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Mark "Jake" Baker THE HUMAN CONDITIONThe world is a very hostile environment, with scarce resources - a very unaccommodating place in which we humans are destined, one way or another, to evolve. This is a place of constant suffering. The day will never come when lives will not be lost to natural disasters, when nations will be not be fighting other nations, when persons of dissimilar race or beliefs will not persecute and discriminate against each other. The day will never come when cities will not be strife with crime, when families will not experience tragic circumstances, when some parents will not abuse their children. The day will never come when some person will not raise their hand against another, when a woman will not fear being raped when she walks home at night, or when we will not feel the pain of loneliness, separation, and death. Just look at the news today. Is this really overkill?—how we are bombarded with graphic incidents of isolated horror? And these are merely the newsworthy. Other continuous horrors are considered so commonplace that they are relegated to sympathetic pleas by the likes of Sally Struthers on cable television. For all people, this world either has been, is currently, or will be Hell. How often have you thought to yourself, "Well, that will never happen here--not to me"? No! There will never be enough exposure to the realities of this place. Why is it still necessary that tragedies hit close to home in order to wake us up? Those that are suffering right now are no different than you and I, and what happens to them does happen to us, on a very deep level—and they deserve our full compassion, love, and understanding. Even the luckiest, healthiest, wealthiest people can only attempt to shroud themselves in denial of this truth in a futile attempt to delay the day when reality will eventually come crashing in on them. Such are the cards we have been dealt, the deck is stacked against us, and we are left here to play out our hand. However, we are also responsible for stacking the deck we play with. In our infancy, there was much to fear: the environment treated us to a multitude of inhospitable changes; wild predators looked to eat us for their own nourishment; barbarians roamed the frontier, invading our homes, killing and stealing. For basic survival, it was necessary to define roles for the men and women that were best suited to their physical attributes. Men developed stronger physiques, and therefore were best suited for tasks such as defending, hunting, building, and toiling the soil. Women were blessed with the gifts of childbearing, and were best suited for tasks such as gathering food and attending to familial duties. Our tribes grew rapidly. We settled down, claimed territories, built strong boundaries and created methods of protection against the harsh elements and invading warriors. Then we nomads began to develop ways to alleviate and eradicate some of our many problems: trade, specialization, and communication between acquiescent neighbors; more sophisticated tools and machinery; better use of existing resources. Many of us were becoming civilized. As we became more civilized, the need to concentrate all our efforts on the group's survival diminished. But, instead of choosing to take roads leading to everyone's self-evolvement, our leaders—rapacious, puissant, egotistical men, infatuated with material desires, self-gratification and over-protection, who were firmly rooted in the positions of strength and influence—saw a window of opportunity to exploit their positions for personal gain. They atrociously metamorphosed their roles to provide them the manipulation and servitude of the Masses, thereby securing their position of dominance in their own societies for centuries. And so it has been. So many of the old rules to which we have become accustomed are losing their relevance. As civilized countries develop peaceful relations, the real need for territorial boundaries becomes a formality; as technology replaces the need for men's physical strength, the real need for the separation of man-woman duties has diminished. A woman can fight in a war, be a fisherman, a construction worker; a man can be a cosmetologist, a homemaker, a nurse; two people of different color or religion can marry. But, because of our inherent concepts, which are based on once necessary and conventional roles, such gender roles do not occur without raising some fur among our traditionalists. Even the traditional roles have become confusing and conflicting. To succeed, we are told to work hard, delay desires and save money--yet, as consumers, we are told to play, gratify and spend--so we pinch pennies, then binge with credit cards. To look appealing, we are pressured to diet and lose weight--so we buy exercise bikes that collect dust, then inhale double chocolate-chip cookies. Our largest industries are profiting by keeping our spirits weak, in line with tradition, and in low self-esteem (especially women: diet, cosmetics, fashion, pornography), all to keep us desiring to live up to the infallible image of the ideal real woman or man. From the day we're born, the old roles, metamorphosed to protect the men in positions of power and place everyone else in submissive roles, are so firmly ingrained in our subconscious by our parents and society, that most of us believe the need for such separation still exists. We are buying the package! So, who are the traditionalists that bind us to these roles? We all are. We are worshiping very bad habits that are preventing us from realizing our true potential, from setting us free to choose our true paths without gender bias, judgements or prejudice. Bad habits, even when recognized, are still very hard to break, especially if we are living comfortably. However, break them we must if we ever expect to truly grow. This process will require immense amounts of courage and tireless efforts to stop the cycle—within our relationships, our families, our educational systems, our legal systems, and within us. Each one of us must make a sincere, conscious decision to be willing to adapt to changing our behavior by striving to discontinue the use of our outmoded, indecorous stereotypical role-playing behavior. We must recognize, accept responsibility, then act appropriately when we catch ourselves judging other people or playing out unacceptable traditional roles on them; and gracefully, yet firmly, let others know that we will not accept that kind of behavior when they do the same to us. We must discontinue using inappropriate role-defining behavior patterns in front of our children, and educate them to the way they are being saturated with the same unacceptable portrayals in their world. Just being able to see when these things are happening around us is a tremendous step. We can then move to correct the mistakes, file the incidents away in our subconscious, and pray to see them coming the next time. Within every one of us is an intense build up of rage, sorrow, guilt, and pain--feelings that have been repressed for so long, covered over by layer and layer of denial, that most of us have no idea they are still deep inside us. Our self-protection mechanism, the ego, has grown out of proportion and needs to be humbled. In order for this to occur, we need to provide people with safe, trusting groups, led by highly trained individuals, where our feelings can be rediscovered and released--without ridicule or mockery--and true compassion and love can be rediscovered and celebrated. There are many important differences between men and women, not meant to promote conflict, but to compliment each other. Through man/woman workshops, we can become more aware of our inherent differences, learn how those differences can work together, and make the necessary changes in our approach to relationships, producing harmony between us. We must make sure that the lesser-heeded problems of gender bias, stereotypical role-playing, etc., are persistently brought into the public arena through discussion, education, publishing, and legal maneuvers. One example: more than half of today's law students and one fourth of the 375,000 members of the ABA are women and minorities. What better chances have we got to initiate change than through such gateways? Whether we are aware of it or not; to grow, evolve and learn about ourselves is the real reason we have been placed here on earth--it is our true goal. We have been given a tremendous opportunity to discover the True Self that is identical in each and every one of us. It is widely said that all God's children are equal in His eyes, and that all He desires is for us to learn to see that Truth as well. Accepting the horror of this place, feeling the pain of separation, and intense desire will help us to that end. But instead, we have been behaving like spoiled children. We insist on playing out in the cold and rain just a little while longer, disobeying our mother's pleas to come in for warmer clothes and hot soup--when all she wants to do is send us out again, better prepared to truly enjoy our play-time. |