Tag Archives: Syria

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Syria Reconstructed

It is in our fragile, nearly broken, exposure
that we are most available for love
and remedial gratitude,
rather than the louder applause
of our full-blown ballistic glory.

While exercising restrained patience breeds tolerance,
giving pregnant reign to co-empathy compels timeless flow
of organic eternity.

Empathy grows fragile compassionate pause,
easily broken by impatient overexposure
to loud adulation,
or even more necessary restrained,
sufficiently polite,
applause.

I have never been to Syria
but I remember it used to be a great place
for healthy wealth.
High quality of co-regenerative life.
Deep, robustly multicultural
and cooperative commercial root systems.

All their neighbors either preferred to just be left alone,
Plan A,
or to become a creolic part of Syria,
Plan B
if peacefully possible,
rather than other empire building prospects
and militarized capital-pirating offers,
like from Rome, for example.

Syrian culture was more intentionally creolic,
absorbing,
deep-resonant layered,
looking for WinWin resolutions,
while Rome was more competitively
“all roads and revenues shall lead to home,
which is Rome”,
more WinLose devolution,
when you are on the not-so-neighborly end
of the military capital-sucking stick,
sometimes the last ecopolitical straw.

I was thinking about this
as I listened to the restrained applause
for the recent WhiteHouse “beautiful bomb” response
to Assad’s prior release of chemical bombs.
WhiteHouse military-industrial incorporated intent
apparently was aimed at weapons
inconveniently provided by Russia,
more than the Syrian weapon-holders themselves.

At the same time,
the all-wise ecopolitical policy gurus
remind us this is a LoseLose necessary investment response
but not sufficient for a longterm plan
with capacity for positive regenerativity.

I mean,
what would that look like?
I shoot your guns
until they are gone.
Then what would we do with all our military toys?

Perhaps we could begin deploying them upon each other
here in the U.S.,
after all the humans,
and other favored critters,
are removed from firing range.
But this seems like an expensive and taxing habit
and one that domestic neighbors of military installations
would probably find detrimental to real estate values
and quality of life,
like being able to sleep at night
without worrying the Army is planning to demolish
the Navy’s nuclear submarine parked in the river
just behind my backyard.

No, the pundits are right,
we also need a WinWin plan.

If I were a Syrian counter-revolutionary,
or the mother of a young Syrian terrorist,
I think I would invest in planting edibles,
especially trees,
to reverse desertification,
played-out soil,
currently reduced to more of a ballistic mine field,
improving purity and flow of water supply
for the long climate therapeutic haul,
and keeping Syrian air clear of toxic nastiness
like bullets and bombs,
sundry ballistics.

These are very hard on trees
and other organic reproductive rights.

Now I can already hear you thinking,
“He sounds like more of a feminist carpenter
who only has a tree planting hammer,
so all problems look like nails
rather than international cooperative opportunities
to play WinWin policy designer.

But, in defense of the carpenter
with a limited one tool arsenal,
this carpenter could be somebody’s mother
who also has a shovel
and a thing for WinWin long term regenerative interior landscapes
and exterior climate ecotherapies.

Moms remember
that WinWin Mother’s Milk
is more cooperatively primal
than competitive ballistic WinLose;
EitherMilitary/OrWhat? OrganicReMediation?

We have both tools,
hunting with WinLose guns
and gathering then planting WinWin embryonic seeds
of healthy ecosystemic wealth.

So, if our Trump card
has to be fight guns with guns
on one politely applauding hand,
necessary, but not regeneratively sufficient,
unless we really do choose to act more like ancient Patriarchal Rome
than ancient Matriarchal Syria,
then why not also share our shovels and seeds,
our Bodhisattva CoMessianic Matriarchal PeaceBuilders,
and our restrained Patriarchal WarMakers?

It is in our fragile, nearly broken, matriarchal exposure
that we are most available for love
and remedial WinWin gratitude,
rather than the louder patriarchal applause of history
for our full-blownout ballistic glory.

