EVERYONE is NON-BINARY

Professional intelligentsia are people whose work largely begins in words and ends in words. There is a major logical trap that anyone of the professional intelligentsia can fall into, as a tendency to get locked into a logical cycling related to unfounded premises, rather than explore external views, diverse sciences, or research via the question, “Is this true?”

There are two religious cases of how that can distort or stagnate the fundamental principles.

The first relates to the strange case of the Orthodox Jew who, on a sabbath, ran a few hundred metres to the house of a non-orthodox Jew to ask that man to come and put out a fire, but could not participate in putting out said fire themself. This non-orthodox Jew had the practice of leaving the front door open on the sabbath so an orthodox Jewish man could walk straight in because he couldn’t knock on the door. It was a simple practice of the non-orthodox Jew to contribute to these neighbours yet it could not be reciprocated on a sabbath. And that it is not held by an Orthodox Jew that the religious law, if designed for purification, is not equally relevant for non-orthodox jew, is also discordant although perhaps a function of believing that the non-orthodox Jew is impure already and can’t be made more impure. Of course Jesus tried to debunk this in his story of the Good Samaritan, but did not prevail with the Jewish teachers.

The second case relates to the fundamental Islamic schools of Iran and previously Persia. In such schools, the sciences are avoided, superstition prevails and the Koran, revealed in the pre-scientific era and which initially fostered the sciences well before the Europeans, now becomes bogged down in an anti-technological, extremely socially controlling structure. Eventually that bubble will burst as the desire of the people to extend their capabilities will add a pressure beyond the control of the Islamic Republican fascism.

Why is this related to the concept of a non-binary human being and the multiple genders theory of some of the western intelligentsia?

Firstly to show that possible serious even fascist-like or just stagnating impact of politically accepting the outcomes of intellectual work that begins and ends in words. Secondly to begin to unpack the absurdness of much of the argument for a multiple gender theory. Thirdly, to show that such multiple distinctions has only one real outcome, the distraction of people from realising their true selves and role in the world as given to service in the path of social unification and the advancement of civilisation as a whole. While the last requires a much more lengthy discussion, for purposes here, the importance of ‘given to service’ of humanity is the critical attribute through which active community engagement and conversation across diversity of thought, experience, and culture, without proselytising (demanding others align for fear of retribution), is essential.

I am using the term ‘non-binary’ as a focus of the discussion of absurdness of the multiple gender theory. Clarifying definitions, binary means requiring two different, opposing but synchronous elements that when operating together can create a novel outcome. Non-binary thereby means not having (all that). As individuals, human beings operate by internal binary systems that establish complex negative feedback loops that create everything from stabilising the sugar content in the blood to formulating theoretical mathematics. However, as individuals, human beings, themselves, are all non-binary. I am non-binary. There is just one of me, whole, complete and indivisible.

As non-binary, in gender terms I am male and masculine. When I get together with a procreation partner, we are binary and can and have created novel outcomes.

Now there are some pop psychologist types who have said to me, “but what about your feminine aspect?”. When I ask them what they mean, they have told me that things like nurturing, kindness, creativity, intuition, are feminine. And force, protection, labour and legal and technical thinking is masculine. This is just another absurdity avoiding that the reality is something more simple.

Taking the premise that there are human virtues or characteristics that make humans, human, such as loving kindness, courage, nurturing, protection, high-mindedness, patience, creativity, intuition, problem-solving, and empathy, then the simple reality is that both male and female genders, and masculine and feminine affects have all of the characteristics. Once we acknowledge that all of the human characteristics are present as both masculine and feminine affects then when we look we can see that the only difference is the manner and degree of expression of those characteristics. Most obviously, a female will mostly bond strongly with the growing foetus and neonatal child because of the upwelling of hormones such as oxytocin. Men often report a more significant bonding at the moment they first held their child. However, when we look at the issue of protection we see that the female is highly protective both through direct force, indirect force and negotiation just as males are with the variation relating to a stronger empathy on the part of females which causes a more defensive posture, and a stronger capability of males bringing personal force into negotiations which causes a proactive attacking posture but is a capability steadily loosing value.

