Politics – Regain Body Wisdom

Anger, the deadliest sin

By Silvia Casabianca

You may remember. In 2007, we were shocked with the news:

A Southcorean, “Seung-Hui Cho, 23, an English major, killed 32 people and committed suicide at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.”

As we were reminded by this deadly event, anger has the power to ruin families and lead humans to committing unthinkable acts.

In the aftermath of killings like this one, full-size WHYs hammer our mind. Seung-Hui Cho killed his mates without a word of warning. He had enough cold blood to leave the campus after killing two, email his videos and come back to continue with the killings on campus. Do we need to ask why?

It’s easy to excuse ourselves from any responsibility here by saying that this man was sick, that his classmates “innocently” tormented him because of his bizarre behavior and that they could not have anticipated the impact of the bullying on him or that the real origin of his mental health symptoms was in the poisonous effects of chemicals from his family’s dry cleaning business.

In a public statement, his sister said that his family, “never could have envisioned that he was capable of so much violence.”

Why not?

How is it possible that not one single person perceived the magnitude of the anger Cho had bottled in, anger which ended in such a fatal episode? Maybe we have learned to view anger as an inevitable part of life, a human “nature” feature, an emotion that does not necessarily need to be overcome, and that many even accept and justify presenting us with the image of a biblical wrathful Jehovah, or of a loving Jesus who was still capable of enough ire to whip merchants out the Temple.

However, we know better. And from this painful lesson and the many more mass killings that have happened since, we may learn that it would do a lot more good to our society if people understood God and Jesus as synonyms of joy and love and compassion.

Why was Cho so lonely that nobody helped him overcome his anger, calm his fears, resolve his hatred? After the killings, it is difficult to say that it was “none of our business.” We won’t be the same after mass murders happen. It is our business.

In addition to the profound compassion that I feel for the families and friends of those sacrificed in mass killings, at the level of my soul I feel also a deep compassion for people like Cho, a person who seemingly lived a tortured life, and I pledge to advocate not only for a zero-tolerance-to-violence society but for a zero-tolerance-to-indifference world.

These events might not be part of our conversations after a few weeks, but they will not easily be forgotten. We might choose to forgive the murderers and question the responsibility of those who couldn’t prevent the tragedy. However, I am aware that nothing positive would come from hating a murderer or just pointing fingers.

Of course, the above are not the only questions that came to mind.

If, from a spiritual standpoint, we are all one, what is our responsibility in this situation, as a society? “We fell down with everyone in that classroom,” a blogger said referring to the victims of the VA killings, and I share the feeling. Let the questioning that seek explanation to delayed warnings and delayed response to the threats be.

I comfort myself after such sad days thinking that after a terrible act of violence like this strikes our hearts, it, extraordinarily enough, also opens the gates to appreciating life in its fullest (imagine what those who were spared feel now!), to reflecting on contributing to building a compassionate society, of learning and teaching socioemotional skills at home and in schools.

Let’s take a moment each day to express our love to our fellow humans who are mourning dear ones after these tragedies occur, including the family of the gunmen. And then, take another moment to feel our responsibility to promote a world where we truly support each other.

Is narcissism fueling racism?

Is our racism fueled by narcissism? This is a time where we need to educate ourselves, strive to understand, use empathy to grasp what living in someone else’s skin means.

I’m throwing the question there, like bait, wishing someone will help me answer it. The question would not have much transcendence if it were not because many of the ills of humanity in the present are due to this plague, characterized by the incapacity to feel the pain of others.

BLM Vigil — Credits: https://blacklivesmatter.com/now-we-transform/

If narcissists lack something, it is empathy. They cannot connect with the feelings of others; they cannot grasp other people’s inner world. In the United States, it is essential to become “the” Number One, defeat a rival, earn more, be more productive, be famous, and the consequence is that more than anywhere else, but not exclusively, narcissism is becoming widespread. Narcissism and individualism are close cousins. The fact that the Times magazine called the Millenials the “Me me me” generation is not an accident. Neoliberalism feeds this trend. A neoliberal logic calls for a growing personal responsibility and discounts the solidary responsibilities of the state or the significance of social justice issues

It is reflected in the way we educate children, the way parents raise them, the undeserved praise we provide them? Is it a matter of intellectual rigidity where we cannot see beyond our limited experience and what we believe (or were told) is true?

