At the time of my writing this DM we don’t know if the “Big Immoral Bill” — as Matthew called it — received a passing vote in the Senate of the United States. In any case, it is immoral for many reasons, including the attempt to sneak in provisions that would shelter the federal government from the consequences of not following court orders. In the meantime, the National Guard has been deployed in California against the wishes of its governor, which I understand to be against the law. Looking at the whole situation from my vantage point in Europe, it looks not that you are reaching a constitutional crisis, but that you are living through it.
I must refrain from gloating over other people’s misery, but I cannot fail to remind my American friends of the many CIA-backed coups which plaugued the world in the 20th century, precipitating countries into violence, chaos, and often destroying for decades the reciprocal trust among opponents which makes for the core of a healthy society.
The 2024 movie Ainda estou aqui (I am still here), set in the context of the Brazilian military rule in the early 1970s, recounts the story of a family whose father – Rubens Paiva, an ex-member of parliament – is kidnapped by the military and disappears. The resilience of his wife Eunice, splendidly interpreted by actress Fernanda Torres, is remarkable. Two choices made by the director Walter Salles make of this movie a masterpiece: the depiction in great detail of the fullness of life experienced by the family before the kidnapping, and how the family must isolate itself after the kidnapping, not being able to talk about it or to mourn their father. It is not known to this day if Rubens Pavia was left in the Amazon forest to die, or was thrown in the ocean from a helicopter, or something else of the kind.
Such cruelty, multiplied by thousands, was abetted by the U.S. government at that time. It must be known, I think, that there are many — especially in the South of the world — who think that Americans are now getting back what they deserve. They are getting back the chaos they have sown for decades, under the pretense of exporting democracy.
A student of mine, being very ill in 2006 because of his handling of depleted uranium ammunitions in Iraq, reported to me that the Abu Ghraib scandal was “nothing” compared to the cruelty that his battalion committed there. After taking one of my classes, he also added: “If I had read these Ancient Greeks who talked philosophy with each other while they had sex with each other (he meant Plato) I would have never gone to war.”
This memory comes back to me now while I am searching for something positive to say, something hopeful. We need lights in the dark night of democracy that we are experiencing, which is indeed the dark night of one of the major dreams of humanity, born in Ancient Greece: that chaos and violence could be tamed by means of democratic institutions.
The memory of my student makes me shed a tear. I don’t know if he lives or not, I could never find him again. He was himself a victim, of course, and — as he recognized — a perpetrator. He found the light by reading Plato’s Symposium and Republic and because he found a teacher — which happened to be me — who believed in him, did not judge him for his past in the military, and challenged him every day.
One of the best things about America is the system of higher education, its academic freedom, its insistence on developing critical thinking. It is not by chance that it is now under attack. We need to celebrate it, support it, defend it. If you are/have been a teacher, please recognize the enormous value of your contribution to society. And, as we all have been students, please remember and appreciate those who shed light for you on your path.
Resisting chaos and cruelty is no small feat, but it can be done step by step and day by day, together.
See Matthew Fox: Trump and the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
And Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
And Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation
Banner image: A sign at a Women’s March in Los Angeles in 2017 is sadly prescient of what is happening now. Image by Samantha Sophia. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
How are you discharging your duty as a teacher? How are you honoring your teachers?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE.
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE.
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.
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
Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation
Authors Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox encourage us to use our talents in service of compassion and justice and to move beyond our broken systems–economic, political, educational, and religious–discovering a spirituality that not only helps us to get along, but also encourages us to reevaluate our traditions, transforming them and in the process building a more sacred and just world. Incorporating the words of young activist leaders culled from interviews and surveys, the book provides a framework that is deliberately interfaith and speaks to our profound yearning for a life with spiritual purpose and for a better world.
“Occupy Spirituality is a powerful, inspiring, and vital call to embodied awareness and enlightened actions.”
~~ Julia Butterfly Hill, environmental activist and author of The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods
8 thoughts on “Chaos, Cruelty, and Education”
Discharging ‘your duty’ as a teacher is an act and honour on its own and of its own merits.
We are humble servants only by doing our job, the job, asked of us. The cast an honour or receive an honour from another is a ‘dead’ act. It’s time has already passed has it not?