The problem that many people have in relation to masculinity is in contextualising the male as controlling, aggressive, even murderous. It is difficult to come to terms with the naturality of masculinity through this contextual lense and so some have imagined that more feminine nature is required to dilute the masculine to make a peaceful world. While that is an applaudable goal, it is unnecessary and even further obscures the potential of the unmitigated masculine and feminine affects in the advancement of civilisation.

The problem with men, if there is one, is the cultural mode that has developed over the past 10,000 years of the male as soldier, fighter, and war fodder for alpha males, kings, emperors. Recontextualising ‘who men are’, we can view cultural history since homo-sapiens stepped out, as a slowly distorted system, boosted (as per the story of Cane and Able) with the development of agriculture and excess wealth over the last 10,000 years, and through the amplification of primate tribalism based on the command of the Alpha male. However there is historical evidence to suspect that this form of socio-political orientation was destructive both intra and inter tribally, preventing the stability of social groups necessary to develop technologies, and intellectual and spiritual pursuits, all necessary for an advanced civilisation.

It is religion that mitigated that amplification of the impact of the Alpha male and allowed stability for the development of civilisation and improving technologies. Nonetheless such masculinity continues to assert itself and we now know that these males have a particular brain structure that heightens control and manipulation and diminishes empathetic responses that we now call psychopathy. On the female side there is also a hierarchy with controlling matriarchs but these operate in a less forceful manner than the Alpha males. In general, subordinate males and females, the vast majority of the human population, are empathetic beings desiring belonging in family, community and a general social cohesion. These are they who are attracted to the notions of religion and spirituality, create new technologies and sciences, and master artisanships, and are the real heart and body and impetus of the advancement of civilisation.

The issue of masculinity and femininity lies only with the affect of the genderisation of male and female and not with any human characteristic as specific as either mascuiline and feminine.

Genderisation is the foetal developmental process of forming a male or female. This process relies on a sequence of biochemical developments with each phase of embryological development. And such biochemistry is formulated by the genetic combination that foetus has been given by the mother and father in.e the binary procreators. This cascade of biochemistry influences both the physical characteristics of the embryo, the phenotype, and the minute and generic structure of the brain. Both the brain and physical characteristics of each embryo is idiosyncratic to that individual. Evolutionary processes have, in the most minor animals, founded a contiguous neural to body sense, what can be called the embodiment of the individual. This embodiment that includes odours, sense of smell, visual range and colours, and physical format etc, has the value of even the most simple animals being able to distinguish between their own kind and others. For example some snakes are snake eaters. However snake eaters usually don’t eat their own kind of snake. Males of the salt water crocodiles that are 240 million years on the planet, will eat their own young that are protected by the female, suggesting that such primordial distinctions weren’t as consistent in the earlier phases of evolution. And perhaps indeed, these brain structures that offer protection and nurture for the juvenile, are primordial structures for empathy.

What we can see from evolution of animals is that there are only two successful ways to procreate: the most widespread is binary sex, and the other way is asexual and in animals like snails this means that they have both binary, male and female, reproductive organs and can engage in binary sex and asexual reproduction.

The embryological development of the brain and body is a synchronicity that creates, for the individual, an obvious sense, an embodiment, of gender. In language it is simple to term the individual with a penis, male; and the individual with a vagina, female. Such nomenclature is simple as it is accurate to the embodied state of the vast portion of the population. In a small number of cases, the brain development is out of affective synchrony with the reproductive organs such that the person grows feeling ‘wrong bodied’ rather than embodied. Indeed these cases prove the issue of the relevant brain structural development. When a male with dysmorphia say they are female, they are noting that there are two genders, the one defined by their body parts and the one defined by their brain structure but which there is a failure of the brain to embody the physical nature of the person. Brain structure wins over physicality in all cases as the brain, expecting to find for example, a female physicality and external sex characteristics will be forever discombobulated when finding these physical traits missing and even other traits not expected, insitu. Indeed, the only resolution for dysmorphia is to surgically correct the physicality as, while the female sense of the brain structure could, theoretically, be ablated, a male sense cannot be in any way transposed into a brain. The brain, itself, only has a structural qualia model for either male or female and never, so far as can be ascertained, both.

The case of homosexuality is quite different. Homosexuality is when the embodied brain appreciates its maleness or femaleness yet the erotic orientation of the brain has developed for the non binary rather than the binary procreator. This tells us only that the brain has structures and processes for distinct aspects of gender and erotic desire. So in the vast majority of people the structures and processes are contiguous and synchronous, creating an embodied effect that begins with admiration for the specific gendered self and later attraction from the binary procreator as an erotic orientation.

