Catastrophe or Middle Way

 I started watching the series Cobra Kai on Netflix this week. It takes up the story thirty years later of the characters from the Karate Kid movie.  It starts showing us the defeated bully’s life as full of suffering and bitterness. And it shows Daniel the youth who overcame the bully as a seemingly happy successful person. (I look forward to see how this develops).  To some this may have seemed like a satisfying life trajectory of the two protagonists of that movie. It would have been my hope in seeing Cobra Kai that Johnny the bully would have learned compassion after losing. He seemed to acknowledge it at the end of the first movie. But then we would not have had a plot line for the new show Cobra Kai. But it started me thinking how often we get stuck in our way of being and find it hard to transform ourselves. How the impact of trauma and early life experiences so often mold us.

When we are young we just accept as experiences as they are because that is all we know of our world. And often we live our whole life with that same mindset of those childhood experiences. I know growing up in the Bronx and New York City there were potential dangers at every corner. In truth for the early part of my life, I did not care why the dangers were there, I just wanted to be protected from them. Being of short stature and little physical ability I learned that humor, negotiation and allyship helped me survive. Even once I would have to say that providence intervened via the help of total strangers to save me.

As I got older, I kept looking around corners for dangers. Although some of that fear is bias conditioned from a young age, some of it is real. There is real danger in the world.  Some people live their whole life in this protection mindset. If I have enough money I can move far enough way. I can build a wall around my housing development. I can be protected by the police from danger.  This mindset of protection can infect every aspect of peoples lives and they see every interaction as a battle to protect what they have and they use lawyers and a sense of shared loyalty to protect themselves from any challenge. Many people live their whole lives this way. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Somewhere along the line I changed. At some point, I started asking why is there danger? Why is there poverty? Why are drugs illegal which caused so much of the violence in my neighborhood (did we learn nothing from prohibition?) Some of my change was due to my Jewish upbringing which stressed helping the most vulnerable as we often were throughout history. I was raised with a penchant for critically thinking and to question everything. Some of my change was due to my Unitarian Universalist tradition that opened my heart and mind to new ways of thinking. A  large part of my change was the adoption of my children who are Korean and seeing how they were treated differently as they grew older. I protected them where I could, but there are things I could not protect them from. Another large impact on my thinking was my interaction with people who were different from me.  I learned that their experiences with the government were not the same as mine and I learned how systemically people were kept oppressed. But mostly, I would have to say I experienced that love overcomes fear. So I combined all of this and I learned and I changed.

We often shy away from the word evil in this life. But it is clear people do evil things. Time and awareness has changed my world view as to what were the evil things being done in the world. For me it is to cause harm to others for no reason. Those who would accumulate wealth at the expense of their fellow citizens causes harm for no reason. Not providing adequate health care even though we can afford it causes harm for no reason. Not providing adequate housing and education for our citizens (while people are building mansions) causes harm for no reason. Not providing enough food for those in need even though we have more then enough causes harm for no reason. Locking up people in jail for drugs (while we have easy legal access to much stronger pharmaceuticals) causes harm for no reason. Remember evil spelled backwards is live. I know that is trite but it gives me hope that things can be turned around. We can choose to live. We can choose to make things in this world better. One thing that is certain is we will all die. So how we live matters.

And so the question that comes to me now is how to combat People Who Do Evil Things (PHODETS). I was raised being taught that non violent action to appeal to the conscience of Americans was the way to achieve change. We saw it used by Gandhi in India. He had some victories with it, but in truth I believe World War II had more to do with ending Britain’s occupation of India. We saw it used successfully in the South to end Jim Crow laws by Martin Luther King Jr. He and many others died for it anyway. King also had the benefit of having the Black Panthers and Malcom X as an violent alternative that led White Americans to side with MLK Jr. History shows us more often then not, dictatorships crush non violent resistance. There are exceptions of course. Ultimately it comes down to the armed services. Now we are not a dictatorship in America yet. But the PHODETS keep talking as if they would not object to America being a dictatorship. So I can not rule out a violent response completely in the future. It is true fear of violence will put people in protection mode. But fear of violence can also bring people to an alternative. A Middle Way.

A Middle Way is not a compromise but rather a better higher alternative. Imagine the top of a isosceles triangle. In the middle, but higher then either polarity. I believe most people do not want violence. It is not too late to avoid this catastrophe that is approaching. We can and MUST VOTE. We must do whatever we can to make sure this election is legal. We must stand up to every indignation and malfeasance that PHODETS put forward. Every single one. We must use what our unique skills are and use them to promote a better way of being and living to confront Americans with an alternative to the PHODETS.

We must adjust our values in this country. Our values should not be to have the biggest house and car and every contraption known to humankind. Our values as a country should be Justice, Equity and Compassion. We can grow and change. We do not have to suffer catastrophe to transform. We can choose to learn and be open to change and thus transform. At least that is my hope. Look around. Learn. Awake. We can reduce physical suffering by generosity of our spirit and our wealth as a country. We do not have to be bitter and suffer just because someone else is getting a little help. There is more then enough of creation for everyone.  We do not have to live always looking around corners for danger and figuring out ways to protect ourselves. We can choose to change. We can choose love. We can choose the Middle Way. The alternative is catastrophe.