The Direction of Intention

Peace on earth. It is something to be wished for, and, in fact, it is something we wish for every winter solstice. We sing. We hold hands. We light candles. We wish.

Wish [verb]: a strong desire or hope for something that is not easily attainable; want something that cannot or probably will not happen.

For months I’ve been taking notes and doing research for a play that I want to write. One of the themes of my someday-play is control-by-division and I find myself constantly tripping over stories and mythology with control-by-division as the central tenet. It’s everywhere. For instance, The Tower of Babel features a unified humanity – speaking a single language – who attempt to build a tower to reach heaven. The god’s response was to blast their language, split them linguistically so they were incapable of understanding each other. Plato’s Symposium tells a similar tale. Humans united are too powerful so fearful gods go to great lengths to keep humanity divided. It’s the history of these intentionally-divided-united-states as understood through the lens of Bacon’s rebellion. It’s a repetitive pattern, a living system.

Peace is something the gods, the 17th century aristocrats, and the current republican party do not want us to have. A united populace is capable of peace and a prerequisite of peace is equity. Good will toward men and women and neighbors and speakers of languages other than ones own. The desire for everyone to prosper, for everyone to be safe. Everyone.

When I was young and perhaps more naive than I am now [if that is possible], I explained to rival gang members that they were essentially puppets doing exactly what the powerful expected them to do: fighting and killing each other. Division serves as a useful preoccupation. It keeps eyes and minds off those who were controlling them, keeping them poor. As you might imagine my blather fell on deaf ears and those beautiful young people were back on the streets killing each other before the sun went down.

This is what I read in all of the myths, in all of the stories of intentional-division: peace is our natural state. It takes extraordinary effort and manipulation to divide us.

Peace. Reaching across division. Division that is often – as we have lately seen all too clearly – trumped up to keep us from coming together, from building our too-tall-tower and approaching heaven. United, we might turn our eyes toward the powerful few and ask, “So what are you really doing?”

United, we might ask of ourselves to do something more than our annual-ritual-of-wishing.

read Kerri’s blog post about PEACE

Filed under: DR Thursday, Pattern, Possibility, Power | Tagged: Bacon's rebellion, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, division, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, manipulation, peace, peace on earth, plato, symposium, tower of babel, winter solstice, wish |