Within the human population, the expression of gender and sexual orientation is essentially idiosyncratic to each person. In otherwords, I am a specific male unlike all other males and my sexual proclivity is specific to me and none other. Even an effete male will be unlike all other males and females and not at all like any females. Likewise transgender women are unlike all embodied females and often evince an uncanniness of masculine affect. Similarly, eunuchs are unlike all mature males and females, yet are proclaimed males. In practice the expression of gender is either male or female. In sexual orientation the expression for humans is limited by erogenous organs (physical attribute), and erotic desire (brain attribute). Erotic desire is impacted by libido with a consistent variation between genetical males and females. Erotic desire is also impacted by the desire for novelty, also an idiosyncratic aspect of brain structure. Libido can also be quite low in otherwise physically robust, sexually intake people, creating a non-sexual affect.

Sexual expression is also mediated by social moral education and this is a necessary education in the cohesion of society, albeit in the past often imparted with little finesse. Nonetheless this cultural modeling about sexual expression should not be confused with anything to do with modeling gender. The inverse is actually true, that embodied gender is one of the most significant drivers of cultural formation. In the main, how culture deals with asynchronous behaviours to the vast consistency of men and women, such as homosexuality, transgender and any number of erotic variations, is a distinguishing feature between cultures as determined by the story of successful social life that each culutre formulates. In any case, gender itself remains consistently male or female, each individual non-binary and each procreator couple, binary. Homoerotic sexual partners are also technically binary just as a binary computer code might have two zeros or two ones adjacent. But as such, this sexual connection is non-procreative.

Some intelligentsia assert that gender is a cultural expression. Although there is vague hypothesis for this, there is no scientific evidence for this. Gender is, perhaps, the primary embodied aspect of a human life as founded in embryological development. There are only two genders. While gender predicts sexual desire, and drives reproduction and the survival of the species, it is by no means an absolute control, and this can also be seen in other animals. These variations are part of the nature of evolution itself and do not need to be particularly successful, and, so long as they are not particularly unsuccessful, the variations will continue to be expressed from generation to generation. Culture is mainly an expression of the embodied genderisation of human beings and how we come to deal with our binary procreating nature.

Justice Accountability and Forgiveness

It is the season of Christian Lent and the Baha’i Fast. The wonderfulness of the teachings of Jesus Christ has lead to one signal cultural message down through the ages: no one is taboo by culture, love and care for everyone you come across, and who abides by that forms a brotherhood and sisterhood, a community, a church.

Baha’u’llah, founder of the Baha’i Faith, pulled justice, the expression of true brotherhood through the larger socio-political lense, into the centre of a religious framing that includes the acknolwedgement that we are a global civilisation that requires integrative tools beyond that of the individual or the community.

Two qualities lie at the interface of the moral individual and the moral society: accountability and forgiveness.

Accountability is the voluntary open and honest exploration of one’s personal life. Given that the culture of accountability by which a society can go about its business in a secure and confident manner requires formal processes social process of accountability, all issues regarding the conquest and subjugation of another people, the takeover of lands, and the expression of this the enlightenment colonial powers performed on many generations after the first conquest, layers embodied trauma (psychic and physical) on those generation until the epigenetic qualities are ingrained in the lives of people living in a more supportive social environment.

Accountability and justice cannot be performed without recognising the true nature of the impact to the conquered people. Indeed I would argue that it is so difficult to outlive this trauma over generations, it is the one thing that has taken generation after generation to war for the past several thousand years. Only the very hard work of accountability can give the conqueror ease even as their descendants carry the trauma of their murders down through many generation afterwards, also living tortuously in our epigentics. Only a full and willing accountability provides a pathway out of our social traumatised behaviours.

When a full and willing accountability has been formally established, what some call a truth-telling, then two redemptive actions can be motivated: a recompense for the losses caused by conquerors (true justice); and, because the recompense can never be fully made for genocidal policies or slavery, the victims across time might resort to radical forgiveness for the shortfall. I would encourage the victims to forgive or at least play with forgiveness even if for the rest of life, for in that lies a path out of the malaise of victimhood to a true empowerment. However we need to be honest with ourselves that forgetfulness is forgiveness (not the other way around) and forgetfulness is only induced by being offered a full accounting of wrongs done against us and a full recompense where it is needed both individually and socially. Such social acts of social integration allows the perseverating mind to rest and turn to other more developmental, transformative and productive living.

