Last night, just before hustling off to take a very necessary shower, and just before my wife changed the channel on TV to something more entertaining, the news report was having a live interview of a young black woman in the midst of the Charlotte riot. She was very angry and self-righteous about an incident which will probably turn out the way these things usually do - and not the way she would like. Bored and leaving, I was suddenly struck with the word she kept repeating - a word that I forget now, but which meant, "I'm important!" or, as the slogan says, "I matter!" It was repeated over and over again with virtually no other substance, but I got it - she WANTS to matter, and thinks she doesn't. She wants to be recognized as someone who counts, as a human being just as important as, say, Barrack Obama - or at least someone who was not just a forgotten face, as she felt she was.
Ah, yes, just like the rest of us, I thought, only more dramatically so. And while we might agree that she doesn't really matter that much in the social scheme of things, we also must agree that neither do most of us. Back in the days of small tribal living, we all really mattered, but now even the president could disappear and little would change. With our numbers and the complexity of things, few of us are irreplaceable except to our families, and even then - well, what of Brad Pitt to Angelina Jolie? What of Ivanna to The Donald? Beyond the social, we might just consider the natural environment - do you think ANY of us matter to, say, the Moon? Or to a wing of our own very common galaxy?
By contrast, in all the major religions, we ALL matter, very much so. For some, every one of us is in a battle between good and evil, a battle over our very souls, and each is important. For others, the universe insists on spinning us out again and again until our souls - that basic god-stuff - is perfected. It may well be that we as people in history don't matter all that much, but in the religious scheme of things, it is different. We matter; the young woman matters; the cop with the gun and the guy bleeding in the street matter. And until we grasp this basic concept, none of us will ever feel that he matters, because without it, we don't. As basic material substances, we really don't matter. With the law of the conservation of energy, we will just be spit out into another form, no matter what we do or have done.
One would think then that, because of this, every one would crave religion. Would the young woman be out in the street doing something that will probably only hurt her chances in life if she had religion? But she is probably too proud for that - in spite of suffering severally from a poor self-image.
This applies not only to the poor or dislocated, but also -even especially too - the well-centered. I remember the autobiography of Margaret Mead's and Gregory Bateson's daughter, Mary Bateson, where she describes the death of her father. Gregory Bateson was one of the leading anthropological theorists of the mid-20th century, bringing both his social and scientific knowledge together in wonderful and unique ways (I still use his stuff). By the time of his death at age 77, he was a living legend for those of us into that sort of thing. But he had been a lifelong heavy smoker, and as he was dying of emphysema, she recalled the look of fear in his eyes. Suddenly, he mattered to himself very much, far beyond his scientific expectations. He must have found that he was the center of his own world as we all are, and as such, I imagine he was taken by surprise at how much he mattered to himself. Life from the scientific perspective was small and cheap, but to the personal, it was almost everything.
I think it is true: we are both insignificant ants and everything at the same time. From the outward perspective, most of us are no more important than that young black woman who ferociously wanted to believe she mattered. She was wrong in her venue- in this vast social and natural universe, she, just like us, is nothing. But inwardly, if we are honest, we know this is not true, and it is not just egotism. Somehow, in a different reference frame we often refer to as the spiritual, we all matter infinitely. If we all understood this contrast as deeply as we should, we would be, if not happier, at least firm in our sense of being, not needing the external to prove anything to the internal. And when we think about it, that might solve some of the worst problems facing the people and the societies in which they live in the world today: yes, we matter, big time, but knowing this, we should not have to prove it to anyone with riots and wars and big yachts, least of all to ourselves. FK
Ah, yes, just like the rest of us, I thought, only more dramatically so. And while we might agree that she doesn't really matter that much in the social scheme of things, we also must agree that neither do most of us. Back in the days of small tribal living, we all really mattered, but now even the president could disappear and little would change. With our numbers and the complexity of things, few of us are irreplaceable except to our families, and even then - well, what of Brad Pitt to Angelina Jolie? What of Ivanna to The Donald? Beyond the social, we might just consider the natural environment - do you think ANY of us matter to, say, the Moon? Or to a wing of our own very common galaxy?
By contrast, in all the major religions, we ALL matter, very much so. For some, every one of us is in a battle between good and evil, a battle over our very souls, and each is important. For others, the universe insists on spinning us out again and again until our souls - that basic god-stuff - is perfected. It may well be that we as people in history don't matter all that much, but in the religious scheme of things, it is different. We matter; the young woman matters; the cop with the gun and the guy bleeding in the street matter. And until we grasp this basic concept, none of us will ever feel that he matters, because without it, we don't. As basic material substances, we really don't matter. With the law of the conservation of energy, we will just be spit out into another form, no matter what we do or have done.
One would think then that, because of this, every one would crave religion. Would the young woman be out in the street doing something that will probably only hurt her chances in life if she had religion? But she is probably too proud for that - in spite of suffering severally from a poor self-image.
This applies not only to the poor or dislocated, but also -even especially too - the well-centered. I remember the autobiography of Margaret Mead's and Gregory Bateson's daughter, Mary Bateson, where she describes the death of her father. Gregory Bateson was one of the leading anthropological theorists of the mid-20th century, bringing both his social and scientific knowledge together in wonderful and unique ways (I still use his stuff). By the time of his death at age 77, he was a living legend for those of us into that sort of thing. But he had been a lifelong heavy smoker, and as he was dying of emphysema, she recalled the look of fear in his eyes. Suddenly, he mattered to himself very much, far beyond his scientific expectations. He must have found that he was the center of his own world as we all are, and as such, I imagine he was taken by surprise at how much he mattered to himself. Life from the scientific perspective was small and cheap, but to the personal, it was almost everything.
I think it is true: we are both insignificant ants and everything at the same time. From the outward perspective, most of us are no more important than that young black woman who ferociously wanted to believe she mattered. She was wrong in her venue- in this vast social and natural universe, she, just like us, is nothing. But inwardly, if we are honest, we know this is not true, and it is not just egotism. Somehow, in a different reference frame we often refer to as the spiritual, we all matter infinitely. If we all understood this contrast as deeply as we should, we would be, if not happier, at least firm in our sense of being, not needing the external to prove anything to the internal. And when we think about it, that might solve some of the worst problems facing the people and the societies in which they live in the world today: yes, we matter, big time, but knowing this, we should not have to prove it to anyone with riots and wars and big yachts, least of all to ourselves. FK
RSS Feed