WITHOUT ONENESS

Effect on Social structure

Acceptance of Hidden abuses

 Effect on Social Structure.  There is an African subculture known as the Ik. The Ik live in the mountains of Uganda. They long have been a marginalized culture. Survival is so severe an issue that children are not raised by their parents but are expelled to live with children their own age. These children must find subsistence on their own and bond into small groups of like-aged children to protect themselves from bands of older children. One asks immediately what the role of empathy and compassion is without the family unit to inculcate these values. Yet this subculture survives – but only in remote regions where contact with other cultures is unlikely. One can imagine there is little hope for the Ik in the long run. It is a survivalist life worthy of a television series and sustains itself on competition comparable to chimpanzees. The Ik are incapable of mediation and certainly cannot achieve oneness.

The Ik people survive without empathy and little compassion. The price they pay for this barren approach to life is the inability to develop an ameliorative society; it is not possible with such meager resources and such barren childhood. The lesson we can learn from the Ik is that our modern society, with its elaborate infrastructure, complex economy and cultural sophistication, is more dependent on oneness than we would like to admit.

The United State is a clear example of change in social structure, moving from middle right but homogeneous society in the forties and fifties to an extremist, non-negotiating society in this century. It is societal rather than incidental because so many cultural issues are involved. Abortion is a religious war that sometimes kills people; Voting rights are a racial battle that sometimes kills people; very limited government is a political war that counts victory as a failed congress and often causes death because of brutalization of defenseless poor. Beyond the cultural issues, the States have just enough power to disrupt processes that reflect the greater good for the greatest number – for example, gerrymandering totally disregards concepts related to one person, one vote.

Oneness is in short supply these days.

Acceptance of Hidden abuses.  Abuse occurs everywhere in many forms from the brutality of murder, rape, and molestation to ignoring the inequities of millions of families losing their homes and savings, to racial and economic prejudice and many more examples. In too many homes child abuse is a given. Whether sexual, starvation, destruction of a healthy personality, or physical beatings, maltreatment is the norm within too many households.

Old style slavery was outlawed by the Emancipation Proclamation but still today the racial burden of being black is not part of a national discussion that will lead to oneness. African Americans suffer unending hope for equality in society. The whites appear to be completely ignorant of black reality or guiltily sweep the issue under the rug.

Corporations and large financial entities feel free to run the US and State governments through the back door with a system that requires elected officials to attend endless fund raisers where their votes are bought by the wealthy. Yet only 39% of eligible voters actually vote. Out of sight, out of mind.

The information industry evades the compassion required to respect an individual’s privacy, security and in recent years, has developed a retail cost model that makes investors salivate.

You understand the situation. We can continue to list hidden abuses but the case is made. This list suggests with certainty that our society has lost its way and is virtually incapable of using compassion to use personal advantage in behalf of the greater good.

The question: Will you commit your time, skills and energy to improve your neighborhood, politics, or improve public service to those who may be disadvantaged?  To what cause will you commit? You are the first brick…..

Ancient Mariner