SHAME AS DISSONANCE

My first memory of shame is of a day trip with my aunt-godmother to a tourist island near where we lived in North Queensland, Australia, around 1963, when I was 4 years old. She was unmarried, a career woman, and the type of aunt who doted on her many nieces and nephews. I had not come prepared with swimming togs (bathers) for this adventure, although she brought a towel. So we decided to do a walking tour and some reef walking at the low tide. She was comfortable company, and, as we walked around the small island we came to a deserted beach. I noted to her that I’d like to swim but I didn’t bring any togs (bathers). She simply said, “Don’t worry, no one’s around. You can just go ‘in your birthday suit”. No-one said naked when I was a child. And so I did undress and took to the water.

However, on coming out from my swim I saw that there was another woman, a stranger, sitting on the beach talking to my aunt. Of course in this small seaside community, there were bound to be people who she knew on a day tour themselves. At that moment I felt a sense of exposure and vulnerability. Nonetheless I chose to walk up the beach, past the two women, to the towel, so I could dry off. My memory is vague as to the comment about my nakedness that the stranger made as I approached. In that moment a welling up of shame left me speechless and it took every effort to keep on walking to the towel which I quickly gathered around me, making no attempt to dry off or dress until the stranger had moved on.

I have often had it that this was a bad experience in life. The memory brings with it an echo of the shame from that day. And I have had it that it was a developmental crisis that forged me into a shame-ridden person that I became and limited the assertion of my needs as an adult.

Feeling that I engaged in life with too much shame, I was nonetheless buoyed by the notion put before me by the founder of the Baha’i Faith, Baha’u’llah, that, “Indeed, there existeth in man a faculty which deterreth him from, and guardeth him against, whatever is unworthy and unseemly, and which is known as his sense of shame. This, however, is confined to but a few; all have not possessed and do not possess it.”

Indeed, I notice in my engagement with others, that it was my activities that showed up from a place of shamelessness whether an angry outpouring or a lurid flippantry, that caused hurt to others. I also see that it was only after a period of reflection and growth, sometimes a year or years later, I would find the memory of those actions, now filled me with shame.
The one thing that, however, puzzled me considerably, over the years, was that if anyone spoke to me with assurance about even the most menial thing, as a criticism, I would become fraught with shame and even, unable to immediately take-on the direction from that criticism. It was even impossible for me to talk about what was happening.

Now, as an older, more assured person, I am able to be with my sense of shame in a more even manner. It has, indeed, been salutary to accept that shame is one of our most important sensibilities, and that, actually it was the shamelessness of my own and others actions and speech that is the truly wrong thing. This acknowledgement has enabled me to, eventually, look back at moments of shame, and gain a fuller experience of the moment.

It occurs to me that my four year old person had already learned something of the social proprieties of clothing and nakedness. As a small child it was okay to be naked in front of family members but not in public. I have come to see that shame about nakedness was already there. However I also noticed that shame stands on the emotional cues already provided by family, about what is the right way to act in society and the wrong way to act. These emotional cues become the basis of what are called our values. However it still leaves a question, how is shame activated, and for what benefit?

When we realise that there is no access to shame by looking at it intellectually, we can explore the realms of our emotional make up and the emotional ties to sociability. Our values are really a function of divining a successfully comfortable relationship with our family, then bit by bit the extended society. I personally experience this as emotionally calm yet energetic with those in the relationship.

Whenever our actions disturb that calm energetic feeling we, as seems obvious, feel uncomfortable. One of the discomforts we will tend to feel, is shame. Shame is, in fact, alerting us to that we have stepped away, often by accident or by the unleashing or not unleashing other emotions, that some social gatekeeper has determined to be the right way to act, our values. The discomfort of stepping into actions, even speech or thought, that is outside the prescribed values of our social life, is called dissonance.