It is only honour to be what we are meant to be, and if it is that of discharging duty as a teacher, then we must teach relentlessly, do we not? — BB.
A few typos above noted and corrected below:
To cast an honour or receive an honour from another is a ‘dead’ act. Its time has already passed has it not?
All true of our evil empire. It’s not realized by most Americans how much chaos and death we’ve brought about in the global south but once you know it you can’t forget it. But the ones who suffer most are our immigrant brothers and sisters, black and brown people and slaves of capitalism.
America needs to reckon with its past sins.
Thank you, GG, for saying this:
One of the major dreams of humanity, born in Ancient Greece [is]: that chaos and violence could be tamed by means of democratic institutions.
And for reminding us in the US that: It looks not that you are reaching a constitutional crisis, but that you are living through it.
And for pointing out how the CIA fostered chaos and cruelty elsewhere on the planet, so it’s no surprise that those energies are showing up here and now in the US.
Plus, your hopeful closing comment: Resisting chaos and cruelty is no small feat, but it can be done step by step and day by day, together.
As a Canadian, watching the news is like watching the worst-ever horror show unfold. I cannot protest & write senators and congressmen. Instead, I pray – I pray for all those living in fear, for those imprisoned (and deported) unjustly. I pray for those with the courage to protest – that they remain safe, remain calm and show to the troops stationed against them, that they are not violent, that theirs is a peaceful demonstration, that they are just trying to stand up for what they believe in. I pray for the soldiers and police officers that they remain calm – that they not become inflamed with the rhetoric of the madman currently abusing his power. I pray for all those suffering from the rapacious greed that has enveloped this planet these many years…the residents of Los Angeles who lost everything in the recent fires (where are they now? the news is silent of their plight), those fighting forest fires raging in both our countries… I pray in the words of Wendell Berry:
“We who prayed and wept for liberty from kings
and the yoke of liberty accept the tyranny of things
we do not need.
In plenitude too free, we have become adept beneath the yoke of greed.
Those who will not learn in plenty to keep their place must learn it by their need
When they have had their way and the fields spurn their seed.
We have failed Thy grace.
Lord, I flinch and pray, send Thy necessity.”
❤️
Many of the psalms and exhortations of the prophets against an evil empire could be written today. I was reading Psalm 12 as part of the Presbyterian lectionary for yesterday: “Help, O Lord, for there is no longer anyone who is godly; the faithful have disappeared from humankind. They utter lies to each other; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak…Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan, ‘I will now rise up’ says the Lord…” To keep speaking the truth to power by contacting our elected officials and by continuing to provide support and solidarity to those who are engaged in resisting the evil that is upon us–that is how I see honoring those from whom we learned and paying it forward to a new generation. There is no question in my mind that this nation was born out of the sin of slavery, which is the sin of greed and acquisitiveness. All in the race to power at all costs, we ruined other nations by assassinating their best and brightest and installing dictators. Is it any wonder that they turned against us? Or even worse, modeled themselves on our worst attributes. What comforts me is the undying human spirit which abides and grows even in the most stunted soil of empire’s autocratic rule. Unless we extinct ourselves, I believe that the good will ultimately prevail.
Many Americans, including myself in the past, have been conditioned to over idealize America and its interconnected Christian nationalism by not recognizing or being aware of its shadow history from the very beginning of conquest, destruction, and racism starting with native indigenous peoples and slavery. This lack of personal and collective awareness of this shadow side of racism and materialistic greed has led to increased social and economic injustices and militarism not only within the country, but its continued imperialism around the world.
This fundamental shadow and evil has increasingly grown in our modern society to the existential point of destruction of our planet by its polluting capitalistic economic system and to the birth of a militaristic authoritarian anti democratic form of government leadership with the passive/enabling support by many Americans, especially among the MAGA movement and Republican congressional leaders. This ignorant and conditioned shadow history of many Americans and society has included its justification and enablement by the similarly plagued unspiritual racist Christian nationalism.
Of course Our Hope and Faith in the US and around the world is that many people continue growing and supporting one another spiritually in our human evolution with Our Source~Co-Creator’s Spirit of LOVE~WISDOM within and among Us in All physical and nonphysical spiritual dimensions…