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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
...it is all the SAME. We are ALL ONE.
The problems of the children in Palestine and Iraq are the same as the adults we believe freely chose to be sent over there to murder and maime them.
In a universe where all is one, all time is NOW. That means that plucking out a single cause and effect relationship in an unbroken chain of related events proves NOTHING and justifies NOTHING. These are the things we distract ourselves with as a kind of comfort in the midst of our own battles with personal hypocracy.
The things I see "out there" are actually "in here," and it is my denial of that reality that drives me to believe that "out there" is being caused by someone who is not me. Words can not do justice to these concepts, so do not parse the words too closely. Just lean into the ideas gently while believing in real global unity and actual, tangible connections between all things.
Like a stenographic print, the message pops out of the background if you quiet your mind and quit defending the indefensible.
Draw a circle around your feet and then commit to fixing everything inside that circle. Once you accomplish that, then we can talk about where the choke points are in this cascade of grief and tribulation seemingly caused by events beyond our personal control.
Have compassion for the world and the people in it for life is difficult, and then we appear to die as payment for ALL our efforts. If you think you see crazy people doing crazy things all around you, can you imagine my great shock?
I served in Vietnam from May 6, 1970, to May 6, 1971. I was not out in the boonies getting shot at on a daily basis but it was still a remarkable year. I flew home out of DaNang to Norton AFB and then took a regular cab from the AFB to Ontario Airport to catch my flight home to Cedar Rapids, IA.
On that flight, there were the first "people from home" that I had seen in 365 days. My feelings included a strong desire to wander the aisle telling everyone about my remarkable year. I resisted that impulse lest I be labeled as the "psycho in 12C."
But, in looking around at my fellow passengers I soon realized something. While I had just spent a remarkable year, everyone else had just spend an ordinary year. They gave no thought to anyone and anything about a war that was 10,000 miles away both in distance and in mind.
I heard stories of GIs saying they were "spat upon" when they returned. I suspect that those stories are hyperbole. The spitting never really occured but the recitation of the story represented a very real expression of how the storytellers felt.
I don't blame anyone for the reception. It was a natural result of when there is a "guns and butter" economy. While some few go to fight, there is no sacrifice required by anyone else. As a result, few beyond those doing the fighting have concern for those few who fought.
I suspect that the people doing our fighting in Iraq will seem fine as long as they are in the military society over there on on the military flight home. But the moment they get on the commercial flight, each will start to realize the futility of what they have been doing. And, that is the precise moment when PTSS starts to affect their lives. And it continues to affect each of them for all of the rest of their lives.
No president should have a "guns and butter" policy. It just isn't right that if there is a war only some of us bear the burden. If we go to war, then, in some way, we ALL should go to war.
Since it has been estimated that only 6 million people in this country actually know someone who has served (is serving) in Iraq, I am among the 294 million majority. Why not a follow up article on how communities made up of people like myself can do something (other than support a move to get us out of Iraq) to support our servicepeople.
Bill England
Researchers are now examining a slate of physical "biomarkers" -- such as long-term physiological changes in the brain and alterations in brain structure -- that suggest a biological basis for PTSD.
Scientists already know EXACTLY which gene to knock out to give rodents a full blown case of PTSD from birth.
But we can't mention its name because we're too close to 2008.
If one breeds rodents with that particular gene knocked out, those rodents will develop chronic PTSD from a small electric shock that any normal rodent would treat as an annoyance and shake off right away.
It's the gene for a particular brain chemical receptor, for the brain chemical that controls the ability to keep traumatic memories from dominating all other information in the brain.
In other words, it's the chemical that controls your ability to forget.
Forgetting is an important as remembering -- perhaps even more so, since only a tiny fraction of the things one sees and hears and feels every day is actually useful for reproduction and survival. If people remembered EVERYTHING, they wouldn't be able to think or even learn.
Researchers in physics education have discovered that forgetting is as important as remembering during the process of learning freshman physics. To learn physics right, you have to be able to forget all the wrong things you learned before you signed up for the class.
That's the part that really throws most freshman physics students, actually.
They learn the right thing but fail to forget the wrong thing. So on exams they write down a combination of the right things they remembered, and the wrong things they failed to forget.
This gene also regulates the deep delta phase of sleep, the generation of new brain cells, and your body's natural defense system against nausea, pain, osteoporosis, intestinal inflammation and at least nine different kinds of soft tissue cancers.
But I won't say what that gene is, in keeping with the standard of strict censorship that this article obeys.
Salon is gearing up for 2008 and I foresee that a certain genetic subpopulation (one that is genetically doomed to be highly prone to PTSD) is going to be targeted once again as public enemy number one.
The Democratic campaign to demonize this genetic subpopulation will be held up as proof to Republicans that liberals aren't so amoral after all.
But what was the name of that gene?
Look it up yourselves. You're on your own now.
It's no longer my job to point out when the Eastern Front has been edited out of WWII to keep children's textbooks safe from Communism.
(If you don't understand that last remark, then examine the last few letters I wrote.)
I've held that job since I was eleven years old and I'm retiring as of today. It's too big of a job, the work never ends, the pay is zero, and I feel too much rage over that kind of manipulation to want to get up close to it and fight it any longer.
If censorship is what you want -- then have it!
But you'll never be able to cure PTSD without talking about that damned gene.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
