I have this thing where brass and pipe bands and parades and crowds at sports arenas seriously freak me out...
I'm pulled into the energy and the excitement and at the same time, there's an overwhelming sense of danger, distress and distaste...
I think it's some kind of multi-generational cellular memory carried froward from the days of the Colosseum, or the Nuremberg rallies or something - that whole mindless crowd frenzy, group think hysteria stuff...
And its completely disturbing to see 'drill' teams of young girls - often comprised of one ethnicity and some only pre-schoolers - marching and shouting aggressive military-style chants...
(interesting chicken-and-egg question -
which comes first in the militarisation of our young?)
AND it also gives me the heebie-jeebies when some of my social activist friends call me or each other "comrade"...
More "isms", more conflict, more implied aggression, more manipulation, more separating ourselves from our other 'selves'...
Whether it's communism or fascism people are espousing, for me, it's more looking back at the past, to dead white men's ideologies that did not work and relied, explicitly or implicitly, on a hierarchical structure of rulers and ruled, of leaders and followers...
So why do we need to do this thing, where we ask people to join us, and we tell them that if they're not with us, they're against us...
Why can't we simply acknowledge each other as friends?
"Strangers are friends we have not met yet"
Why can't we listen to each other?
Why can't we take the best of what has been tried before, leave what didn't work, add in a touch or two of creativity, mix it all up and try out what we get?
The way of the future is in synthesis and synergy...
AND/ALSO - which brings PEACE...
not either/or - which brings conflict...
The complementarity of intuition with logic, of feminine with masculine, of art with science, of idealism with pragmatism, of the natural with the manufactured...
PEACE
I hope we get to try it...
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