STILL ON MY CURRENT INTUITIVE QUEST TOWARD REGAINING PEACE OF MIND

What do we unconsciously learn to emulate at our mother’s knee?

And what else is learned if ‘taken to the woodshed’ by an angered authoritative father who, all too often, metes out corporal punishment as did his all-powerful father?

What needs be widely learned (and ever more deeply absorbed) throughout the prejudiced, yet well-educated faction of our many layered society, today, concerning liberating youngsters from emulating yesteryear’s narrow mindsets that continue to defiantly denigrate every plea to unite humanity as a harmonic whole. as never before?

 “It is somewhat remarkable, that, at a time when knowledge is so generally diffused, when the geography of the world is so well understood—when time and space, in the intercourse of nations, are almost annihilated—when oceans have become bridges—the earth a magnificent hall—the hollow sky a dome—under which a common humanity can meet in friendly conclave—when nationalities are being swallowed up—and the ends of the earth brought together—I say it is remarkable—nay, it is strange that there should arise a phalanx of learned men—speaking in the name of science—to forbid the magnificent reunion of mankind in one brotherhood. A mortifying proof is here given, that the moral growth of a nation, or an age, does not always keep pace with the increase of knowledge, and suggests the necessity of means to increase human love with human learning.”  —Frederick Douglass  1845

Excerpt From The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, published in 1845—so long ago as to anger my mind and fill my heart with sorrow over prejudicial attitudes passed down from one generation to the next, twisting the vulnerable perceptions of millions of children to grow up to emulate men and women who’d been ‘educated’ (at their parents’ dinner tables) to believe in harboring cold blooded hatreds within hard-hearted mindsets as though the Civil War continues to be fought within not-so-secret societies to this very day, suggesting that attitudes we learn to emulate, during childhood, will likely determine whether we grow up to be open-minded, mutually respectful, free thinkers or thoughtless brutes who (have likely been bullied at home) hide from their personal issues (with subconscious bouts of low self esteem) by wearing the mask of their defense system’s kind-hearted persona until the glaring truth of racism slips out of the racist’s two-faced mouth.

And thus does ‘learning’ (like human nature) have two sides.

I believe that, in 1845, Fredrick Douglass’s reference to learning translates into each person’s mindful capacity to work toward interconnecting with our sense of community ever more deeply and expansively by way of mustering the patience necessary while society learns to embrace universal need of personal growth.

On the other hand, had Douglass swooped down to Earth from on high, today, I believe we’d hear this remarkable orator roar—Enough with patience!   THIS is the year 2022!  Enough with 60 years of MLK’s passive marches!  Enough with lasting change is slow to grow widespread’!  Black Lives have ALWAYS mattered just as they Matter, right now!  And what the bloody hell is being done to right Putin’s old blooded criminal wrongs, which are killing The Ukrainians, who are literally fighting for personal freedom, day after day?  Will you well-educated people of the world never—learn?  A brute like Putin will not stop his killing machine until world powers step up and join forces, forcing him to stop in his tracks and retreat into palaces ostentatious enough to dazzle Queen Elizabeth’s royal eye—Must you wait until this lying predator attacks your freedoms, too?  Think Pearl Harbor but in terms of today’s threat of nuclear warfare!

Though the train of thought concerning Douglass’s fury is my own conjecture, I’ve read The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, which breathed life into this self-taught, learned orator and renown author, raised within the heartless, shackled confines of utterly deprived, poorly nourished, impoverished slavery with lash marks aplenty scarring his back, as he’d experienced, first hand, the sad fact that lasting change doth not take place in the absence of growing pains, and as one change for the better leads to another, growing pains must be expected to invade peace of mind  during each next stage of your life and mine.

In addition to the three ‘R’s’, everyone who’s ever walked on planet Earth, has had gargantuan portions of knowledge to learn and absorb concerning attitudes in need of change for the betterment of humankind as a whole as each of us experiences sound reason to seek out, expand and deepen our conscious comprehension of love, truth, peace, war, liberty, community, brotherhood, friendship, self respect, mutual respect, roots and wings, personal boundaries, instinctive reactions, self disciplined attitudes, actions and beliefs concerning mental and emotional intelligence, compassion, empathy, enmeshment, existential growth spurts and death—WHEW!  When the subject is learning about humanity I could go on and on.  And on … and having read Douglass’s memoirs, I dived straight into The Dread Scott decision.  No wonder why Harriet Beecher Stowe felt driven to write and publish Uncle Tom’s Cabin in hopes of brightening the minds of the populous by turning the spotlight upon the savagery of slavery, making abolitionists of those of us whose attitudes of complacency had languished for far too long in self-absorbed ignorance—

“The Lives Grown Out of His Life”

this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro

beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world

where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,

this man, superb in love and logic, this man

shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,

not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,

but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives

fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

—Robert Hayden”

Excerpt From

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass & Henry Louis Gates, Jr.