Monday, April 1, 2013

Why is it Not Painful to be Ignorant?

Instead, it can be quite painful to witness ignorance.


I was trolling the internet this morning.   Don’t ask why I was looking up flying fox bats in Sydney Australia.  Nonetheless, I ran across a story about a woman, called Amina, in Tunisia who posted a topless photo of herself with words scrawled across her body which translates as, “my body belongs to me, and is not the source of the honor of anyone.” 

According to the article she was involuntarily incarcerated in a mental hospital by her family, and now faces several possible penalties including going to jail, flogging, or being stoned to death for her actions. 

Amina was expressing solidarity with Femen, a group that protests the patriarchal codes expressing ownership of women.  They do so topless. 

One of the topics I needed to work on with my psychiatrist was my surprise at the ignorance of people around me.  It just was so difficult for me to witness ignorance.  It was painful to witness ignorance. 

What helped me was to take the larger picture view.  I already knew quite a bit about holons, states and stages of consciousness, the memes of Spiral Dynamics (see past blogs).  However, I had not yet “incorporated this knowledge into my bones.”  I was unable to grok (see the novel by Heinlein “Stranger in a Strange Land”) that being at a lower level of consciousness precluded the understanding of a higher level. 

Fundamentalists are operating at a fairly primitive level of consciousness, they define family as only those who think the way they think.  Doesn’t matter if they are Islamic, Christian, Jewish, or any fundamentalist sect. 

Fundamentalism is ignorance.  If you don’t like the way someone thinks or acts, you kill them, or at least punish them severely.  Doesn’t matter if these are crimes without victims. 

To be in the Green Meme level, you have a very large family and are concerned with the environment, you don’t kill people for any crime, etc, but you still reject these people who think in fundamentalist fashion.  To transcend to the next level, you must sit with the truth that these fundamentalist individuals are exactly where they need to be at this moment in time. 

A fundamentalist’s current level of function may be due to genetics and personality, maybe with a low capacity for cognitive or emotional intelligence, and most often is due to the environment they grew up within. 

To live within a fundamentalist level of evolution, is to live in fear. 

So, actually, it is painful to live in ignorance, because you live in fear.  The fear of the new.  The fear that the world is changing around you.  So you may hide away in a fundamentalist compound, you may hide your children in home schooling, you may hide in plain sight in your fundamentalist church, and maybe try to play well with others outside your church. 

At a higher level of evolution you can see how fear runs a fundamentalist’s life.  You accept them just as they are.  That does not preclude taking actions to mitigate the crimes that may be committed in the name of fundamentalist fear. 

But, the actions counteracting fundamentalism comes from love.  From the compassion for the pain of those living within fear. 

So, on April 4, 2013 support Amina in whatever fashion is appropriate to who you are and your own level of evolution, what ever that may be. 

As an introverted-meditative-science-nerd, I will be holding her and all defenders of continued higher evolution within the core of my being.  I will also send some money energy as well. 

I accept each of you for who you are and whatever course you take in this cause or any other. 

Just don’t hurt anyone!  

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