Acting against the destructive futility of some of what we see
If we all just breathe and chill, do we not merely enable the bullies and their toxic ideals?
W e create many toxic by-products as we consume our busy, industrialised lives. We know about the air pollution, the plastics, the chemicals in the water and the poisoned insects, but there is one pervasive side-effect that we can’t touch or measure: stress. Stress is a type of psychological pain. It increases our susceptibility to heart attacks, strokes, ulcers, and to mental illnesses including depression.
Stress can afflict the rich and powerful. Greed and grasping for more money, ownership, control and obedience can keep them awake at nights. Anger and fury at people getting away with something for nothing, being lazy or soft-hearted, or standing in the way of ‘progress’, can make their blood boil.
At the other end of our social scale, there is the stress of the underdog. People who feel thwarted at every turn, with impossible endless days, debts and demands, subject to the whims and moods of bosses and landlords. Interminable hours of saying nothing out loud, then getting snapped at just for thinking it.
Many are squeezed in the middle of the stress-sandwich, subject to the arbitrary diktats of senior management, with some minions beneath them too.
Of course, not all homes and workplaces are run as cascades of stress, with unreasonable demands being channelled down the hierarchies, but the worldview that underpins our competitive, exploitative system actively encourages such dog-eat-dog thinking.
It is not enough to say that mindful breathing and honouring our emotions help mitigate the effects of stress, although such practices can certainly help. We can try to be aware of the onset of stressful responses, look out for changes in posture, breathing and muscular tension patterns, and try to relax, breathe and not rise to bait.
But where is the place of righteous anger? If we all just breathe and chill, do we not merely enable the bullies and their toxic ideals?
When should the mindful and skilled warrior-monk rise up and say no?
Compassion demands that every effort be made to reduce the suffering of the world. To take full responsibility for our life and our being requires that when we see injustice and pain we do not shrug, breathe and pass by on the other side of the road, but that, sometimes, we act. If we can act cleanly, decisively and skilfully, we may help raise everyone’s awareness of the destructive futility of some of what we see.
This article first appeared in the Jersey Evening Post on 9 August 2018
