Crawling Out of the Cave

For this blog post to make sense, you must have read last month's. This could easily be a book, but I'll do my best to keep it succinct.

Escaping the cave I grew up in took time, distance and experience.

First, I had to age out and leave school and home. I needed to experience others' lives, homes and ways and I needed to form my own manner of living. I had to work back and forth between living as I always had and trying new ways. I had to recognize the difference between the concepts of right/wrong and different (wherein falls better and not-so-good).

I'll share a few pivotal moments. I dropped and broke something that belonged to a boyfriend. I remember bracing myself for his ire. Instead, he gasped and said intently, "Are you alright?" I was gob-smacked. Instead of chiding me for clumsiness or inattentiveness, he showed concern. Instead of being punished, I was being cared for.

I was a big fan of Walt Richardson and the Morningstar Band back in the day in Phoenix. I remember being on the dance floor at one club where they were performing. Some guy jumped up on the stage, danced around and sang. Walt just kept playing, watching him and waiting. The guy eventually jumped down. Walt kept playing and watching him until he caught his eye. Then Walt gently shook his head and said, "Don't do that, man." They guy nodded and kept dancing. On the dance floor.

These are two of many instances that showed me that the entire world was not waiting for someone to err and pile on punitive consequences.

While this is not as specific as the above incidents, I remember when I first started hanging around people who, when they didn't know something that someone else was talking about, listened, asked questions, then listened some more rather than laughing in discomfort or rolling their eyes in mockery. I learned to respect those who had knowledge I lacked, rather than calling them a nerd (back when it was not a compliment) or taking on a snide well, good for you attitude. This worked two ways. I also learned to comfortably admit I didn't know something, because I knew I'd be taught rather than ridiculed. While I refused to take pedagogy in college, I grew up loving to teach, perhaps as a result of those experiences.

Crawling out of the cave is a long, ongoing process. It takes my mind a long time to catch up to newfound knowledge and ways. I'm still surprised when I go out to eat and order a salad. In a moment of determination, I signed up to run ten kilometers in the local Bridge Run last Saturday. I made it! (No walking!) I've been practicing. (I can't bring myself to call it training, as I still don't see myself as an athlete after all these years.) When I started the run, my mind flooded with thoughts of: Who am I trying to fool? I'll never make it. I'm glad I brought money to get a cab ride home. I can always just walk. Etc. And those are doubts I still have of physically proven changes in myself. Imagine how long it takes my mind to catch up to realizations like: Not every clerk or waiter who doesn't smile is unfriendly. Not every homeless person is a lazy addict. Not everyone of a different faith is doomed to hell.

We create caves. The people who elected Donald Trump, who behaves abominably by making untrue, bigoted, racist and sexist comments unapologetically, create caves of ignorance and intolerant, punitive, loveless judgement. (I guess I must admit that he is, unfortunately, a sadly accurate representation of a large part of the United States of America, some whom I know and love. He is not a representation of me.) We are so intent on not changing the way we live, that we mock science rather than prepare for great changes in attempt to keep our natural world functioning the best it can. We believe news as we comfortably hear it rather than researching to verity its truth. We so want to be right that we surround ourselves with like thinkers and don't develop the ability to share opposing thoughts and sort out truth from fallacy.

Jochen Wegner gave a good TED talk on matching up people of opposing viewpoints to have conversations about their differences. That is what I want to hear about, not political rally violence incited by a presidential candidate.

Even if what you teach in your cave is the truth, opposing viewpoints need to be known to better teach. I can't tell you how many times Douglas and I have gone round and round on an issue only to eventually, finally realize that one of us (usually me) had a misconception they were going by. Some people would have said we were arguing, but we weren't; we were discussing opposing viewpoints until one of us realized we'd somehow latched on to misinformation. It's exhausting, it's rewarding and it's vital to our society.

If we cannot, in our own society, crawl out of our caves and see the array of truths outside of it, we can have no hope that religious zealots who want to leave women indoors covered with bolts of fabric or lop off our heads for our beliefs will ever hear us. Not the least reason being that we are shamefully unprepared to formulate and gently, wisely share what we know and believe. We need to find our way out of our various caves and practice experiencing more of life.

Next month, I promise something lighter, more fun, with some pictures from Vladivostok.

A Little Plato for You

In “The Allegory of the Cave” Plato describes a group of people who are so isolated that they see nothing of the outside world. They are chained head and foot facing a cave wall, able to see nothing but shadows produced from artifacts being passed in front of flames from the center of the cave. Any sounds produced are presumed to echo so that, from the perspective of the captives, it seems as though the shadows themselves are producing the sounds. That is their reality.

Imagine one of the captives being led from the cave for the first time. It would likely cause physical pain for the captive to be moved, and, I would add, scare them. The fire in the center of the cave would be so bright, it would hurt him to look at it. Imagine the effect the sun would have when he first stepped outside. How long would his eyes need to adjust before he could even see any of the strange things outside the cave? (Would he even want to open his eyes?) Would those dragging him around understand why he couldn’t see anything, why he couldn’t look? Imagine the influx of sounds. (I can only imagine it may be akin to a hearing-impaired person receiving cochlear implants.) Upon being told that this is the world, this is reality, not the dim, quiet cave, how long would he need to process that?

Having been exposed to, accepting and adjusting to the reality of the world, imagine the former captive returning to the cave. How long would it take his eyes to adjust back to the dimness and see the subtle shadows he once knew?  Perhaps the others would think that seeing the light ruined his eyes. Would they not resist anyone who tried to rescue them? Would they believe anything he had to say about what was outside?

The myth goes on, read it when you have a chance.

I, as I believe we all are, am struggling with truth―finding, recognizing, knowing, telling and sharing it. I’m extremely frustrated―enraged at times―with people in charge and friends and family who deny provable facts and are comfortable with ideas that shut out reality, ignore the future and oppress their fellow man. Plato writes of the captives in the cave, “They are like us.” I need to remember this and check my anger and frustration when I’m confronted with what I consider backwards thinking (e.g. promoting coal power over renewable energy, emulating ancient China by building a wall on our border, repressing women by not giving them free reign of their own bodies, e.g.). I spent a long time in a cave and still hear the echoes of it in my mind. None of us emerged from the womb wise or intelligent. Some were simply born into a better situation that promoted a broad education and wisdom.

The power of story is often stronger than bare facts. If I were with someone in physical pain (as the man in the story when emerging from the cave), would I be impatient with them? What if that pain were long-term? Constant? If they were confused, would I respond with anger? If they were scared, would I mock them? I think we'd all answer a resounding "No!" to all those questions. But, get a group of people who were born thousands of mile away and are scared, confused and in pain near our border and suddenly the written law means more than the needs of humanity. In the story, I think many of us would picture ourselves rescuing the people from the cave and helping them adjust to real life. But in reality, how many of us help even a homeless, unemployed person?

There are many caves in this world in which people are being raised. The cave may be a house or a country. It may be a cave of religion, mental illness, political agenda, personal or family fame, prestige or power, or sheer limitations—whether they be physical or opportunistic. They may have been born in that cave, forced into it or stumbled dumbly into it. Caves, like situations in life, can stretch deep underground for miles; it can take a long time to find your way out if you’re lost-if you even know you're lost. Sometimes caves are spacious enough to stand up in, sometimes you can barely crawl through them. Plato picked a good analogy for our situation in life.

The words to Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love by William Blake come to mind. Stanzas 3 and 5:

For Mercy has a human heart, 
Pity, a human face, 
and Love, the human form divine. 
and Peace, the human dress.

And all must love the human form, 
in heathen, Turk or Jew; 
where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell, 
there God is dwelling too.