FROM THE ARCHIVE: 6/19/2020
Juneteenth is a celebration of the end of slavery, a day to honor the survival and resilience of Black people throughout 400 years of sheer inhumanity: from the profound sadism of slavery, through the Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and segregation, to the racism of today.
Sadism is a kind of tyranny, a kind of domination. So is racism whether we see it in individual instances or whether we recognize it as baked into our institutions, the “conditions” as Dr. King put it in which so many people of color find themselves after centuries of colonialism and domination.
The photo seen round the world of a white armed policeman killing another man smiling and self-satisfied on top of his “prey,” reveals a deep sadism. It raises questions: “How much of our society and so-called civilization is, at the core, sadistic?” Isn’t this what “domination” means, a word dear to patriarchy itself?
Taking pleasure in the pain of others includes taking pleasure in the death of the Earth. Denial about climate change is in fact sadism extended to future generations wanting to live healthily on this planet.
Is sadism part of what keeps haves and have nots so far apart? Is sadism present in every win/lose proposition? Every claim that “we’re #1” and “we’re exceptional” (and you aren’t). The triumph of the reptilian brain.
Racism is another form of power-over and sadism.
Sadism is not just a psychological condition—it is a sociological and structural condition. It is baked into much of academia and an educational system which teaches us how to make it in a sadistic system.
Institutionalized sadism is Institutionalized Violence which is Susan Sontag’s definition of Fascism.
How deep is it, this necrophilia? This hatred of life? This pessimism? This patriarchy? This victimizing?
Do we misuse our creativity putting it to the service of building more weapons, more killing machines, supreme courts that prefer injustice to justice and power-over to power-with and domination to play, joy, delight and justice?
King’s strategy included appealing to the conscience of white people by exposing the sadism of the system at work. Police dogs attacking children on television changed the day. We are told that even hardened segregationists recoiled from the sight of a police dog lunging at a child. By exposing that kind of evil, King had indeed opened the boil of segregation to the medicine of air and light…*
* Stephen B. Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr., p. 238
See Matthew Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society, pp. 258, 262f., 353f.
Banner Image: Five thousand people demonstrate in support of Black Lives Matter, Hamburg 2020-06-05. Photo by Rasande Tyskar on Flickr.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you see sadism or a compulsion to control alive and well and at work in our institutions today? How is that feeding racism and other forms of oppression including sexism and homophobia?
Recommended Reading
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them.
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science. A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics
4 thoughts on “Juneteenth: Survival in the Face of Racism, Sadism, Domination”
Thank you Matthew for your deep insight and analysis. I’ve been introduced to the Mystics through your daily Meditations. The Cosmic vision helps us align with our place in the tapestry of creation. Being, assumes new meaning outside the anthropomorphic power constructs, which have caused so much human suffering and destruction. The living Cosmos and our Being, as a thread in a greater tapestry, introduces integration and alignment through our hearts into the metaphysical. There we can experience the power of Love, Empathy and Compassion. They are the only way we will survive the patriarchy and toxicity of our current systems of greed, repression and lies. We have to bring justice through Truth and Love. Our so called leaders have decimated truth and decency. A lying fascist, and his cowardly minions want to recreate the political landscape which birthed the horrific atrocities and wars of the last century. They want to take away civil rights in the name of religious liberty. The god of their movement is repression and greed. It is only through the recognition of truth that we can defeat these evils. You are a gift and a light and I want to personally thank you for all you do. Vinny Scoca
Yes! Sadism is part of the many manifestations of the values of patriarchy in our ongoing human history and evolution — dualism, egocentricity, racism, misogyny, ecocide, control, power, ignorance, spiritual imbalance, self-hatred… — which have caused so much destructiveness, suffering, social injustices, wars, and deaths…
The FAITH and Importance of each of our unique sacred human daily lives with one another on our eternal spiritual journeys is essential knowing that God’s Spirit of LOVE, TRUTH, Peace, Justice, Strength, Healing, Transformation, Creativity, Beauty, Joy, Compassion, Service… Is ALWAYS PRESENT within, through, and among Us in the Divine Flow of LOVING DIVERSE WHOLENESS~ONENESS….
It seems that when you have to control and dominate, it’s because of your job; which puts you on a tight and stressful schedule. You have to make people you encounter do it your way because you are on this, your employer’s, schedule for you. I’m rushing and late, therefore I yell at my kids and kick my dog out of the house. These are cruel actions, but they allow me a little release from my fears and angers at my employers who dominate me.
Why do the employers dominate? I think this is explained in the book “The Chalice and the Blade”. It seems a plausible explanation.
This is a good subject, and sadism, cruelty is alive and well in our country. Thanks for sharing your brilliant thoughts and insights, Matthew.
Humans are the broken primates: sociopathic monkey relatives who casually kill, with any and all excuses: domination (alpha leader), mating, greed, paranoia, and fear, plus sheer psychopathic bloodlust, a joy in destructive viciousness.
Jewish prophets, inspired by the Source and implications of an astonishing, universal Mystical Revelation, enshrined it as THE central, sacred teaching/Divine Revelation within their religion. It gave them a new hope for a respectful, Loving, egalitarian, forgiving society. Jesus and his community expanded the egalitarian message to be (correctly) radically inclusive. Females, non-Jews, outcasts — even slaves: everyone was equal. Everyone was God-loved.
That message amazed and delighted the Roman audiences and was the reason Christianity spread, a loving new religion that practiced what they preached: free share-meals and kindness to anyone. Then the religion grew big enough to hire males to oversee it (women were forbidden public roles). Males seized control, women were downgraded to invisibility, and the self-elected males created a power-lusting patriarchal “Christian Church” with a new theological framework to justify it.
The self-crowned “Christian” male hierarchy betrayed its vows to God and Jesus to Love and respect others AS God Loves them. In effect, they told God that THEY know MORE THAN JESUS.
They made a small-god religion for themselves in THEIR own image.
Jesus and Moses warned about that