Tag Archives: Mohandas Gandhi

Angelic Troublemakers

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Posted by on in children, collaborating, Community, Inspiration, Personal goals, Personal Values, service, Social, Spiritual, Striving

November 23, 2024- “We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers”-Bayard Rustin

An angelic troublemaker is defined as “someone who uses their life to disrupt the status quo in a positive way”. The above quote was among those cited this evening by a community activist who definitely has challenged the status quo, in positive ways, over a period of twenty years. One of her actions involved playing an accordion in the midst of a rally of an angry demonstration, two or three years ago. It had a calming effect on some of the ragers, and she was not hurt.

Angelic troublemakers were responsible for much of the progress the nation, and the world, have seen over the past eighty years or so. Certainly Mohandas Gandhi would fall into that category. So would most of the rank and file in the American Civil Rights movements. Others, like yours truly, fall into the category of angelic troublemakers with tight halos, stumbling into acts of goodness as often as we intentionally walk into them. Most of the time, though, some good comes out of what we do.

I open my big mouth as often on behalf of people with whom I disagree on many things, as I do on behalf of kindred spirits. We have, in this physical world, a duty to listen to all sides, even the most outwardly ludicrous, in order to glean the whole truth of any matter. So, the “Flat Earther” can spout his gibberish, and maybe one or two kernels of truth will drop to the floor. The person who claims to be from the Pleiades can also spew forth a barrage of nonsense, and we may actually learn something about the greater Universe, in the process.

Where I draw the line is with those whose beliefs, when acted upon, cause harm to children, teens and other vulnerable people. There is no quarter for pedophiles, for vaccine deniers who also adhere to a diet of processed foods, for human traffickers, and for those who believe in price gouging of medicine and care for the chronically ill, the infirm elderly, the disabled and the mentally ill. I have no use for those who tell veterans and families of dead First Responders that they are on their own. I detest warmongers, no matter how “worthy” the pretext for their rampage.

So, on we go, us good troublemakers, angelic and otherwise.

Saintly

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Posted by on in collaborating, Community, impediments, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

November 1, 2024- I am the last person on Earth who should be called “saint”, and that is not a statement of false modesty. I’ve done a fair amount of good, especially in the past twenty years, but have also made some world class faux pas.

Today, in many Roman Catholic countries, people are observing All Saints Day, in honour of the canonized icons of the Church. Other countries honour their moral titans at different points during the year, and this is all a good thing, overall. The thing about the canonized, though, is that they are also mortal beings, subject to human frailty, and therefore fallible.

Everyone deserves to be held to account, but also to be assessed on the balance of what they do. The former helps us grow and the latter keeps us honest. There is, essentially, no one living today who is perfect. The Messengers of God were perfect, and ‘Abdu’l-Baha was a perfect Exemplar of thought and behaviour. A few people, like Mohandas Gandhi and Coretta Scott King, have served as long-suffering, but stalwart, proponents of social justice, who were also willing to take themselves to task and work to resolve personal failings. Others have been promoted by the media as near perfect human beings, only to have independent researchers find out differently, after the individual’s death.

As Americans decide tho will be our next President, it seems a good idea to not place too much stock in the perfection of one’s choice or to place too little, in the ability of the other side to also do some good. I’ve known many conservatives and progressives who are exemplary human beings. I’ve also known less than savory characters, at both ends of the political spectrum.

When Separation Is A Fallacy

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, distraction issues, Education, Historical, impediments, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Personal Values, Service Activities, Social, Spiritual, Striving

February 24, 2023- The writer and artist responsible for “Dilbert”, a comic strip carried by several newspapers in the country, has announced he is no longer interested in contact with Black people. He says that, in his recent experience, Blacks hate him for being White. Not knowing his specific experiences, I can’t speak as to what he should or should not do. Scott Adams goes further, though, encouraging other White people to likewise shun contact with Blacks, even saying that the news commentator Don Lemon, who himself is Black, has reported problematic experiences, when he lived in predominately African-American neighbourhoods. I can’t speak to Mr. Lemon’s experiences either.

For me, though, I have faced no hatred whatsoever, when visiting predominately African-American “hoods”, or mostly Hispanic barrios, for that matter. The opposite has been true. In one of my first walks in the Southeast area of Washington, D.C., I was a bit hesitant, when walking past a family of three, who were watering and weeding their front lawn. The father was pleasant, and told me not to worry; nobody was going to hurt me. A neighbour girl told her wary little brother, a few minutes later, “He’s a good white man”-while knowing nothing specifically about me.

This experience has repeated itself, many times over, in Black neighbourhoods of Boston, New York, Newburgh (NY), Newark, Philadelphia, Erie, Baltimore, Chicago, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. People have either been friendly or indifferent, but not hostile. The same has been true in barrios, both in the U.S. and, years ago, in Sonora and Baja California del Norte. These experiences tell me that separation is not the answer. Open mindedness and understanding of different styles of communication, however, are of the essence.

The same holds true for the idea, recently floated in the halls of Congress, and elsewhere, for a “national divorce”-letting regions or groups of states go their ways-even to the point, advanced by a local resident here, of a total dissolution of the nation-with fifty independent countries as the result-so “each state can follow its own destiny”. To this, I say “rubbish”! Any family, community, county, state (or province, for that matter) can attest to the difficulties resulting from differences of opinion, perspective, world view-what have you. The choices are either work through it all and focus on common ground, or give up and walk away.

