How does a "we" become a mere "me"?

Although it has been a while, I've dealt with the notion of "Advent", what it's about, how it not only marks a change of seasons, but also what it means in a yearly sense.

There's no real need to rehash old themes. This year is not all that different from previous ones: there's too much trouble, pain, strife, war, death, and suffering going on out there; the greedy still can't get enough; the poor are still looked down upon, if they're not outright despised; the first salvos in the so-called "war" on Christmas have already been fired; and my own desire to hear a collective voice of reason in the hectic remains unfulfilled. Too few people care ... about any of what this "season" should bring; and even fewer are willing to budge even an inch out of their own self-righteous comfort zones to fill the season with any kind of reason.

Margaret Thatcher, the Female Godhead of Neoliberalism, maintained -- and her acolytes and adherents proclaim -- that there is no such thing as society; it is merely a collection of individuals. That is unchallenged dogma in the meantime, and even the briefest glimpse at anything calling itself news confirms its "truth". But, religions -- and neoliberalism has taken on this mantle -- cannot exist apart from cultures, so that is the next falsehood that must be destroyed, and all of us worldwide, though more markedly we in the West, are rallying to the Call for Destruction. Just like the often illiterate and ignorant destroyers of culture known as ISIS, even we non-military, supposedly peace-loving, non-violent types are just as effective as they are at destroying common history as well.

Without a society; that is, without some kind of social grouping that views itself as "us", it is difficult to imagine a culture forming. A culture, in this sense, the linguistic, artistic, musical, literary, and value-oriented backdrop that provides the context in which a given group can function. In certain regards it is all those unspoken rules, guidelines, customs and mores that let everyone knew "how things are done around here". That group will then organize itself in relation to other groups in civil (political) and economic (commercial) ways. Politics and commerce are, by their very nature, unable to support culture. Given the influence she enjoyed throughout the West, when Mdme Thatcher conceptually eliminated "society", she did as much to destroy our culture as Muslim radicals do when they go around blowing up cultural heritage sites or chiseling facades off of walls. We readily recognize the one, and deal very ineptly with the other.

Though only one example, it is indicative of why we find ourselves in crisis these days ... and everything has become a crisis. Whatever it was that made us "us" has been so weakened, so debilitated that we're left primarily with ourselves. And individuals are never a sound basis upon which to build.

An iceberg sunk the Titanic, and it could happen to us

The thing about icebergs is you can't see most of what they are, but they're there anyway. The thing about prejudices is that you don't know where they come from, but they're there anyway. The thing about stereotypes is that you don't know why you believe them, but you believe them anyway. The thing about myths is that you don't know where they come from, but you believe them anyway as well. Just like we don't know how to account for 75% of the mass of the visible universe, we can't account for the motivations for most of what we believe and what makes us act the way we do.

Truth be told, we don't know what we're doing, nor why we're doing it most of the time. Why is that?

Sigmund Freud, G-d bless him, opened Pandora's box at the turn of the last century. We can think what we want about his theories on how the mind works, but one thing you can't take away from him is his insight into the fact that the unconscious determines much more of what we do and how we act than we would like to admit ... well, more than we are willing to admit. No, Siggie didn't get a whole lot right, but in that regard, he hit the proverbial nail smack on the head.

Just because we "know" this, doesn't mean for a second that we've done anything about it. Most of us are still driven by our unconscious. More of us are Mr. Hydes than we are Dr. Jekylls, whether we want to admit it or not. Why is that? Well, quite simply because we are (truly) afraid of shining the light of day (or knowledge or truth) on the dark (that is, unknown, unconscious, repressed) part of ourselves.

We like to think we are good, upstanding, and humane, yet, at night, when we turn off the lights, in the twilight prior to sleep, we are plagued by the ghosts of fear (of others), hate (of Muslims, or ), uncertainty (about how we're seen by others), guilt (perhaps someone has seen through our personal facade), and simple trepidation (how do we continue to keep up appearances). Our problem is that what we proclaim to be good, right, and proper is based on unconscious assumptions and beliefs that most of us don't even know we have. In other words, we have our own (personal) myths that we hold to be true.

In some cases, these myths tell us that we are the "good guys", that what we do is for the best of all, that our history is one of benevolence and enlightenment, that our intentions were always pure and that our actions, even when they fell short of their goal, were unselfish and noble. Yes, that is what we would like to believe, but for those who have taken the time to look honestly and intently in the mirror, we know that the reality has fallen rather short of the desire.

We in the West are not alone in this. It is, it would seem, a universal illness of our age. We like to think we are informed, knowledgeable, enlightened, even wise. And so our myths get a bad name, because we accept them blindly, without thinking, without consciousness.

Myths, however, are real, and they are true in that realm in which they operate. What we also need to know is that we must engage them as they are, and unlike the unmovable and unbreakable iceberg that sunk the world's mightiest ship, we can reshape and remold them into those stories who unfortunately tell us who we are, but mercifully, can show us who we really want to be.

