Multisystemic feminist ecotherapists,
deeply immersed in permacultural eco-logic,
a systematic teleology of cooperative economics,
remain rarely flushed out from their camouflage.
A self-isolating,
often eremetical,
subspecies,
with shamanic nature-as-spirit tendencies,
our most articulate mentors often wander off
to pray for,
breathe and suffer and dance and sing
with Earth and all Her polyculturing species and seasons,
spaces and times,
outside glaring spotlights of media networks
and shallow soundbites.
That said,
perhaps I can share lessons from my children
about internal and external landscapes of justice
and passion,
passion for justice.
Spencer is my cooperative networking
transgenerational
post-millennial polypath.
At 18, he remains with me,
has not yet wandered off into his camouflage,
in part because I am a slow learner
in comparison to his lightning networked intuitive consciousness.
I am a more thorough and systematic teleologist,
but also ponderously detailed,
like Thomas Aquinas and Buckminster Fuller,
unwilling to leave any paradigm untouched,
producing a cooperative ecosystemic thesis
and antithesis of cognitive dissonance,
that remains undecipherable
except to those few who already speak
and hear
and feel
and see,
absorb polypathic nutritional polycultures.
What does justice look like for my 20 year old African American son
who graduated from special support services at Entitled Upper Middle Class High School
with a fourth grade cognitive and affective functionality,
no marketable skills other than his physical strength
which shows decreasing likelihood of endurance
due in part to horrid nutrition
lack of self-care
his preference to self-medicate
away from his internal dissonance.
He prefers THC,
although he is angrily aware this means state and federal employment protection laws
form a moat around his buzz,
with all the opportunities on the outside
and far too many of the long-term risks on the inside of his bleary silo of despair.
Dillen, my loyal handsome young adult son,
recognizes discrimination,
marginalization,
poverty
in comparison to outcomes for self-medicating with alcohol.
It’s a cultural thing that old people do to his Transmillennial Generation,
like declaring wars so they can learn to fight each other,
while elders suck our fat wealth deposits into
sport cars of shifty ludicrosity.
Dillen’s skills do not include multiplication,
much less division,
but he knows when justice divides his population of young adults
looking for their first jobs,
so they don’t have to live under the tyrannical oppression
of their parents.
Self-medicating with alcohol can easily pass a drug screen test
with one day notice from Human Resources,
while Dillen watches from the other side
of this divide.
Can he get through at least eight weeks without medication
that actually does seem to help him feel and think better
of and with himself,
and,
given any doubt that any of this makes any sense,
how long before he stops bothering to apply for any hope of a full life?
Dillen understands the justice and injustice of attending a horribly designed State contracted job training program,
to sit for eight unpaid training hours,
for at least four weeks,
probably six or even more,
in a summer classroom with no windows,
with 29 other ADD and ADHD medicated trainees,
to face the dismissive derision of their trainer
for being who they are,
losers who will never actually be sent through to the paid employment stage of this card-shark process,
violating perhaps every justice principle intended by the Americans with Disabilities Act,
while drawing full Job Coach Trainer pay at my tax dollar expense.
Dillen was not outraged that the State had no record of contractual oversight,
no evidence that anyone who did eventually get paid could not have done so with one week’s unpaid training,
no evidence that there were no other training contractors with the capacity to avoid violating the civil rights of those supposedly receiving a service with positive outcomes,
rather than rejection and dispossession and dismissal and further hopelessness outcomes.
Dillen was not alarmed that the Commissioner,
his own State Senator,
his US Senator,
the ACLU,
did not seem to raise so much as one eyebrow
to a misuse of public dollars and trust
with outcomes that could not even perform at the thinnest level of justice:
If you cannot do any good,
at least be sure you cause no harm.
Dillen has become used to an economic and cultural ecology
that does not include him,
and others who look and act and perform and breathe and beat their hearts,
and try to balance their bicameral hemispheres as best they can
in a “Business-As-Usual-Means-You-Do-Not Matter” environment.
So, Dillen reminds me of what I recognized long ago,
growing up gay male in a homophobic
hetero-dominant
culture.
I am reminded of what it means to have no economic right to employment
and no ecologically supported right to love,
to be valueless human nature
intrinsically mendacious
negatively deviant from all that is universally orthodox goodness,
that justice could not include any marital relationship within a Beloved Community,
could not include acceptance as a healthy soul
or body
or identity,
as the appropriate offspring of socially acceptable justice.
Dillen’s bottom line,
“If they wanted to abuse us,
then I wouldn’t have minded so much
if they were at least going to pay me.
I’ll be The Man’s whore if I have to,
but I won’t be his bitch.”
gdill52 