Women & Crazy: Some Heretical Thoughts

Image of me courtesy XRay Delta Flickr CC

Want to know what's really crazy?

Arguing with people on the interwebs, that's what.

I've engaged in this insane practice more than I care to admit, even though I know how pointless it is. I know I'm not alone.

Still, it's not all negative.

You learn stuff on the interwebs, weird stuff you need to know. It's kind of like taking the pulse of the masses, such as we are, and we are not always making a heckuva lotta sense.

Here are some popular interweb memes that seem to me to be totally batshit:

1. If you eat well, exercise, and feel all your feelings fully and completely, you will never get sick or have any emotional problems.  Rot and nonsense. This is something scared, selfish people tell themselves to avoid caring about others and/or to magically protect themselves. How about this: Trouble comes to all of us in time, so don't judge. Remember Jim Fixx? Yup. The unwelcome truth is, "Eat right, exercise daily, die anyway."
2. Vaccines are a government/big pharma plot to control your mind/kill you/turn your children into naked blind molerats. Listen up dipshits: Vaccinate your fucking kids. Whooping cough and measles are coming back because of your stupidity. I was alive when these diseases and others, including polio, were still common. If you think vaccines are now more dangerous than infectious illnesses that target kids, you need to learn how to read. 
3. Women who are violently raped need to forgive their rapists in order to heal. This works even better if it happens within days of the rape in a very public forum like the Dr. Phil show. If you choose to swallow this poisonous crap, be aware that ten years from now you may still wake in the middle of the night screaming. It happens. A lot. So stop beating up on women for it and start prosecuting rapists. How's that for a formula for healing?
4. Medication is poison. If you take medication for depression or bipolar disease you need to suck it up and heal yourself. Uh, um, sure. Or... maybe some people ought to shut the fuck up and stop giving medical advice without a degree in medicine. 
5. Feminists are frigid bitches. Why do you say that as if it's a bad thing? Maybe I'm not a frigid bitch, maybe you are just kind of crude, smelly, and unattractive. I'm not saying that's how it is, I'm just offering up some other options for consideration.

As you can probably see if you've gotten this far into this cranky post, it's been a slow news day. Nothing much going on except for ebola showing up in the US, America blowing stuff up in the Middle East (for a change), killer flu strains in over 30 states paralyzing children, and an armed robbery at my favorite nature preserve. 

So all I could write about was how dumb the internet is. It isn't my fault. Nothing else to discuss.

Did you know that it's a series of tubes?

Forgiveness Gone Wrong

Damaged inner child wolf

Anyone with a Facebook account knows that the way to heal any kind of family problem, social problem, or mental or emotional disorder is to practice forgiveness.

I've seen at least a dozen meaningful, moving forgiveness platitudes posted on the FB this week alone.

But what does forgiveness really mean?

Before I get into that, let me tell you a story about what it doesn't mean.

Back in the 90s, when I was an adjunct college teacher (roughly the equivalent of a McDonald's employee except you don't have to say "Would you like fries with that?") I was invited to attend a one-day retreat offered by the Women's Studies Department.

A Native American medicinal healer was going to be there. So was a famous Eastern European self-proclaimed feminist witch.

Since my academic mentor had strongly suggested I attend, I did.

It was a pleasant experience for the most part. We made some stuff out of clay. We did some meditative exercises.

Then, as we sat down together to eat a noon meal, the conversation wandered over to forgiveness, the super megavitamin of all non-traditional healing. Everyone seemed to feel pretty damned forgiving and lamented the fact that more people weren't as evolved as them.

At this point I was ready to leave but to do so at that moment would have been impolite so I kept chewing and not talking, hoping this would all end mercifully soon.

Someone brought up Hitler. Would you forgive Hitler?

Now here was a meaty New Age hypothetical if ever there was one (which there never was, just in case you were wondering).

After a bit of reflection it turned out everyone at the table would have forgiven Hitler. One person knew Hitler had had a crappy childhood. Another had read about his conflicted feelings about his Jewish ancestry. Still another suggested that if you can't forgive Hitler you can't forgive anyone.

At this point, against my academic self-interest (such as it was) I cried bullshit.

No one at that table had been in a death camp. No one was Jewish. It was no one's business there to forgive Hitler, because Hitler had not wronged any of them, except to maybe offend their ethereal sensibilities.

Everyone now turned their attention to helping me raise myself to a higher level of consciousness so I could forgive Hitler and heal the world, at which point I said, "Get off of me."

Weirdly, the Eastern European self-proclaimed feminist witch came to my defense, shutting everyone else up immediately.

"No, she's right," she said. "Hitler is in a different category. It's not a good topic."

By the way she was glaring at me, I knew she had no softness toward me as a person (later confirmed through a friend and also my mentor). I mean, I know a Madame Blavatsky bullshitter wannabe when I see one, having that kind of ancestry myself on my mother's side, and having seen one.

I didn't really care that she didn't like me.

So the fact that she stuck up for me in this crowd was a bit of a surprise.

Here's the thing: Human beings are capable of great atrocity. We all can access a darkness that is so deep it feels supernatural, whether or not it really is. The best you can do in such instances is turn away, laugh, focus on loving yourself and others.

Forgiveness?

It was a 'given', beforehand, that Hitler, having aligned himself with this Darkness would cause suffering and death beyond imagining. If we, imagining ourselves safe from harm and looking back at this transcendent evil feel moved to embrace the damaged child inside of a dangerous man who no longer exists in the flesh, does that help anyone?

Does it heal what happened?

No. It just feeds our own egos, which, by the way, are already way too good at giving us bad advice.

Sometimes, when faced with such Darkness, if you can summon the strength to turn away and heal yourself, and go on to live and love, that is enough. That, in fact, is amazing and heroic.

May you never have to experience this truth firsthand.

Many have, however.

You probably know more than few, and yet you don't know, because they remain silent.

I try to remember this, although I'm not always successful. Sometimes you open your mouth and your brain falls out.

Now that, as a person who has lost my mind many times, is something I can forgive.