Boiled Frogs and Original Sin

Is it an urban myth/metaphor or a reality? That if you stick a frog in a pot of water and heat the water gradually the frog’s capacity to adapt will be its downfall. Not realizing it’s in danger, it will be boiled to death. Leaving aside the gruesome possibility of this ever having been a real life experiment, it’s not a bad metaphor for adult behaviour. We get stuck in a comfort zone that starts out looking and feeling just fine, and keeps us materially provided for. It requires a whole lot of compromises but they seem small at first and perfectly manageable.  

Some part of us is in protest but we don't hear it. Or if we do, there’s always the future. I’ll just do this for a while then I’ll change and do something really worthwhile. 

The days, weeks, months and years pass. At some level the compromises become increasingly painful and unbearable but instead of listening to the pain and taking it seriously, we say things like It’s not so bad. I shouldn’t complain. I can’t complain. I should be grateful. Don’t worry be happy. Be positive. We feel quite heroic when we do that. Responsible. Accountable. Unselfish. Healthy members of society. 

Healthy? I'm not so sure. Afraid, maybe. Still so controlled by an atavistic fear of having no food and shelter that we can't embrace that our survival requires more than that now. It requires nurturing the heart and soul.  

Growing up Catholic, I rebelled strongly against the idea of original sin. Nobody could explain in any way that sounded remotely intelligent to me. I've come to see that probably our capacity to not listen to the most important part of us is what it's about if you strip it of the moralism. Sin is an archery term, meaning to miss the mark. Original sin is our capacity to miss the mark – which is pretty much what languishing in a comfort zone that doesn’t feed your heart and soul and mind in a balanced way is. Alongside judging those who are least trying to not die the slow crucifying death.

I can’t imagine that boiling frogs was ever a real experiment. Even if some psychopath did decide it would further the understanding of human nature, they would have had to slow-boil hundreds of thousands of frogs to be able to reach any kind of significant conclusion, since one frog doesn’t equal every frog. Just as in a tank of fish the majority will swim round and round in the same direction but a few will swim in the opposite direction, it’s probable that most frogs would boil to death but some would leap out as soon as the water started getting warm.

I doubt there’s a human being who wouldn’t look at those few and believe they were at the forefront of frog-evolution. But when people behave in the same ways as those clever, evolved frogs would if the experiment really happened, our reactions aren’t so simple. 

Some humans are a whole lot more finely tuned than others. They feel what’s happening within themselves, they see what’s happening in others. They register emotions and discomfort far more quickly than many others do. A whole world is visible to them that others are oblivious to. The kind of compromise that others will feel comfortable with for a while - and regret most horribly later on - is like torture to them immediately. They instinctively understand the danger. They make different choices in life which we often see as risky. But that’s only if we don’t see what they’re protecting. If we don’t see that they’re like those frogs that jump when the water is just getting warm. We don’t even consider whether in fact they’re taking less of a risk than we are. 

If they find a way to be materially safe in the world and even materially wealthy, we make heroes out of them. We look up to them as leading the way, following their heart, inspiring us. We write books and make movies about them; we make them our role models and aspire to be just like them. Or we tell ourselves we’d like to. We hold on at least to the fact that it is a humanly possible thing to follow your heart and succeed. We hold onto that light in our darkest hour.

What if they don’t do so well? Do we still recognize that at least they’re following their heart, or trying to? Do we look to them for inspiration?

It’s a rhetorical question. We’re more likely to criticize them for being irresponsible, selfish, freeloaders. We turn our backs on them; judge them for not being more like us, for not being willing to make the sacrifices we make. We do it especially if we’re slowly boiling away in boiling frogland. Even more especially if we don’t have the courage and honesty to acknowledge it.  

Or else if we help them we do it believing ourselves to be the heroes. We seldom let them forget how magnanimous we are and how much they're in our debt. Whatever we do with it, we hold onto the idea that we’re the good guys and they’re the bad guys. We're at the forefront of evolution and they're trailing behind us. Even though our choices are eroding our lives faster than the speed of light. Yet imagine if we recognized that in many ways they’re ahead of us. Imagine if we embraced them, not from the perspective of how much we can do for them, but of how much we can learn from them about how not to slow-boil yourself to death. Imagine that.