We can't stop terror

Tomorrow is the second of the four Sundays in Advent. It is also St. Nicholas Day, and tonight millions of children throughout the German speaking world will be putting out their shoes in hopes he'll stop by with treats. It should be a day of peace, reflection, joy, and togetherness, but it won't be in much of the so-called "Christian West", for the simple reason that the terrorists are winning the fight for our hearts and minds. How sad is that?

Sure, we feel for all those who were ripped out of life in the attacks in Paris. Sure, we feel for those who were killed by the shooters in Colorado Springs, Savannah, and San Bernadino. We find ourselves asking "why" again and again, but we simply refuse to acknowledge what we all know is the answer to our question: we've become what we hate; we're complicit. And that's why we can't stop the terror.

Oh sure, we like to point to the turmoil in the Middle East and look down upon those uncivilized souls who simply can't stop fighting with one another and the world. We love to point our fingers in disgust at those who our misconceived religious fanaticism says we're justified in despising. And we overreact, both blindly and wildly, to the least bit of provocation from "them", whereas in truth we know that we are not one bit better.

Our reaction to 9/11, an alleged attack on our freedom? The Patriot Acts and more restricting and even eliminating many of those freedoms which had been attacked. Our reaction to the Paris attack, the latest attack on our freedom? Declaring a state of quasi-martial law and placing unrelated, environmental activists under house arrest during the recent climate summit; that is, restrictions on those freedoms (free speech, assembly) that had been attacked.

What do we abhor about terrorist attacks and mass shootings (which are, whether we want to own up to it or not, acts of terror)? The killing, the bloodshed, the violence. But how do we react? With even more violence. We started an illegal war in Iraq which directly and indirectly has caused the death of over a million innocent civilians. We aided and abetted terrorist organizations when they suited our purposes. After 14 years of violence, bombing, and killing in Afghanistan, the Taliban (a CIA creation) holds more territory and has more supporters than when we started. ISIS is a product of CIA intervention and years of funding and supplying by our so-called allies (Saudia Arabia, Qatar, Turkey), yet we say we are fighting them. We're supporting other "moderate terrorists" (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean) to oust a legitimate head of government in Syria, even though no one can explain to me how we acquired the right to decide who other nations select as their leaders. By what right do we inflict such violence on others? Imagine for a moment some foreign country would be doing this to us? There would be fanatic violence from every corner as every gun-owning American and others would be violently reacting to the violence inflicted from without.

Of course, when that same violence comes from within (the attackers in Paris were European citizens) but they fit our propagandized profile (Middle-Eastern names will suffice) it's terror and the reaction is more violence to "them". When the same violence come from within but they're more like us, they are mere individual psychopaths. But, they aren't. They are the products of the veil of violence that covers all our actions and reactions. All we know anymore is violence, be it in sports, competitions of any kind, politics and political campaigns, family disputes, communal security or foreign policy.

We've become what we hate. We can't stop the terror. We could, if we changed, but we won't.

You become what you hate

This is a special time of year in many regards. We're between holidays that are not so important anymore and perhaps the biggest American holiday and the universally Christian holiday of Christmas which is right around the corner. It is fitting, I think, that these all occur when they do, here at the end of the solar year, after the harvest, and in preparation for the retreat before the winter. This is a time of turning inward -- or it should be -- a time of reflection upon who we are, what we believe, and what we are doing.

There's an old mystic's adage that is particularly appropriate given all that I've been posting about lately: "You become what you hate."

Yes, speaking of hate at this time of year seems a bit incongruous, but only at first glance. The world seems to be full of hate these days. It's directed toward all kinds of "others": immigrants, political opponents, particular lifestyles, adherents of other religions ... you name it, there is a good number of people ready, willing, and able to stand up and decry just how evil all those others are, even if loudly decrying, and hating generally, are values we (and more often our religion) proclaim not to have.

Hate -- and it is actual hate in most cases -- is a dangerous emotion, not only because it is inherently destructive, but because of its insidious power to change us in such a fundamental, essential way. Someone who hates invests a lot of time and energy (and given the short spans of our lives, rare and precious resources) in that hate. The object of one's hate plays an essential and central role in our thought, speech, and actions. We are offended by the slightest of details which we come to see as ever more proof of the rightness of our hate. We end up knowing more about what we hate than we know about ourselves.

In the wake of WW2, it was the Communists who reaped our ire. Those God-hating, atheist oppressors and suppressors of freedom. But who is it these days turning on whistleblowers, passing legislation to rescind basic rights and persecuting dissenters? Oh, we still claim to love God and can't reaffirm enough our religious values, but ignore every precept which that rebellious Nazarene carpenter put so much trust in. We hate Muslims, those bellicose terrorists who want to turn the clocks back to the Middle Ages. But who is it that places religious values above so-called democratic ones and who worship a constitution that is centuries old itself? In place of the KGB which we held high as the prime example of suppression of freedom, we have the NSA and CIA who can't pry broadly and deeply enough into our own lives. In the place of humane values of community and cooperation, we have raised the values of competition and money to religious ideals.

It's not surprising, at least not to me, that we have come this far. And, it is even less surprising that most people I know would argue that I couldn't possibly be speaking to them. But I am. The change from one to the other is slow and subtle, but it's apparent nonetheless. The mystics were right then, and they're still right today: you become what you hate.