Latin night at a gay nightclub in Orlando, and the place is in full celebratory swing at 2 am when a deranged young man, supposedly inspired by the hate-filled ideology of ISIS, unleashes his own fury on the innocent crowd.
49 people, most of them gay men of Latin decent, needlessly killed at the hands of a homophobic man with a closed heart. My own heart was pierced as I heard the news, and I immediately called my son Jonathan, who lives 2 hours away from Orlando. I was quite certain Jon was in Miami with his husband’s family celebrating Danny’s 40thbirthday. They could have been there though. My sons could have been among the 49.
Jonathan answered, crying. Jon and I were together on the Tuesday, of Sept. 11, and we cried together that day. This was a day like that. We need to cry like the weeping Buddha with our head in our hands.
I want to say something I really believe, so that you get it. My sons were among the 49. Your brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and children were among the 49. The killer has a family too, and they are heartbroken on so many levels. We are all in this together.
This is not natural for human beings. This myth of survival of the fittest must be busted once and for all. Most of us in the US have heard of Darwin’s first opus, The Origin of the Species, which focuses on genetic mutation and selection based on the survival of the fittest. This model seems to be a modern-day bible for the corporate and political world where indeed, survival has to do with the biggest and the best and most. Donald Trump is the “Great White Hope” of those who feel defeated by such systems, and he is using the same tactics himself. The Emperor really has no clothes.
In his second and more mature work—the one we did not hear so much about in school—- The Descent of Man, Darwin shows how the foundational aspects of selectivity and survival are maintained, while a yet higher and more complex form of life evolves. This higher evolutionary cycle is fueled by the “higher agencies” of love and altruism, and the key is nurturance, an instinct which gives rise to and fosters love and altruism.
Nurturance. Yes, caring for yourself and others with tenderness—in other words, what the world needs now is love, sweet love.
Dawrin was influenced by the white supremist philosophy of the time, and in spite of that, his own observations indicated that natural selection promotes sympathy, social feeling, unselfishness, and even self-sacrifice—-qualities most parents understand. It recognizes no differences based on color, race, or any of the other qualities humans express. He even argues that sympathy and social feeling most likely developed among less imposing and therefore “weaker” beings where affiliation was an advantage. This sympathy was actually what I refer to as empathy.
Women are more naturally gifted in this arena, and have been considered the weaker sex. Ah, the patriarchy is very transparent in its attempt to squelch this evolutionary impulse, and all oppressive systems are mutations and an out-dated attempt to maintain false power. Each of us must remain awake and conscious of what and to whom we give our power away.
You cannot hide with your head in the sand. Put it in your hands and weep instead. It will cleanse you. I for one, maintain a fierceness in the face of fear, a watch out that’s my kid kind of feeling about what is happening. That way I can keep my heart open, because I feel the love, and at the same time I can be aware, able to recognized the darkness and hate, and the power it has to destroy physically.
I am all for our brave military doing what they can to dismantle the strongholds that terrorists have in the Middle East, and yet, even with the great progress made lately, the real stronghold was not touched. The power that hate has in the hearts of so many, including children being raised on hate’s ugly reflection—that is the stronghold that only love can dismantle. We must remember that no terrorist can ever take away what is most important about being human—our capacity to love and care.
I am writing a book about the power of love, and the first chapter begins with this poem, by Kim Stafford, an American poet:
Saving The World
In my dream last night it was all so easy:
With this gizmo in my hand light as a feather,
softly gleaming. I could vacuum trouble and sorrow there.
I could siphon anger from a terrorist
(restoring him to father, brother son)
and from fury the gizmo could distill
an elixir to banish cancer from every child.
Governments can’t make peace,
but the gizmo could. Armies can’t bring
back laughter from the lost, but the gizmo did.
The patent for this simple Stradivarius stood
enshrined above the Constitution. It replaced
the car, the prison, money, and war.
Some called it canto, ballade,
Almeh, lieder, poehma. Lullaby.
Everyone had one free.
I will be sharing a newsletter soon, but I wanted to get this out now, and ask you to be fiercely loving in the most nurturing way today. Every day. It could save the world.
Well said Kathleen! Thank you for sharing your powerful post.
Nancy
Thank you for this beautifully written piece. I feel the same as you about promoting love and kindness as a way through these difficult, scary times. Peace.
Thanks for this beautifully written piece. I so agree with the idea of loving and empathy during this time as a way through the scary and horrific recent events.
Well done, Kathleen.
I’ve written a book, to be released soon, about happiness in the workplace that quotes from that first Darwin book, and I’m glad you’ve given a taste of the second one. He wasn’t clueless to his end.
I really like your focus on the power of love. It’s the only thing that will heal our inner and outer worlds.