By the time we are 3 years old, we are already fully engaged emotionally with the social moors, at least of our family. Shame already exists in a state of low ebb, networking closely in a negative feedback loop with all other emotions especially anxiety. The degree that shame might be amplified will be the degree that social gatekeepers have called other emotional discourse to any event considered shameless. The more distressed or angry the social gatekeeper, the more likely it will raise a sense of shame among the lesser in the social ranks. In a paradoxical turn, the most amplification of shame is likely to be activated by a denigrating response from another. Denigrating responses to others is often socially acceptable by social gatekeepers of themselves but not when returned by lesser ranks. It takes a certain type of social education to have denigrating responses as truly shameful.

I want to make a distinction, here, between shame with the sense of guilt. My experience of guilt is that it is a different affective experience than shame. It is apparent that my sense of shame, while anchored in a learnt experience, acts to mediate my future actions. So even imagining certain acts can bring on a sense of shame. Shame is also activated by any number of actions that my emotional system declares as inadequate to my values. For example, who I am for myself is someone who is a competent person. So whenever someone shows me I have been incompetent at (washing the dishes, assessing a client in my professional life, networking, business success, an intimate relationship et etc) I will feel a sense of shame.

When I look at my affect of guilt, on the other hand, I see a contribution of fear to the shame that as a whole I the experience of having done a social wrong that could attract a social punishment. Social punishments include stygmatisation, exile, imprisonment, physical assault, financial loss, or execution.

I want to leave this commentary by noting that the key to reading all this is without adding or subtracting interpretations of right or wrong about shame. Shame like all emotional affects, just is. The real value of this commentary is to have you looking calmly at your shame and at all other emotional responses you have around shame. Like all emotions they do not point to the truth of anything except their own existence in a situation. And like all emotions, shame can be used as a tool and a guide for growth and development. We often want to clamp down on the discomfort of shame. Don’t do that. Your power as a human being lies in sitting with your shame, until you find a way to either reconcile with your values or formally turn them down, to everyone around you.

There is more required to unfold that topic and that will be for another time.

Why be generous towards rule breakers

where governments have been clear what those rules are and why, around the COVID 19 pandemic?

The short answer to this question is that open, free society requires it.

The long answer is a whole lot trickier for most people to get, especially those of us who tend to be obedient.

The problem lies in our primal nature in regards to authority.

Most people are obedient to authority and always have been across a million years.

Simultaneously, people have always exploit loopholes and bent the rules. And creative and imaginative people are better at it than others.

To understand these characteristics we must understand the evolutionary success of human clans and the advancement of human civilisation over the past 10,000 years.
The evolutionary success of human clans are based on primate hierarchical and social support behaviour. This behaviour hinges on an alpha male, a female harem, and progeny. The human alpha male is to a large extent what we now call psychopathic. Their (our) success, as against other primates that haven’t socially changed for millions of years, developed around the opening up of clan society to sycophant males who were allowed female relationships as reward for that submissive support. Their female harem also had a hierarchy. Kinship and successorship to the alpha (chief, king) developed according to the male children of the female hierarchy, although subordinated by the most psychopathic natures in the system.

The political tensions within clans were terrible, with death waiting around every corner, harnessing two types of proclivity: intelligent rebellion for domination; and shame provoked submissiveness. Intelligent rebellion for domination not only lead to successorship of the chief or king but also to the development of hierarchies of sycophancy. In other words, a way to dominate is not to hold the throne but to hold the highest positions in the hierarchy serving the throne. Shame-provoked submissiveness created a safety ‘red-flag’ in all social circumstances from the earliest ages. Children with shame would survive by immediate submissive responses in the face of any authority: parental, older sibling. This is very important in a social environment in which death by an irritated chief was immanent and uncurbed, even for a child.

If we see that the degree of intelligent rebellion and shame wove (and weaves) a composite individual nature, then we can see how political hierarchies eventually developed, as powerful sycophants worked to increase the territories and subjection for their chief. We can also see, as a parallel process, the development of religious hierarchies both as alternative ways to dominate the society and the chief himself. I caution, here, to let go of any impression this is giving that these are simple transactional behaviours. From the earliest human times, dealing with the issues of death and our awareness of our relationship with others and other species, and our killing them for food and resources, has been an existential challenge that required a intelligently deft vision, a meta-story to comfort our burgeoning moral consciousness in the face of requirement for survival. Spiritual and religious visionaries command a space that submits to the right of kingship, while offering comfort to all subjects of their ‘rightness’ in subordinate life and death.