As I see protesters all around the United States (and the world) marching in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, as I see workers protesting and demanding fair wages, I also see the faces of hundreds of people who have no clue about what these protests are about. People who cannot understand what being a black person or living on less than a minimum wage means.

Racism is such that the actual color of the skin, the social status, the level of education doesn’t really matter if you’re not one of them. I have been called a “coloured” person because I come from a South American country (even if my skin color is rather milky white) and the medical degree I earned there, a white male Republican illustrated to me, is not as good and respectable as if I had earned it in this country!

I had to educate myself to understand that I can’t–and probably will never be able to–fully grasp what the experience of a “coloured person” is in this country.

I can say, though, that it requires empathy to step out of our comfortable places and get into someone else’s shoes. Narcissism is thinking we are better, we know better, and others should just be just like us.

I have often heard that if someone does not have a better life, they have not tried hard enough. Those who adhere to this theory are probably oblivious to the history of white supremacy, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, supremacy, and privilege. Will learning about the suffering black people endured while working to build the wealth of others allow us to be more empathetic? If not, what would?

Conscious evolution from fear to solidarity

How do we responde to stress or fear? We have choices but we need to learn how to regulate emotions and become more compassionate.

Dr. Silvia Casabianca argues that humans are hardwired for empathy, love and compassion. These gifts reside in our genes, our physiology, our chemistry, and they can be nurtured and developed. They can be harnessed and used to solve many of the problems we struggle with-from the interpersonal to the geopolitical. Millennia of human experience have led us to this moment when we are perhaps finally ready to embrace, and enact our true, loving nature. The coronavirus pandemic provides us with an opportunity to rethink the way we live, to appreciate what we have instead of craving for what we don’t have. This might be an opportunity to become more aware of how crucial relationships are and that we’re so interconnected that what I do, can affect everybody else. Go to www.SilviaCasabianca.com or buy her book in Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/ydy6eljm

We’re wired for love but humans have created stratified societies that enhance competition over cooperation and having over just being. The coronavirus pandemic provides us with an opportunity to rethink the way we live, to appreciate what we have instead of craving for what we don’t have. This might be an opportunity to become more aware of how crucial relationships are and that we’re so interconnected that what I do, can affect everybody else.
We often fail to embrace our common humanity or commit to our common destiny with full responsibility. It often takes a crisis, an epidemic, a recession, an earthquake, a hurricane, to activate what Shelly Taylor called our tend-and-befriend response. But if we learn new parenting and education modalities that take into account our human potential for empathy, compassion and solidarity, we will become equipped to solve the most pressing problems humanity and our planet face.

Our foremost asset is that we’re born hardwired for empathy, compassion, and love even if the current state of affairs in the world often seems to contradict this assertion.

Many of our problems come from the way we learn to respond to fear or perceived threats in the environment without consciously assessing them first. In other words, we have not learned to regulate emotions, we respond automatically. This is mostly because our educational and parenting models are centered on modifying children’s behavior instead of promoting autonomy, self-compassion, and empathy.

EVOLVING in times of the Coronavirus pandemic

Coronavirus pandemic tests the capacity of the world leaders to manage a crisis.

“We have to change our everyday lives — not gradually, but right now,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said. Germany has shown an exemplary management of the Coronavirus pandemic.

I honestly feel unqualified to talk about compassion during this Coronavirus pandemic. My perspective about the illness, the role leaders play in a world emergency, has changed since we first learned about the Coronavirus.

I have been upset, worried, uncomfortable, a loud critic during the month or so since we started to realize that we were not safe from the spread of this virus. Many things have crossed my mind. For example, I have thoughts of nature taking revenge on us for the little care with which we treat it. It’s decimating the population of the most destructive creature that has ever inhabited Earth, I thought.

Then I found myself inclined to believe some of the conspiracy theories. We’ve gotten so mistrustful of “leaders” driven by greed, that it was difficult not to start looking around to see who is benefiting from the epidemic so that we can place blame on someone, or something.

