All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.—George Orwell
Just to be very clear, we’re not talking this morning about Primal Scream the movie, nor Primal Scream the Scottish band. I will reference the album of the same name by the late trumpeter and bandleader Maynard Ferguson, but central to my premise this cold, wet, weary Friday morning is the psychotherapy method developed by Dr. Arthur Janov. Dr. Janov’s theory is that, from the very moment we are born, we begin repressing traumatic events in our lives, sealing them away from memory. Who remembers the actual birth experience, for example? None of us, of course. Neither do we experience the trauma of thinking that our parents have left us when actually they’ve only gone into the other room. Janov’s practice is to help us deal with those traumas, which he is sure is responsible for all our depression and anxiety, by bringing back those painful memories and then quite literally screaming at them.
I’m guessing Dr. Janov has trouble keeping neighbors.
While I’m not going to vouch for the efficacy of Dr. Janov’s methods, I do think it is valuable for us to occasionally list the things that are upsetting us, write them down perhaps, and then give them, collectively, a giant middle finger. With social media having become so prevalent in most our lives, we are now inundated with more information than ever, and a lot of that information is something less than positive. Our response tends to fall in the direction of two extremes: we either bitch and gripe about everything, constantly, trolling comments and insulting people we don’t know; or attempting to ignore everything in the hopes it will all go away. Neither of those approaches are exactly healthy.
So, what we’re going to do this morning is list the five things from this week that have pissed me off the most and then turn on the title track from Maynard Ferguson’s 1976 album and scream at them, letting the music provide a counter-weight to our bellowing. One big primal scream. Once we are done, we set those issues aside and try to not mess with them again. Feel free to join me. Create your own list. Let’s move into the weekend emotionally free of the frustrations that beset us. Ready? Here we go:
- Gun reform. I fail to understand why anyone with a sound mind objects to background checks for deadly weapons and I certainly don’t see where anyone gets off claiming that such precautions somehow interfere with their right to keep and bear arms. Remember, the Constitution only gives that right in order to maintain “a well-regulated militia,” and part of being well-regulated almost certainly means taking steps to ensure that the wrong people aren’t getting their hands on guns. What’s even more infuriating is the degree to which the GOP has completely acquiesced to the National Rifle Association on the topic, despite the fact that the United States continues to have more handgun related deaths, by far, than any other industrialized nation in the world. The argument is ridiculous to the point of insanity and really makes me want to scream.
- Protests in Burns, Oregon. A week ago, a group of gun-toting cry babies led by the seriously delirious Ammon Bundy took over a federal wildlife refuge to protest something that didn’t deserve to be protested in the first place. This has to be one of the worst-planned sieges ever. While the group claims they are planning to occupy the little building just outside Burns for several years, they failed to bring enough food. By Monday, they were asking for people to send them snacks. That they’ve not been set upon by angry birders or scalped by native Paiute, who actually have a legitimate claim to their ancestral land, is actually disappointing. Were these idiots not a bunch of white guys, they would have been on the receiving end of a massive military operation already. The government has cut off power and water to the facility and is waiting them out. Meanwhile, the world laughs.
- The global economy. Uhm, hello? Haven’t we been here before? The fact that stock trading in China had to be halted twice this week and is, once again today, taking another roller coaster ride sets off similar sell-offs in both the European and US markets that should have everyone worried. In fact, if you’re not at least a little bit scared you’re crazy. Super-investor George Soros says the situation resembles the 2008 crisis, and this time around we don’t have a Congress that’s willing to do anything about the situation. This could end up very, very bad for the entire world, and it could happen before Spring gets here.
- Worsening immigration situation. There hasn’t been a worse time to be an immigrant since World War II. The influx of refugees across Europe continues to grow and as more arrive in the United States, where they should be welcome and where we have plenty of resources to help, our response continues to be about as wrong as possible. Compounding matters, there is yet another article in this morning’s New York Times regarding the plight of families fleeing escalating violence in Central America. I wonder if an uprising of native tribes would be sufficient to remind Americans that this entire country is founded upon immigration, taking in those who were not wanted nor welcome elsewhere. We need to get over our selfishness and put an end to this problem.
- Earthquakes in Oklahoma. 70. That is how many earthquakes have hit the state of Oklahoma in the past week. Fortunately, none of them have been terribly large. The largest this week registered 4.8 on the Richter scale, which typically is enough to rattle windows and upset cattle in the area, but seldom causes any substantial damage. The problem is that these earthquakes appear to be the result of fracking across the state and Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin, who is in line to be one of the worst governors in the country and certainly Oklahoma’s worst since David Hall in the 1970s, refuses to do anything to reign in the controversial activity pending further study. The unanswerable question is at what point these quakes stop being a nuisance and turn into something critical. We’ve seen the strength of the quakes grow from the 2.6 to 3.8 range to frequently over 4.0 in the past year. This week’s 4.8 quake comes frightening close to the point at which significant property damage begins to occur. Gov. Fallin needs to halt all fracking activity in the state immediately, but she’s far too stubborn and closed-minded to bother.