The Brazilian Revolution - Quality of Life Trumps Football

In an era of mass communication it’s surprisingly easy to know very little about a country’s people. My assumption about Brazil was that everybody was crazy about football and up until protests erupted recently I presumed everybody was excited about the Confederations Cup and the Olympics. Clearly I was wrong. What started out as a righteous objection to the price hike of transport was just the tinder catching fire. That something so sacred as football is being sacrificed to a greater need says a lot about how far Brazilians have been pushed.  

Now it’s practically a full-blown revolution as the middle class riots against corruption, poor services and government mis-spending, which includes the inordinate cost of hosting the World Cup and the Olympics. More than a million people demonstrated on Thursday in 80 cities around the country. Compare this to 100 people protesting lasting year about the hike in bus prices.  

It’s starting to look a bit like Egypt. With one major difference; President Dilma Rousseff paid attention and praised Brazilians for their courage in speaking out peacefully. As the protests got violent she didn’t support the violence, but she hasn’t used it as an excuse to shut the door.  

Perhaps that’s because she was radical student herself and can identify with the protestors – many of whom are young and demonstrating for the first time in their lives. Or maybe it’s because she’s taken note of history, and power hasn’t intoxicated and blinded her as it has many activists who led revolutions only to become harsh dictators. Whatever the reasons, partly at Rousseff’s command, bus prices were restored to what they were in quite a few cities, and on Friday she called an emergency meeting with various relevant ministers.  

Some of the demonstrators’ placards have read “Halt evictions”, “Come to the street. It’s the only place we don’t pay taxes”, “Stop corruption. Change Brazil”, "We don't need money for World Cup, we need money for hospitals" and “Government failure to understand education will lead to revolution”. The message is clear. The middle class is awake, alive, articulate and courageous. Not willing any more to take abuse. 

It’s happening all round the world. Call me a radical but I think it’s a good thing. It signals the coming to an end of an era that’s been great for a few but miserable for millions. The world has gone from having two classes, upper and lower with no hope of the lower rising, to three where the middle class enjoyed prosperity. And if you were born with nothing you could make a fortune.  

But the dynamics have been slipping back dangerously close to a 2 class world as the middle class has lost its footing. I guess in a way that's because it still had the mentality of boss and servant. It was a thing of pride to give all your loyalty to a company. Until giving your loyalty was abused and became sacrificing your life and your lifestyle. That’s when the middle class started splitting into two. Bosses and entrepreneurs rose, and workers sank. Bosses became greedier, workers became demoralized until the boundary between the two began solidifying again. In today’s world if you’re born with nothing or you lose what you had and you land in the gutter it’s incredibly difficult to get back up again.  

But all the time the middle class has looked to be losing its power it’s been gathering a different kind of momentum: awareness that it has rights, that people can protest and make a difference. That the masses actually have the power. 

This is always how consciousness grows. When you don't know your worth you get kicked around, you give yourself away to people who abuse your trust. You get angry. You protest. You realise you can drop the boss/servant mentality. You can take your power back. It usually happens when you have nothing left to lose.

The beauty about today's world is that some leaders understand this dynamic and are either actively promoting the middle class or at least recognizing that they have to work with it. I think that’s a beautiful thing. So I'm all in favor of protest and demonstration. I hate violence but I can understand how a person can get to the point of being so constantly dismissed, disrespected and made to pay for others’ inhumanity, corruption and lousy management that they blow a fuse. 

May Brazil have as peaceful revolution as possible; may Rousseff find a way to help the people succeed in their quest for a better run government and a better quality of life. They deserve it.

Good, Bad and Ugly News: Iran's Elections, G20 Spying Scandal and Nigella Lawson Abuse

Last night CNN brought the good, the bad and the ugly right into my home. The good was the result of Iran’s elections. 

After too many years of Ahmadinejad’s narcissistic extremism that ostracised Iran from the rest of the world and destroyed the economy, the Iranians have finally been allowed to have enough of a voice to elect a moderate. 

And that’s what they did. There was a lot scepticism prior to the Ayatollah’s Khomeni’s selection that there would even be a moderate to vote for but that scepticism proved ill-founded.

Hassan Rouhani looks and speaks like a reasonable man. Granted it’s two months before he takes office, and it remains to be seen whether he’s allowed to do what he wants, but he has said that the days of extremism are over. That he wants to forge a relationship with the US and the west. The west, of course, is going to have to come to the party as well. 

His requirements are that the US will not interfere in domestic policy and that Iran will have its nuclear program. The US will probably require total transparency regarding that. Personally, I warmed to Rouhani. I’m tired of western media’s portrayal of Iran as the embodiment of all that’s evil. It’s not. It’s a country with ordinary human beings who clearly aren’t extremists and who deserve the right to forge their own destiny. I think it’s kind of ironic that they have voted a moderate in while in the US conservatives still control Congress and hinder true progress for that country.

