Lightning over the lake in my backyard is tearing outdated skies
in half like discarded pages of a diary. Could be your diary. Could be mine. A
few minutes ago I stood on my upper deck while rain pelted down upon my face as
if writing an urgent new page. It was one of those dynamic perspective moments
when time seems to suspend itself. The droplets prattled like a keyboard,
trying to penetrate my skin, my brain, my heart, my soul. But another flicker
of lightning ignited old instincts and I fled inside, all safe and sound.
Safe?
From what? I took an insignificant risk, standing in the
rain watching the lightning, and now I have put a sheet of glass between me and
those zigzags that tear the sky asunder. Am I safer? Well…that’s the illusion,
isn’t it?
But I think I got the message. If you allow reflexes to make
you flee or hunker down, you miss many of nature’s cues and inspirations. Hey, dummy, even an “idjiot” comes in out of
the rain. Yeah, but the point I’m making – and I’m making it because so
much of your email lately goes toward the polarization of our society – is that
even the most basic reflexes need to be re-examined sometimes. There are bedrock
instincts common to all animals for physical survival, of course – things
imprinted from ages past – but what about those things we acquire after we’re
born? Those are not INstincts that keep us from going EXtinct. They are
programming, plain and simple.
We come into this world as empty vessels and immediately
start to fill with premises and associations according to our fears and
desires. And from those premises and associations we form emotional reflexes that
define us for a lifetime. Likes and dislikes. On the physical side, we will be
afraid of this or drawn to that, attracted or repelled by sensory info that
gives us pleasure or pain. But far more impactful is the psychological stuff,
the attitudes and perceptions that are grafted onto us by our parents and our
surroundings. We first imitate those values, then absorb them into our
foundational feelings toward the world around us. Call ‘em psychological
emotions – psycho-emotions. That is our primary indoctrination.
Our comfort zones will forever reach back to those
psycho-emotional roots for how we feel about things without remembering why. Distinctions
like good and bad. Things to trust, things to not trust. Choices. Emotions
first, logic first. Our earliest mind-sets accumulate rapidly and then are
simply taken for granted. We are boy or girl. We are family or not family. Soon
we are Hindu or Christian or Muslim or Jew or pointedly none of the inherited
faiths. We are a neighborhood, a school, a city…a nation. As we fine tune our similarities
and differences, we imitate, reject or accept the labels. Teen years arrive and
we shift the source of values from parents to peer group. We think we are
rebelling, but it is not so much a rejection as a trade-off, because most of
all we want to be accepted, to belong.
So, the name of the game in adolescence is spotting the
hypocrisies and contradictions beyond the cocoon – life’s lies – and we will
never be more vulnerable to the voices who preach victimhood and solutions than
when we are casting about in anger and disillusionment for answers in those
formative years. We may emulate the first informed-sounding Guru who comes
along, be it passionate college professor or emotive celebrity. The rumble of
the herd is loud, and beneath all the balm of protesting is still that
fundamental need to find an identity. So we listen and follow. Then into the macro
world on our own we go where peer groups blend into society. It is our world
now, or should be, we decide. Our values, our norms, our mores – these are our new
indoctrination, our chosen brainwashing, we believe, though our
psycho-emotional reflexes are pretty much intact. And even if we are less
scared, less unsure than before, we are still conforming to groupthink.
OK, that’s all Growing Up 101, if you recognize what I’ve described
here. And it is the prerogative if not the mandate of parents and societies to
inculcate themselves and their young with whatever dogma they choose. But the
societal indoctrination has intensified exponentially since the 60s, due
primarily to a quantum jump in mass-fast media saturation. And the media
content skews sharply to emotional biases.
This, in my OSHO, is why in a push-comes-to-shove world we
are so polarized. Rational arguments are up against emotional programming. Cognitive
reflex, it has been called. You can win an argument today, but tomorrow the psycho-emotions
will be back in place and it will be as if the rational argument never
happened. Our psycho-emotional reflexes are too buried in the past to be easily
re-examined.
No agenda advocacy intended here – quite the contrary. I’m
not referring to anything specific in the narratives of one designated group
over another. But what if we could all seriously, totally honestly, ruthlessly
and relentlessly re-examine our bedrock premises right down to the roots? I
mean everything. Would the sources of
our moral imperatives still obey social endorsements rather than inner honesty?
Would we worship our chosen gods out of fear and guilt? Would our intimate relationships
be skin deep and soul shallow? Would we love (or hate) people as groups? Would our
commitments dwindle into pretenses and façades? Would we even be able to recognize
false propaganda that was so fundamentally ground into us with fear and guilt
long ago?
I think that aging brings at least some re-examination upon
us. Most of us. Kind of depends on how much insecurity lurks on your
ground-floor. If the warm, fuzzy acceptance of an identity group owns you, then
maybe the ideas that underpin their identity aren’t that important. But if
you’ve seen it all before, and if the media’s array of tricks and games seem
juvenile to you, you are ripe for some kind of transformation. Recognizing that
society’s polestars continually drift has given you an opportunity.
Re-examining your values and even your morality without the jackhammer of media
agendas and narratives pounding you with guilt and negativity can help you
fathom ulterior motives and discover true principles.
Sorry for the simplicity of this and the galloping
generalities. (I’m trying to get to the lightning, where in a sudden flash of
independence we realize how imprisoned we are by fears and guilts, biases and
habits, political correctness, arrogance, intolerance, façades and hypocrisies.)
The emotional branding is so deep that it is difficult to get beneath it, to
question the motives of values – of controls really. But a good way is to run
your values by Mom Nature. If they hold up with what you find in nature, they
are probably universal truths. If they don’t, they are probably without moral
authority – just choices or strategies we use to control each other and get
what we want.
Ooh. I think I just said it. So next time it rains, get wet.
Step out into nature. Risk a little lightning. Look beyond the narrow rooms of
life as defined by the media of the moment. Nature isn’t “breaking news,” and
it doesn’t manipulate you. It’s there in your mind (if you can gain some
separation from groupthink) and in your heart (if you can exercise compassion without
giving up your brains) and in your soul (if your heart and mind can come
together with honesty and freedom). The other choice (default really) is to
wear your galoshes, carry an umbrella, and renew your subscription to fear and
guilt.
Repeat after me:
You CAN teach an old dog new tricks.
A leopard may not change its spots – but I’m not a leopard.