We have seen five nations split apart, in my lifetime: Pakistan, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Sudan and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The first four were hybrid states, pieced together by colonial powers (Pakistan and Sudan) or by the participants in the Treaty of Versailles (Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia). The last one fell apart of its own weight. In none of these cases has the separation been complete and total. The nations arising from Yugoslavia have fought one another and still deal with cross-border tensions. Czechia and Slovakia have managed a more amicable separation and find themselves working together, both being part of the European Union. Pakistan and Bangladesh are both part of the union of South Asian states, their main bone of contention having been their being separated geographically, by India. Sudan and South Sudan are slowly learning the need for economic cooperation, despite their divisions, which are primarily tribal and religious in nature. As for the USSR, central planning and a sclerotic economy still hobble several of its former members-especially Russia. The Commonwealth of Independent States, floated by Boris Yeltsin, was a good idea on the surface, but because it mainly sought to maintain Russia’s dominance, it exists today only in name.

I have gone on too long, but the point is, we are a global family-and not talking, or talking trash, with each other, is going to “make the whole world blind”-as Gandhi said, referring to adherence to the Old Testament, back before World War II. There are people who see a better path, such as activists on both ends of the political spectrum, from South Central Los Angeles and rural West Virginia, who have chosen to work together for the common good. One group’s strength is collective effort. The other’s is individual initiative. There are uses for both.

There is, however, no use for throwing up hands and walking out on the very people who need a person’s individual strength and a group’s unified power. There is no strength in division.

Getting Power to the Tower

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, impediments, Personal Values, Social, Striving, Technical stuff

July 27, 2022- The technician’s assessment of the issue facing my modem/router combo was quite simple. The power cord sent in the original package was not suitable for the device. M/R had faked it, for several months, but was unable to make it, in the end. So, I bought a universal power supply, set it to 12 volts, and if the tower was not too worn out by the recent experience, it should be good for quite a while longer. For good measure, a wall plug adapter, specific to this device, should be here on Friday.

Some, but not all, people of my generation-including yours truly, at times, have to be taken through technological matters, by the numbers. Fortunately, I haven’t had to have the same lessons repeated, ad nauseam. Power to my own upstairs still comes fairly easily. Nutrition has been a big factor, as has keeping immunity up to a high level.

This brings me to the matter of the power allotted to the average citizen. I am reading the last chapters of the autobiography of Mohandas Gandhi. It covers his life up to the 1930s, and focuses on the lack of trust that colonialists had in the people of the Indian subcontinent, in managing their own affairs. Some of this, no doubt, came from greed and a cultivated lust for power and control. The rest came from the rulers being stuck in one model of civilization.

We see the same, across this country, and around the globe, in our own time. Those who mistrust people who see things differently from themselves have taken to turning off their ears, and their filters, reverting to the failed and miserable mindsets of bygone days- be they Fascist or Bolshevist.

In this complex world, answers to problems come from various points of view. No one viewpoint can address everything that the world presents to humanity. The tower of power should be open to all, which means only inclusive democracy will work to sustain civilization-in the long run. As long as we are in a human state, no autocrat, no matter how bright, can run a nation alone. We need only look to the failed rulers of the 1930s and ’40s, to see this.

I rest my case.

Regeneration and Reaping

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, impediments, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Striving

March 20, 2021-So many times, I have been knocked down and gotten back up-sometimes right away, other times after a fashion. It is a solace that I am far from unique, in that respect. Mohandas Gandhi was knocked down, by a South African policeman, at least half a dozen times, and simply got up-not to attack the officer, but to move along, independently of what anyone in authority thought. The Civil Rights crusaders of the Twentieth Century moved through targeted assassinations, betrayals and studied indifference, to build the framework that has so changed at least the trajectory of social discourse, to an elevated place where hatred is rightly seen as the fruit of ignorance and psychological instability.

My own struggles pale in comparison to those faced by so many, across the globe. The best of those, especially the indigenous people in so many countries, have withstood centuries of degradation, squalour and deprivation of human dignity-only to spring up anew, and lend their life learning to the betterment of some of the very people who oppressed them. I have learned far more from the First Nations peoples of North America than I ever imparted to their children. African-Americans have imparted a goodly amount of common sense solutions and the importance of maintaining presence, which have gone a long way towards bringing my often convoluted thinking processes in line with what is needed on the ground floor.

South of the Equator, people are getting ready to reap what they have cultivated over the past year- both in terms of agriculture and social action. We, who are north of the Earth’s midsection, are preparing our soil and our societies for another season of productivity. Will we struggle aimlessly, or keep our focus on what will bring relief and power to all concerned?

More Than That

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Posted by on in distraction issues, impediments, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Social, Striving

April 7, 2018, Prescott-

It’s been 6.5 years, but I remember:

He- “Your life has been one disappointment, after another.  Your delivery has been horrible.  You SEEM to expect others to carry you along.”

I (Thinking)- “My life is far from over.  I may not have my nose to the grindstone, but I am NOT letting one person condemn me to the scrap heap.  I may or may not amass the fortune he seems to expect, but I am going to get back to a quality life-on MY terms.”

The uncomfortable morning passed, and I’ve held my own.  There has been no fortune amassed, but there is a decent life.  I paid the above person back, every cent owed at the time.  We have a strong bond, again, and a mutual respect has been rebuilt.

I write this, in response to a young correspondent expressing a high level of self-directed anger, in the midst of a rough patch.  Some of us, indeed, hit more than our share of speed bumps, and some are imposed by other people- or by institutions, including governments.  There is no limit, however, on how many times one can get back up and continue onward.  Remember, Mohandas Gandhi, before he was Mahatma, and when he was a supporter of the South African government, was knocked down, repeatedly, for voicing a difference of opinion with that government.  Each time, he got back up, and eventually earned a meeting with the Prime Minister.

This resilience is true, for each area of our life.  I am known in my family to be nothing, if not as stubborn as an ox- and this has been the deciding factor, in keeping me alive and well.  There is no reason why any person can’t climb out of a hole- despite the depth.

Each of us is more than that.