with your own people. If you are still putting a lot of emphasis on the importance of your parents within your life, I would propose that this is a really good time to get some distance. You need that distance so you can work out these emotional entanglements that take a toll on your body and your vitality.
These are the perfect years of your life to accomplish this particular goal, of holistic health that reaches from your inner emotional and physical world and reaches out into your relationships. In choosing practitioners to work with, you may find that someone who identifies as a "conventional" doctor or therapist, but one who has exceptional experience, and is likely fairly old, may be the way to go. It may be that you will benefit from the assistance of someone who is an "alternative" practitioner but who has enough respect for conventional practices to take them into account and put them to work for you. The key is balance between tradition and innovation. I know there is part of you that is sure you can discover something radically new and innovative. But there is also that deeply traditional part of you that knows that all healing takes time.
In any healing process, one of the most vital things we can watch is our relationship to everyone else's issues. How you perceive them and experience them will change from day to day, or at least that's a worthy goal. If it doesn't you may need to loosen up your perceptions and your interpretations. Give people a chance to change, and give yourself a chance to change. Take a look at how in most groups people encourage one another to stay the same rather than to change. You are a potent, dynamic and very appealing example for growth and personal adventure.
People are getting the message, and slowly, so are you.
Next week, we'll take a look at money. ++