Spiritual and religious visionaries also set up their own hierarchies. Within those hierarchies, additional allowance was made for the freedom for a certain type of intelligence to become immersed in the metaphysical landscape through practices of the mind, language and reflection. As societies advanced, artisans (product makers) became artists. Some artists and religious visionaries shared the proclivities to divine the metaphysical and theological.

A particular form of intelligent rebellion was able to be fostered in larger societies. This took place in the form of a youthfulness that no longer needed deep shame to survive, and an artfulness, a creativity, to formulate new social constructs and ways to promote them. The promotion of new social constructs that mostly challenged the authority of the king, while developing a following in times of general social tribulation, tended to be visited by programs by the political and religious leadership. It is worthwhile pondering the ebb and flow of these tides, as, finally, every civilisation that enters a certain internal tribulation, falters, collapses, and then finds that once youthful vision rise in the populace with a more loos, open (not entirely new) social construct.

Fast-forward to the modern society. Dr Barth Hoogstraten who was a medical student in the Dutch resistance in WWII wrote in the foreword to his 2008 book, “Resistance Fighters: The Immense Struggle of Holland”, that throughout history, students and artists have been in the forefront of struggles against tyranny. In Nazi-occupied Holland, 1,671 Dutch men and women paid the ultimate price for their heroism. Hardship, terrifying suspense, and sacrifice that characterized their life were interspersed with the moments of humor, simple beauty, and love that persevered even in the darkest of days.

In their research on the behaviour of french resistance fighters of WWII, Andre and Alex L. Juliard noted that they found a new insight into the nature of human motivation and into our own psychological makeup may sometimes result from the observation of individuals living in unusual conditions such as people who joined the French “resistance” during World War Il. They had been participants with other young and middle-aged persons who belonged to a “maquis”’ in Southeast France. Their observations induced them to discern in human beings a larger variety of innate aptitudes, or inclinations, than those currently recognized in normal daily existence. Some of these overlooked inclinations, nevertheless, play an important part in the behavior of dedicated people.

And what of the masses of people who committed the atrocious acts of WWII, Stalin’s rule over the USSR, Pol Pot’s revolution in Cambodia, etc? “We may be genuinely puzzled as to how people could obey commands that seem both bloodthirsty and stupid. Puzzlement can vanish when we realize that in the eyes of their perpetrators the hideous crimes of history are not hideous crimes at all, but acts of loyalty, patriotism and duty. From the vantage point of the present we can see them as hideous crimes, but ordinarily from that same vantage point we cannot see the crimes of our own governments as hideous or even as crimes.” (Don Mixon, Obedience and Civilization)

Rebellious domination and religious vision has slowly and surely brought us to a place in the development of human society, when we no longer need a chief or a king. Yet we stand at a cross-road, and ebb in the tide of a kingless society. To a large extent, in times of difficulty, our behavioural responses are not so different from 10,000 or 100,000 years ago. Mostly we are looking for who to be submissive toward, who to be supportive of, who will give us security in return, even if with a sense of dread around each corner. And in turbulent times, alpha males will tend to come to the fore to provide that direction through their political hierarchies. Yet there are those, mostly young, mostly creative, mostly intelligent, who will take all kinds of risks in rebellion against the domination of authority and their sycophants. Theirs is not to have a far-reaching knowledge of all things worldly. That is for other, older heads. Theirs is to be the ‘resistance’ to the tendency for most of us to find a haven under an authoritarian rule.

“Man has continued to evolve by acts of disobedience. Not only was his spiritual development possible only because there were men who dared to say no to the powers that be in the name of their conscience or their faith, but also his intellectual development was dependent on the capacity for being disobedient, disobedient to authorities who tried to muzzle new thoughts and to the authority of long-established opinions which declared a change to be nonsense.” (Erich Fromm, On Disobedience and Other Essays)

