Sunday, January 11, 2004

I was just thinking today of how much we fail our children in our attempts to protect them. When I talk to people about trying to introduce reason and choice to children, the same parents who say that children can't reason and need to be punished fail to see the irony in expecting them to associate pain with a disconnected action. I think we end up breeding a society of people dependent on absolutist authority to set limits, when punishment is associated with an unmet object of desire rather than a natural consequence of meeting that desire. Even the classic extreme that everyone brings up, that I heard every time I presented non-violent parenting at RAVEN, the child running into the street. While I think you need to give parents some leeway for their own feelings of fear, imagine that scenario where a parent, instead of screaming at the child or grabbing the child and beating him or her, takes the child safely out of harm's way and then explains how scary that was and how dangerous cars are. Maybe a follow up is an object lesson in basic physics, maybe even showing an example of a car hitting a watermelon. More work than scaring the hell out of the child, but it becomes a growth lesson in recognizing boundaries rather than another imaginary prison. I think I'm either going to have really balanced children, or they're all going to die before the age of four, from electrocution, burns, falls, car wrecks, poisoningings. I guess part of the problem is that we live in a society that is not particularly safe anymore for bags of water, human flesh. I've also been thinking a lot lately about the fact that we can't really have a sense of how humanity will evolve until humanity evolves. I have a picture in my mind of a just and humane universe, and I believe we will achieve that just and humane universe at some point in our existence. Until then, I need to try to be less caught up in the day to day frustrations of our world, and look to that joyful place. I had an imaginary conversation in my head with anti-choice "fundamentalist" Christians, without getting too far into the irony of their religion itself being based on highly selective and fanatical readings of a highly selective and fanatical document, taken completely out of the socio-political context, largely by poorly educated graduates of bible colleges, and I keep hearing Steve L.'s comment when we were talking about my discomfort with the Nicene creed, that the way he resolves that for himself is to simply remember that people were trying to figure things out back then, and that that's a snapshot of the process of questioning. That puts my own struggle with my faith and spirituality into a new light - that the entire existence of humanity is not a definition, but a question, and that organized religion is one way of exploring those mysteries in community. But to suggest that any one faith or non-faith has the answer, is folly, and an abomination in the eyes of the very God exlusive and limiting religions worship. On the pro-choice issue, from my perspective, that we have too many people period, beyond the issues of patriarchy that I see having huge detrimental consequences for humanity long term, I can't imagine a God who was willing to sacrifice his own son for the salvation of the world would not be pro-choice. I wonder if that argument has been made before, and what the response is. 5:01:07 PM

Ever since watching Whale Rider, which for me, was partially a message of hope for a return to community for all of us, a repudiation of the societies of privilige and deprivation we've built. The ending, the war canoe, gave me a couple of ideas. One, that Bob Dylan's Babylon has not yet necessarily won - there may be a return still to ideas of the tribe, the community. Two, that war canoes were sustainable violence. Things would never get so bad that you would completely decimate another community. Hard to say how some of those warring tribal communities actually lived in conflict, since we, with our capacity for organized, brutal violence replaced those models so swiftly. It finally dawned on me, the alternative I've personally been seeking for some of the cooperative living situations I've seen. I want a community of people interested in creating a modern tribe. I don't know that I want to share assets communally - I'd rather create some economies of scale, which may include investment and business opportunities as well, to allow all of us to enjoy better qualities of life. That may not even need to be shared housing, as much as clustering space is helpful as well. I was telling Amy and Megan how, on some micro scale, Jans and I were building that - having the flexibility of raising a child in a modern world with both parents working, but with flexible enough lives and schedules to be able to mold their living around their daughter. Having Fiona around the office today and yesterday, and times that I'm hanging out overthere demonstrate the amazing exponential expansion of the ability for everyone to care for a child and take care of their lives with just one additional person.  Imagine that same scenario on a larger scale, a modern tribe in a modern urban setting - what a great way to inculcate those values into a larger society - little monads of people living prosperous lives in a diverse community, demonstrating in their very lives what humans are potential of when we work for the greater common good. I think that's one of the most valuable survivals of what the old church, the old parish would have served as for a community - a coming together to accomplish community caring and the ultimate transcendence of self. Only now, it's more limited, building buildings, starting schools - more project oriented than central to living. We still remember, somehow, what it was like to come together in greatness, only now it's different, something we do on Sundays. I know other people have thought these same thoughts, and done these same things. I know some of them now. But I think I know how to create a modern tribe, at least the first inklings, creating a small in beautiful model even - although I'm not sure yet myself that I want to abandon what I see as a fairly comfortable life. Part of the notion fuses Johnny C's idea of buying one of the city schools and turning it into a charter school, supported by rental income from other parts of the building that are turned into loft apartments. You could build an entire community around that concept. 2:44:38 AM