Repetition
Image by Tu-2
Once more, the gloom of this month greets the day. The temperature is 61 degrees fahrenheit (16.1 celsius). Today is Tuesday. It happens every year at the shore - June Gloom.
Why do we keep repeating the things that hurt? Repetition seems to be a basic life phenomenon. After all, the seasons repeat year after hear, fruit trees bear fruit season after season, and human beings seem to have a pattern of behavior that repeats time and again. We seem not to use our capacity to understand and learn from mistakes - collectively and individually - resulting in self-destruction and preventable violence. Watching it unfold in real time is like watching a repeat of a bad movie.
About 33 years ago, my city (Los Angeles) experienced what was then called "the worst civil disaster" recorded in American history. After the near-death beating of Rodney King at the hands of LAPD, the city imploded. The rage was so widespread that the community suffered a billion dollars in property damage and untold amounts of damage to the hearts and minds of Korean immigrants. Many of them owned small businesses in the poorest part of L.A. and the anger at law enforcement and local government turned into scapegoating on a massive scale - defined by Koreans who had little or nothing to do with the legal system that produced not guilty verdicts for the officers that were prosecuted.
In post-disaster reflections, we predicted that society would face a similar if not worse civil disaster in a few decades, unless people truly understood our common destiny. Some of us pointed out the consequences of systems that were broken or out of touch with the people: the courts, the police, the economy, the media, the failure to recognize common humanity. Today, add political differences and we arrive at a moment when an armed military force has been ordered to take control of the region. The military is trained to kill. There is no pretense that it is a force intended "to protect and to serve".
People living in fear and uncertainty respond in very predictable ways. It is an irony, isn't it? The unpredictability produces a very predictable result: first, gathering, then chanting, then action. In the gathering, there is room for counter-intelligence and provocateurs to embed themselves so that incitement to violence can offer a reason for force to be unleashed against the people. It is scary to watch - like lambs being brought to slaughter.
Repetition is what we do - sometimes to support life; often to destroy (human) life. Why can't there be another way to respond to the deadly hardware and the clear intent to deliver violent tactics in a win/lose scenario? This is where the capacity for human creativity has an opening - a way to breakthrough the existing impasse between those who see the world in the duality: to control or be controlled.
It is time to stop repeating the mistakes of the past and do the unexpected - en masse. Would the military weaponry be used in our streets if there was a show of love, compassion, music, dance, food, a common beat from drums that speak the language of preservation rather than destruction?