A society is neither for the young or the old, the rich or the poor, the dominant or the non-dominant. It is for all of us, and, therefore, all of these. At this point in time, the advancement of civilisation requires that there are a number of primary agreements in place that support the strengthening of the collaborative and cooperative sovereignty. Under this form of sovereignty, the mass of us who are given to obedience, will avail ourselves of the servitude to the collaborative and the cooperative project. The psychopaths will become the true rebels, tending to strive to be dominant over everyone else in their sphere of influence, yet being held in check by their own drive towards self-interest that is held in the collaborative space. The youth, artists, activists, visionaries, disenfranchised, and children will enjoy the rewards of being in collaboration. The agreements include: we all hold equitable ownership of the land of our citizenship; we all hold equity in participation and servitude to the community; policing is in community servitude – violence physical force or coercion is forbidden except where an immanent threat to another is evident, and then only to mitigate that threat. While policing is sycophant to an authoritarian domination, while police officers are trained to hurt the common politic and those who rebel against that domination, so the rebellion will continue and broaden. It is not to say, the turbulent times are not the time for rebellion. The turbulent times are exactly the point when gains in equity and participation in the democratic advancement are being handed over by the submissive to the authoritarians. Turbulent times are exactly the the times of sacrifice for the next phase of freedom, peace, and the advancement of human society.

We, who would have this society, must stand for the agreement forbidding police force on peaceful citizens, regardless of the rules they have broken. We will then prevent police for using force on citizens of whom there may be a suspicion of but, in reality, haven’t broken rules. Police forces will be primarily negotiators of community upset, on rare occasions to prevent immanent violence against another, effecting physical intervention. On all but this very rare event, having accessible and cordial relation with community wherever they go.
We, who would have this society, must be generous in our attitude about youthful, creative, rebellion against authority. We must avoid our tendency to effect shame and submission, the bringing into line under authority just so we can have a sense of security as being a little higher on the hierarchy. We must recognise that in our own need for the advancement of civilisation lies a need for those who are devoted to working around authority and even sacrificing themselves against the true nature of authoritarianism.

When policing stops working for community.

SHAME

Nothing to Be Ashamed About

Over the last 50 years there has been, especially from our brothers and sisters of the USA, an increased tendency to find shame, well, a shameful thing. And in finding it a shameful thing, have rejected it as a virtue. A recent ‘meme’ I read on facebook had shame characterised as a barrier to spiritual  transformation. This rejection needs revisiting, as much because there is a misunderstanding about what shame is, and also, because, in this misunderstanding, it is not recognised that much of the world’s travails are directly related to a lack of shame.

Let me start this exploration with the words of Baha’u’llah from the 19^th Century. “Verily I say: The fear of God hath ever been a sure defence and a safe stronghold for all the peoples of the world. It is the chief cause of the protection of mankind, and the supreme instrument for its preservation. Indeed, there existeth in man a faculty which deterreth him from, and guardeth him against, whatever is unworthy and unseemly, and which is known as his sense of shame. This, however, is confined to but a few; all have not possessed, and do not possess, it. It is incumbent upon the kings and the spiritual leaders of the world to lay fast hold on religion, inasmuch as through it the fear of God is instilled in all else but Him.” (Baha’u’llah, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 27)

Two ideas stand out from Baha’u’llah’s disposition here. The first is pointing to a definition of shame, which I take as meaning that there is an ability to: recognise what is unworthy and unseemly; and the result of this is that SHAME prevents a person from acting in that manner. In other words, without performing any unseemly act we can recognise the possibility of it within us, and SHAME is a tendency to avoid those acts. The second point is that Baha’u’llah recognises that FEW have a sense of SHAME. So, rather than being something that the mass of humanity is beset by in some way, shame is a more like the name for a natural supreme talent in recognising unseemliness and being that it is something one does not take into one’s present or future relationship. Rather than being a less transformed person, a person with shame has the Olympic athlete potential for transformation.

Therefore, to the rest of us, Baha’u’llah encourages to some competency through the fear of God and obeying God’s Law.

Returning to the power of shame, then, what would be that something a shameful person would recognise with themselves that they avoid taking into their future. I suggest that this something correlates to another of Baha’u’llah’s teachings that, “To act like the beasts of the field is unworthy of man. Those virtues that befit his dignity are forbearance, mercy, compassion and loving-kindness towards all the peoples and kindreds of the earth.” (Baha’u’llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, p. 214)

Perhaps the shameful person recognises, with a certain acuity of insight, that within themselves is a ‘beast’. Surely that ‘beast’ is none other than the beast neurological scientists have described by labelling the fundamental human brain processes as ‘reptilian’ and ‘monkey / paleo-mammalian’.   And surely that beast is the one we all recognise as that rageful, lustful, covetous being who, after we have acted in its name, dissolves in the shadows, leaving only our tears in anguish for the hurt and separation we have caused. Yet to bring clarity to the definition of shame, SHAME is when the rage, lust, and covetousness is being recognised but not being acted upon.

