This is Thanksgiving week and
I’m very grateful for the following insight as a result of reading Barbara Kingsolver’s
novel The Lacuna.
Recently, I’ve discussed the
spiritual concept of Oneness. It is not a uniformity of social behavior –
groups or congregations that all seem to agree on a few common beliefs. I
believe this is a kind of egoic version of oneness, which is merely a feeling
of belonging to a common group that – in bigger numbers – alleviates my fear
somehow. It helps me believe I’m right. It is similar to mob mentality and
sometimes can morph into just that with the right trigger. That is not the oneness
I’m speaking of.
The story Kingsolver tells is
one of an American lad that is raised in Mexico and returns to the US as a
young adult. It is set in the pre- and post-World War II era. This was an era
of wonderful community commonality brought on by the Depression and WWII,
followed by the Cold War and our fear of Communism (stoked and promoted for
political gain until the fear became pervasive and irrational).
From The Lacuna, Barbara
Kingsolver, HarperCollins, 2009, pp. 5, 185:
The boy, Harrison Shepherd, had
discovered snorkeling and was mesmerized by the schools of fishes around a Mexican
reef. “The rule of fishes is the same as
the rule of people: if a shark comes, they will all escape, and leave you to be
eaten. They share a single jumpy heart that drives them to move all together,
running away from [perceived] danger just before it arrives. Somehow they know.
“Underneath the ocean is a world without people. The sea-roof rocks
overhead as you drift among the purple trees of the coral forest, surrounded by
a heavenly body of light made of shining fishes. The sun comes down through the
water like flaming arrows, touching the scaly bodies and setting every fin to
flame. A thousand fishes make the school, but they always move together: one
great, bright, brittle altogetherness…. [p. 5]
“… A wife. Van had a wife named Gabrielle. He has a son. This is what
it means to be alone: everyone is connected to everyone else, their bodies are
a bright liquid life flowing around you, sharing a single heart that drives
them to move all together. If the shark comes they will all escape, and leave
you to be eaten.” [p. 185]
This thought, of schools of fish
acting as one, keeps coming up over and over in different forms. It is the
metaphor Kingsolver uses to describe what happened to America during the late
1940s and early 1950s during the Joe McCarthy era of rabid, fear-mongering
anti-communism. In the atmosphere of terror by innuendo, trial by press release
and guilt-by-association, the forwardness of American politics just stopped. Since
one couldn’t criticize public policy without being condemned as a probable
“Red,” the country stagnated as having suddenly “arrived.” No more progress
needed. We are perfect. Let’s just stop. Others who think otherwise are
unpatriotic and dangerous. Let’s leave them for the shark.
Personally, I encountered this
same attitude in the 1970s during the tumultuous activity of Civil Rights, the
social safety net and the Vietnam conflict. The prevailing atmosphere was perfectly
summed up in the popular bumper sticker: “America – Love It Or Leave It.” Once
again – the attitude was we’re pretty perfect just as we are. If you criticize
us, we’ll label you as being “suspect.” Soon that will morph into “dangerous,” then
”un-American.” Finally, that fear will lead to being denounced as “evil and unchristian.”
Kingsolver goes on to explain
how this attitude of America’s special “rightness” came about. It is just five
or six years after WWII. She uses a character called Artie: “Do you want to know my theory? … I think
it’s the bomb…. I believe that is the heart of the matter. When that bomb went
off over Japan, when we saw that an entire city could be turned to fire and
gas, it changed the psychology of this country. And when I say ‘psychology,’ I
mean that very literally. It’s the radio, you see. The radio makes everyone
feel the same thing at the same time. Instead of millions of various thoughts,
one big psychological fixation. The radio commands our gut response…. That bomb
scared the holy Moses out of us. We became horrified in our hearts that we had
used it. Okay, it ended the war, it saved American life and so on and so forth.
But everyone feels guilty, deep inside. Little Japanese children turned into
flaming gas, we know this…. [So] we convince ourselves we are a very special
people, to get to use this weapon. Ideal scenario, we would like to think it
came to us from God, meant for our own use and no one else’s…. Suddenly we are
God’s chosen, we have this bomb, and we better be pretty damn certain no one
else is going to get this bomb. We must clean our house thoroughly. Can you
imagine what would happen if England also had the bomb – or France, Germany,
Japan, and the Soviet Union all had this bomb? How could a person go to sleep
at night?” [pp. 369-70]
I believe one of the primary
facets of guilt is the unspoken assumption that “they” will do to us, if given
the opportunity, what we have done to “them.”
So, to quell the fear driving the guilt, we must do all we can to
prevent that (perceived as probable) attack from happening. Published in 2009 The Lacuna is a wonderfully written, but scary, portrait
of the rise of the same hatefulness, fear and distrust that has pervaded our
country in the last five years. Fox News commentators, who artfully blend
factual reporting with opinion-as-fact, are now providing this singular voice
of fear and hysteria about anything that sounds progressive in nature. The
Democrats counter with fund-raising appeals that broaden the base of Fox’s fear-filled
messages. McCarthyism almost brought our government to a standstill in the
early 1950s. Today, the Republican-Tea-Party-Social-Conservatives, whose stated
goal is (for a variety of competing, very different, reasons) to do nothing but
bring down the Obama presidency, is accomplishing much the same level of non-governance
as McCarthyism did.
Our situation today can be
viewed as frightening, but the book’s history has helped me keep today’s events
in perspective. We survived Joe McCarthy and went on to move our country
forward with Civil Rights and social safety-net legislation. We’ll survive today’s
movement trying to return us to values of the 1950s: state’s rights, abortion
bans, a clamp-down on all sexuality, maintaining all sorts of groups of
second-class citizenry, including women.
To be aware of my True Self,
which allows for the possibility of seeing another’s True Self, begins, for me,
to be aware of my thoughts and the importance I seem to give them. If I harbor
them, they lead to words, actions, behaviors, habits, and values. All of which
can lead me away from my spiritual path.
Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna, 2009. Read it. Ponder – with
willingness.
Although these messages are
mostly for me, thanks for listening. As always – feel free to forward this
message to your friends, family, and those accompanying you on your spiritual
journey.
Don
#4 November, 2013
Copyright, 2013
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