There’s my list. How’s yours? Once we get these out of our system, the deal is that we don’t keep revisiting them over and over. We let them go in one long, loud, guttural primal scream that comes up from out gut and frightens all animals into hiding. To prevent alarming the neighbors, I strongly suggest clicking the link below and turning up the volume on your computer or mobile device as loud as possible before you begin your primal scream. That way, people will just think you’re trying to sing along to a song that has no words and leave you alone the rest of the day.
Now, go and enjoy your weekend.
Sympathy For The Masses
To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.—Ivan Turgenev
Life is not always as comfortable as it appears
I’m wondering this morning how many people consider themselves sympathetic. I’m not talking about how we feel when someone dies, though certainly we could use more sympathy there, but more along the lines of what the Oxford dictionary refers to as, “understanding between people; common feeling.” Sympathy for our fellow humans, for the people right around us, and especially for those we perceive to be different from ourselves, appears to be in a drought.
For example, being a Saturday, one’s expectations might be that people have the day off, their weekend free, two days of leisure available to them. Yet, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, at least 35% of us work on the weekend. Most of those working weekends are in retail, food service, or sales, which is of little surprise. Of those working weekends, though, more than half of those have more than one job, and that particular statistic has grown substantially over the past ten years. I wonder, as we snarl at how slow a waitress seems to be moving or complain about the number of registers open at the market, if we might do well to show a bit of sympathy for those who are overworked, lacking sleep, struggling to make ends meet, but are still expected to smile and meet the petty demands of customers.
I also think about those around us who deal with persistent pain that we never see. When I was a boy, I fear there were too many times when I thought less of my mother because her arthritis forced her to ask for help. While that attitude reversed itself by the time I was an adult, it is only as I find myself frequently in that same predicament that I truly understand how deflating it feels to have to so often ask for assistance. I know many others who deal daily with chronic pain brought on by a plethora of issues; they smile, they rarely complain, they would rather you not know how they’re really feeling. Yet, when they can steal a moment to themselves, they break down and cry in the silence. Do they not deserve sympathy?
As a general population, I fear we have become so incredibly selfish and self-centered that we’ve lost our sympathy for our fellow man. We deride those who struggle. We make fun of those less fortunate. We even delight in placing obstacles in the path of those trying to better themselves. We would rather strip people of their dignity than put an arm around their shoulder and help them out of the ditch into which they’ve fallen. Instead, we chide them for having dared to fall into that ditch in the first place.
Our lack of sympathy became painfully evident in the past week with a local news story that went viral. A woman complained to a local bar that her New Year’s Eve was ruined by what she mistakenly assumed was a dead drug addict being carried from the bar. Her words were scathing and mean as she not only derided the bar, but her over-worked server. When the bar’s manager came back with a scathing reply, explaining that the “dead addict” had in fact been a 72-year-old woman having a heart attack, the entire Internet cheered that the rude woman had received her comeuppance.
There is a shocking lack of sympathy in that story, first from the woman making the complaint, who was so caught up in how “horrible” her night was that she felt compelled to share her anger on social media. Her words were insensitive and uncaring and the manager’s response was sufficient in correcting that wrong. However, we, as a society, are not happy, apparently, until we’ve taken things too far. As the story became one of international interest, people around the world went out of their way to humiliate the woman making the complaint, even inundating the salon where she rented booth space. Notice that I’m using the past tense in that sentence. Because of the severity of the response, the salon canceled her booth rental. The woman now gets to start 2016 without any income.
“She got what she deserved,” is the common response, but did she? She deserved to be corrected in the same manner as she complained, and that happened rather swiftly. But to think that she, or anyone, deserves to be shamed internationally, to have financial harm inflicted not only on her but on others, who worked at the same salon, demonstrates a global lack of sensitivity, compassion, and sympathy even greater than that which she exhibited herself. Some have said, “I hope she’s learned her lesson,” and I would assume she has, but clearly the rest of the world has not. There is no good reason for the shaming to continue nor for her name to be dragged through the mud of international media.
Throughout my life, I’ve made plenty of mistakes, errors in judgment, outright acts of willful ignorance. Chances are pretty damn high that you’ve done the same. None of us are proud of those moments. We learn our lessons, hopefully, and move on. We all work hard. With the economic devastation of the middle class, the number of people struggling just to put food on the table has increased, despite yesterday’s news that the economy added 292,000 new jobs in December. Simply having a job, or two, is not necessarily sufficient for sustaining a reasonable quality of life.
For 98 percent of us, life is a continual race from one challenge to another. We all have our struggle. We all experience pain we don’t talk about. So doesn’t it just make sense that we should have sympathy for the masses that share our common condition?
A little sympathy and caring goes a long way. Try it.
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