Moving on, CNN’s bad was also kind of funny. Turns out the British government spied on the G20 in 2009. Or the Guardian alleges they did. Bit embarrassing for the British hosts this time round.

The ugly was a picture of Nigella Lawson and her husband in a restaurant, he with his hand around her throat, his thumb pressing into her neck. Another shot was shown of her outside the restaurant on her own, in huge distress. As if that wasn’t enough, the bastard put out a press release saying he wasn’t being violent; he just had his hand round her neck while they argued about the children. As if it’s normal to partially choke somebody while you argue. He added that she wasn’t upset afterwards because he’d hurt her, but just because they hate it when they argue.

Well I bet she hates it. I wonder what’s been going on up until this point. Nobody gets to that level of abuse in one leap. Why didn’t she kick him in the shins, call out for help, scream? That she didn’t, says more about him than anything. 

He’s a pig and deserves whatever is coming to him. The whole situation is horrendous and shocking. Not just because of his actions in the restaurant but because we’ve believed a lie. Here we have another beautiful woman who’s seemed like such a great role model. She’s consciously created a universally appealing image from which she’s garnered fame and fortune. It hasn’t all been about food. Part of it has been that she’s an independent and spirited woman who has made a life for herself. But it’s been underpinned by being married to an abuser. That part leaves me feeling betrayed. 

Who knows when the abuse started. If she’d been able to be truthful from the start, would she still be so famous? It’s hard to say. Can you imagine her speaking passionately about being trapped in a marriage of abuse, crying, angrily slamming things down, but still creating marvellous dishes? Getting help, walking away with her children. Now that’s real role modelling. What immense courage that would have taken, though.

Gay Marriage, Racism, Giant Corporate Interest – the Fight Against Injustice

Statistics on gays and lesbians in the US form a very small percentage of the total population. Yet look what they achieve, in spite of the huge and inhuman resistance to them. Treated like animals, spurned by society, laughed at, mocked, hated. Gay politicians fight courageously and are shot for it, like Harvey Milk. That doesn’t stop others from taking up the cause. Brave people. Determined people.

What about African Americans? How hard did they have to fight against crippled minds and psychopathic power?  How many sacrifices did they make, never knowing whether they could succeed or not? How many women and children were raped, never receiving justice, just more of the same? But they didn’t give up.

And now, the right for gays and lesbians to marry is gaining momentum. They will succeed. And although the conservative, intolerant white mentality that supported the KKK and slavery lingers on, sometimes in the most alarming places, despite the racism that underpins all conservative politics in the US, Barack Obama is a twice-elected president.

It only happened because enough people said “it’s enough” while they were demoralized and destitute of spirit; excluded from mainstream society and the benefits that those who are included take for granted. The hardest fight of all. People say it’s easiest to fight when you’ve got nothing to lose. That’s because they’ve never been there. When all you can hold onto is something so minimal it’s invisible to others it’s more precious to you than anything else in the world. To fight knowing you may have to give that up isn’t easy. It crucifies you. But they did it.

How many people, I wonder, have been hurt by the banking crisis? How many lives have been destroyed by the hold giant corporations have on politics? How many people maimed, tortured, killed, because of the power of the military industrial complex?

How many people think banks and bankers should be punished for their crimes and forced to pay where it hurts? I'm sure it's a greater percentage than that of any minority that has fought for its rights and succeeded. Yet Americans seem to remain powerless. Why? Because they don't care enough to actually band together as one and fight and never give up? Because hardliner conservatives continue to be voted into Congress? Because they all use the banks and corporations that are busy destroying them?

It's not just the US, it's western society. Banks and big corporations control the world. But they’re run by people. There are a lot more of us than there are of them. It's time for a world revolution of a completely different sort. No guns, no violence. Just intelligence (as in thinking for ourselves and not letting ourselves be conned by politicians) and persistence. 

Maybe it’s already begun. At the beginning of the fight for gays and lesbians; in the days of slavery and the KKK, it probably looked as though nobody was fighting. But they were. It was just the beginning. It always starts as something internal. That’s where we are with the control that banks and giant corporate interest has over most of us. We're angry, we know it's happening. Pockets of active resistance flare up. We haven't banded together yet but our revolution will gain momentum. Revolutions always do.