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The Unfortunate Syrian Family: Child Welfare Report

Syria and her family were quarreling, a truly wicked row, if you know what I mean.  All her thousands of kids were at risk for survival.  This toxic home environment is both chronic and critical.
However, rather than bombastically removing them from their home, and lives, in some unfortunate cases, where Plan A has gone quite drastically wrong (I digress, with apologies, but perhaps we could learn a bit more analogously from experience?), I occupied their home with some of our best and brightest kids, so that each of Syria’s children now has a Virtual Mentor volunteer.
If any one, or more, of their kids is feeling threatened, or even just anxious about something, s/he contacts her/his Mentor, tells their Mentor what s/he is feeling, why she is feeling that way, and what she would like her parents to do to make it stop, if anything.
These Mentors will contact me if they get any calls.  Should I receive a call, and I really do NOT want to receive a call, I will go to their home, sit them down, and tell them which specific children called, how they are feeling, why they say they are feeling that way, and what they are asking the parents to do, or stop doing, to make it go away.
Further, I will wait to witness Syria’s response to her kids, and our kids.  So far, no calls.
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On Labor and Capital

I am struck this morning by the confluence of a hugely compelling “Security” question as the U.S. moves into Labor Day.  So, please forgive what begins tangentially, but I do move to an underlying cultural change observation by way of this “Labor” and “Capital” exploration.
I suspect that Capitalism is no more the opposite of Socialism or “Sharia Law Tribalism” than it is opposed to reorganizing as a globally cooperative Information-based economy.
Capitalism is simply a historical-cultural mistake of reductionism.  More specifically, “wealth” became reduced to the value of human enterprise, production, and financial measurement.  Capital, physical assets, wealth, has its place and role, but it is not the whole story, or even most of the “Labor” and economic story.
There is also value (though currently less amenable to measurement) in learning, in information, in communicating effectively and inclusively, in loving, in goodness, in beauty, in nurturance, in caregiving, in discovering a new truth or insight, in enlightenment, in “spirituality.”
Capital came to monopolize economic value, in the Western hemisphere, with the advent of “Industry” severed from vocation, “Empire” or “Nation” severed from culture. “Capital” severed from its Value-root has fed the devolution of feminist culture, leaving three exorbitantly expensive evolutionary scars.
1.  Empire-building is the de-valuation and displacement of aboriginal communication and communities, discounted as not rational and uncivilized.  Older, smaller scale, aboriginal cultures assume highest values are found in organically fused (“permaculture”) local communities.  Empire-building led to the ownership of, thereby power-marginalized, aboriginal cultures.
2. Slavery, historically speaking, was male imperialist ownership of de-valued aboriginal people, violently disrupted from their organic human communities and cultural/communication systems.  Vestiges remain, and these contemporary versions remain male-over-female dominating power structures.
3.  The emergence of post-industrialized “child welfare” systems de-value the relationship between our species’ nurturers and their children.  This results in the  forced disruption of primordial and neural-based communication, and considerable trauma to a vulnerable and marginalized population.
Perhaps this “Great Turning” moment, turning from historical precedent to a more inclusive global dia-logos about our shared cultural roots, potentiates a “PermaCultural Awakening,” fueled by our unprecedented globally inclusive communication potential, to recapture “feminist” aspects of our value culture that include species diversity and male-female, or Yang-Yin, equilibrium.
That was a very long and dense sentence.  Nevertheless, it is my hope and prayer on this Labor Day that we can communicate our globally shared vision.
I imagine living in a U.S. culture that celebrates “Vocation Day,” inclusive of Labor;
“Nurturance Day,” inclusive of Mothers;
“Interdependence Day,” inclusive of Independence and Freedom and Security;
“Creativity Day,” inclusive of Christmas,
“Regeneration Day,” inclusive of Easter,
“New Seasons Day,” inclusive of New Years,
“Visioning Day,” inclusive of Memorial,
“Gratitude Day,” inclusive of Thanksgiving,
“Mentors Day,” inclusive of Presidents,
and maybe even the perennial kids’ favorite “Enlightenment Day,” inclusive of Halloween.
While I am reweaving what has been torn asunder, please forgive me the further hubris of suggesting some of these  Days might be more significantly thought of as “Sharia-Analogic” global celebrations, more significantly than U.S. “legal” holidays.
Labor and Capital have not failed our economic prosperity.  This Transitional Moment is about re-connecting them to their deep cultural roots.  Globally cooperative species-vocations, analogic structures of inclusive dialogue, and richly inclusive values potentially mature our vast and stunning diversity toward a sustainably balanced global PermaCulture.
That would be my idea of Security, sustainable Labor, and, yes, Sharia Paradise.
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