I want another kind of healing.

[kenoli Oleari]

Some thoughts I wanted to share with friends. -- Kenoli

I want another reaction than retaliation!  I want another kind of healing.

Today I heard an interview on TV between three young interviewers and
a member of Reagan's cabinet.  The (Reagan!) cabinet member was
trying to say that there was a way of understanding that the
motivations of the people who initiated this act of terrorism may
have come from the way the United States has acted in the world.  As
an example, he tried to explain that many Arabs consider that the way
the United States continues to treat Iraq to be an indication of its
disrespect for Arab countries.  He was also saying that a blind
response, like bombing Afghanistan because it harbors Bin Laden,
could feed this.  The younger interviewers could barely let him talk,
insisting that we are right to act the way we do in Iraq and that we
should bomb Afghanistan because even if Bin Laden didn't do this he
needs to be bombed anyway.  The debate went on with the cabinet
member suggesting that acting unilaterally could enflame reactions
against the United States.  The young interviewers expressed
passionate disdain for any notion that the United States should have
to ask anyone before doing anything it wants.

Peter Jennings argued with Orrin Hatch, urging him not to assume that
all Palestinians took joy in this act.  A ray of light?

Today I heard that Congress has denounced this act (which is
appropriate) without saying anything that might heal the feelings
that drive it and is considering an action which should be passed by
both housed tomorrow giving George Bush authority and funding to do
whatever he wants to do to hunt down and act in retribution against
these terrorists.  The vote is intended to reverse the war powers
act, the very act that the congress passed to make sure that the
President doesn't act irresponsibly.

Schwartzkop assumes that the principle desire this act will raise in
our national psyche is a desire for revenge:

"After something like this, there will be a desire to strike back.
What will be hard for us, given  our national psyche, is that we
cannot. We don't know who, or where, to strike."
-- General Norman Schwartzkop

Does Schwartzkop have a particular insight into this country's
psyche?  Is this really where most of the country is coming from?  I
really am confused about this.  The media and the President seem to
assume that this is foremost on people's minds and hearts.  I allowed
myself a glint of hope that a Reagan cabinet member would argue for
understanding and felt a crushing anxiety hearing the young
intelligent interviewers leave no space for any view but their own
view for blind reaction.   that Peter Jennings might see the
possibility of a reasoned perspective.

It was not my reaction.  My reaction was sorrow that we had driven
people to the point that they felt they needed to do this.  My urge
was hope (beyond hope) that America might possibly feel like
repenting and modelling a response that might put this way of being
in the world behind all of us, to express some sorrow and not anger
or revenge.  Many of my friends into understanding the world through
developmental models tell me that current American society operates
from a level of consciousness that makes it impossible for them to
act in any other way and that this event has a likelihood of
triggering action and reaction that will likely drive us into a dark
age as has never been seen before.

How do we act in the face of this?  Is there a hope for something
else? How can those of us act who want healing and not revenge?  How
can we honor the apparent inability for some people (or groups) to
see beyond revenge without endorsing it?  How can we act in response
to this response in a way that heals, that makes more possible an
alternative other than more terror and war?  How can we model
something else in the world?  How can we make a statement that can be
heard?

A friend and I fantasized about tens of thousands of people going to
Israel and just staying there, refusing to leave, putting our bodies
peacefully between adversaries until some healing took place.  Would
this even be possible?    What can we do?

In a way I felt strangely unmoved by this terrorism; after all, I
spend some time everyday thinking of the billions of people who
suffer or die daily at the routine "business" as usual work of the
United States.  This is a huge sorrow to live with constantly, it
does numb the nerves somewhat.  That suddenly this consequence of our
actions shows up immediately in our midst is not surprising; in some
way it is a miracle that it took this long to show up on our door
step.  And it brings with it the same sorrow, the same loss, the same
broken lives that occur daily for billions of others at the hands of
our country's way of being in the world.  Having just returned from
Indonesia, I am deep with the awareness of the depth of physical
suffering that has become the norm for these billions of people.
Those folks whose dream is a $3.50/day job with Nike.

I was deeply struck by some statistics that David Korten referred to
(which I can't find now in their entirety) of the kind of lives that
the vast majority of people live.  It included (out of a 5 billion
earthwide population) the fact that:

"more than a billion of the world's people live on less than a dollar
a day and lack the most basic necessities of life."

Where is peace and justice?  And prosperity and hope?  How do we act?

Kenoli

--
Kenoli Oleari, Horizons of Change, http://www.horizonsofchange.com
1801 Fairview Street, Berkeley, CA  94703   Voice Phone: 510-601-8217,
Fax: 510-595-8369, Email: kenoli at igc.org (or click on: mailto://kenoli@igc.org)

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu,
Visit:

http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html