On the other hand, the shameless are all lust and rage and covetousness. So why do some who believe they are on a path of transformation reject the value of shame? Here we must see where the ‘beast’ become a clever ‘EGO’ and as a clever ego, manipulates the discomforts of real transformation against us.

Many contemporary transformative ideas have come to the misunderstanding on shame through the work of Helen Shucman and William Thetford who developed ‘A Course in Miracles’ (ACIM) based on the dreams of Helen Shucman. In an attempt to show that reality is not as we think or see it is but rather a perfect realm from which the ego hides for the sake of its own persistence. Schucman, like mystics of the past including Sufis, recognise the fundamental barrier to ‘seeing’ reality is our tendency to pick a fight with ourselves. The solution to this is to recognise that we are already created ‘sons of God’ and that there is nothing to fight. By their commentary, Schucman and Thetford seem to define ego as the ‘making distinctions in order to make separations and fight ourselves’. Well so far, so good. However in this, Shucman and Thetford seem also to be influenced by the psychiatric notions of the early twentieth century and conveying the idea that shame is at the heart of neurosis, and therefore is a fight-related element that can be disappeared by shining a light on it.

However, there is another way to look at shame, which I have pointed to above, and also explain why shame is likely to be seen at the heart of neurosis. The ordinary shameless mortal, looking at a child with the tendency to shame will see a shy creature, keeping its own opinion, perhaps demure, and over time, certainly long-suffering. Trapped at every turn by the shamelessness around it, the shameful creature has no options except to turn unto its own loops of logic, becoming trapped by its own ego into a resentment for and fight against the shameless. Indeed, in the paradox that Shucman points in ACIM is present here. The shameful person also recognises the shamelessness of themselves and so, under the conditions of entrapment, shame and shameless fight into an embittered resentment.

Rather than victimise the shameful one, Baha’u’llah sees that this one is the potential olympic champion of the whole world of human extraordinariness, and points to us that the great power of the shameful one lies in their natural attraction to nobility. Baha’u’llah also rejects the proposition that people, by recognising that they are sons of God, for indeed we all are, is enough to restrain most of us from shameful actions. Rather the presence of the shameful person is the exemption that makes the rule, the clear distinction that most of us will reach extraordinariness through submission to the laws of God.

The challenge for the shameful child is that most of us have missed the point of the shameful child. In other situations, ordinary parents, seeing that their child can do calculus or run like the wind at age 8, do as much as possible to encourage them, and look around for a great teacher and trainer to assist the burgeoning potential. However, in missing the point that shame is an indication of a great spiritual potentiality, we fail to encourage the child’s exploration of that shame, nor look around at for a great trainer for their burgeoning spiritual potentiality.

This is becoming a thing of the past under the development of the children and youth training programs of the Baha’i Faith. However let me make some comments on things that might inform the development of children’s training from shame. The first is that any valuable spiritual training provides the child access to the source of its own nobility. For the child of shame this is like the sun shining on to both the beastly recesses and the mirror mosaic of virtues. Here the child of shame sees the beauty and nobility that they have only vaguely deduced. Access to the source of nobility comes from two integral disciplines: prayer and meditation; and the spiritual teachings of Baha’u’llah and other manifestations of God and even lesser teachers. From these sources, the child of shame, already able to recognise the ‘beast’ now learns how to tame it, placate it, exploit it effectively for the great game ahead. Like any trainer of ‘beast’ the child learns to speak softly, calmly, laughingly to the beast within. The child doesn’t reject the beast, for this is a fine beast, a wonderful beast. And in accepting the beast, the child of shame finds an extraordinary powerful friend, protector, and supporter. A beast that can be ridden into the arena of endeavour.

Shame’s great resolution is to be able to look upon the beast with confidence and capability, to find accountability in being noble. Not to fight the beast any more than one would hit or chastise a young working horse or dog for being unruly, but to look for the source of that unruliness and find that training method that directs the energies into great feats and great exhilarations. The child of shame, growing into an extraordinary adult, will always be acutely attuned to the restless power of the beast, know its awful potential, and be ashamed.