I was troubled by some people’s carelessness also. But I was myself being careless. I thought I was healthy, had no symptoms, and could wander around with little risk. Then I read about the healthcare practitioners begging us to help them “flatten the curve.” I realized our carelessness could contribute to unconsciously made the epidemic worst.

And, of course, I blamed the ineptitude of the president of this proud country. It hit me that there are so many people who do not believe in science, who render the US weak in front of the epidemic and who would say anything, no matter how inaccurate or false, to blame an opponent, to capitalize the moment politically.

However, the most striking realization was to remember that I used to believe in the mighty power of the US. This country is no longer the vanguard, it does not make alliances with other countries, and pride has consumed the nation and its leaders into odious selfishness that, in the case or coronavirus, can prove deadly. The US administration no longer works side to side with world organizations like the World Health Organization to coordinate efforts to alleviate the burden of this health event. Nationalism in the times of globalization proves its weakness and its wickedness. People and countries cannot be global to profit, and then not global when compassion and solidarity are needed.

Disconnected from the other

The main point about civility is…the ability to interact with strangers without holding their strangeness against them and without pressing them to surrender it or to renounce some or all the traits that have made them strangers in the first place.

—Zygmunt Bauman

The media constantly inform us about acts of terrorism, wars, people displaced by violence, refugees, famines, natural calamities, human and drug trafficking, mass lay-offs, corporations that sink overnight or merge to form larger and frighteningly powerful entities. All of these are symptoms and consequences of our disconnection as humanity.

In January 2018, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, Teresa May, created a new position, a Ministry of Loneliness. More than nine million people in the UK suffer, either occasionally or permanently, from loneliness, according to a report published by the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness. And loneliness seems, more than anything, the product of our inability to connect with others.

We’re not only isolating ourselves, we’re regrouping.

Armed with recent demographics, journalist Bill Bishop published The Big Sort:Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart. (First Mariner Books, 2009). When he looked at the electoral results of the last thirty years, he observed that Americans have grouped by class, skin color, and beliefs in increasingly homogeneous communities. This has happened not only at the region or state level, but by city and even neighborhood. His data has been confirmed by other reporters, such as Corey Lang and Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz of the UK,[1] who also predict that this tendency toward segregation will be generalized along party lines. People are choosing neighborhoods (and churches and news programs) that are compatible with their lifestyles and beliefs. This type of grouping prevents the new generations from being exposed to different opinions and views of the world. The phenomenon is happening throughout the nation. For example, in rural West Texas, a fifty-acre community development (Paulsville) was created in 2008 to provide homes exclusively for followers of then libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul.

Bill Bishop suggests that the outcome of this trend has been a notoriously dangerous polarization of the population, a decline in tolerance, and an increase in extremism.

Facebook designs algorithms that select what’s displayed in my wall and shown to my friends and family. Other algorithms will get me to see more posts from people who think like me and fewer from those who have different opinions, or more personal comments and pictures, than any political news I’d like to share. My followers and the people who like or click on my posts back my opinions, but my posts rarely reach those who think differently. The balkanization of social media or splinternet––meant to block, filter, or redirect certain topics––causes us to live in separate microcosms, with narrower visions. It denies us the opportunity of enriching ourselves with differing ways of seeing the world. It has become a political instrument to perpetuate power in the hands of a few.

In a sociopolitical climate of constant change, corruption in the highest spheres, mutual distrust, and unrelenting competition, we feel easily judged, criticized, and excluded. This also constitutes an obstacle when trying to connect with others. I distrust others because I suspect they want what I have (my money, my partner, my position at work, my influence). Since others have abused me in the past, betrayed me, abandoned me, rejected me, I can’t expect otherwise. In the midst of this mistrust, I keep my guard up. I don’t show my vulnerability. I choose not to connect with those different from me but to group with like-minded people. The paradox is that vulnerability actually connects us, humanizes us. We need to change the paradigm that the intellect is what makes us strong. True strength doesn’t come from our physical bodies and brains, which inevitably deteriorate, but from experiences and feelings that eventually make us capable of empathy and prompt our indignation about social injustice or ignorance and ambition. We all have a soft side, and that’s just fine. We are yin; we are yang.

[1] The LSE US Centre’s daily blog on American Politics and Policy (online).