Main Stream Media Shrapnel & Declogging

Every once in a while, just like a victim of terrorist bombs (but no where near the same degree), I also have little pieces of shrapnel that surface and I have to deal with.

terrorist bombers put nails or glass or whatevers around their bombs so that when they explode, they get the extra carnage that they lust for -or their leaders lust for. That, combined with things that get blown up around -it leaves so much shrapnel inside a person, that the doctors can only take out the big pieces and leave the survivor to deal with the smaller, really embedded pieces as they slowly surface back up to the skin--its a long process.

I don't want to diminish what they are going through, but on a smaller scale, I feel as I've I had a blast of media poison when I was younger and slowly slowly shrapnel comes to the surface.  Depending on my maturity, my development, I then deal with it.

So today's shrapnel is:

Seeing Indians from India, Sudanese, Nigerians, etc., as humans!!  (on a different plane than before).

I think the American media trains people to view people from the Asian continent and the African continent as just a bunch. A lump. A pile. A mass. So when I hear that people were killed by the hundreds, its like hearing there is a storm in a far away city in America; you hope all is well and that everyone braces themselves and don't think much after that.

But after hundreds being killed -people aren't "well".  And bracing ones self is not enough. Many, many families are hurt and crying for their babies, their sons, daughters, fathers, mothers. friends. Whole communities are effected and discouraged.

The big stories when I was young was Indian train crashes.  There was always some horrific train crash with hundreds of casualties.  I think they even listed how much cattle was lost as well. That, to me was odd, as if there were fishes, humans, and cattle. All without speech! All from the animal world.

Truly, I even started to imagine Africans and Asians as people with tunnel vision -which is how  I imagined animals then- creatures, albeit nice creatures- who only see directly in front of them and don't have peripheral vision.

Well, thank God all that had changed. It was a slow process beginning with me stepping away from an abusive, closed home and stepping into a world where I dated Nigerians -that made them somewhat real. I wasn't fully healed from the abuse and so even dating was not a healthy affair.

Getting to know a whole other culture also helped. After I moved away from home, I got...CABLE!! woohoo! lol. That really opened me up to different worlds. I really enjoyed the Islam channel and the Hindu channel. My favorite was the Hindu channel with all the bollywood music videos and their sitcoms. It really helped me to understand that they are regular people, they have feelings.  But still I couldn't understand it when hundreds get reported dead from a disaster or from a murderer in the news in such a stoic way. As if, the appropriate emotion is no emotion.

This past Shabbat, I was telling my children about the different names of God.  It was tricky because, in Judaism, one does not say these names unless one is actually trying to invoke God. So it would go something like this:

"And there's Shakai. If you change the K into a D, you get another name of God..that name is about limits, too much, too little...." As I spoke, the kids mentally replaced the k with a d and shouted out the "answer"!

To show them that it was a scary thing (without scarimg them) I would duck my face into a blanket as if scared.  The kids had a good laugh about it, but then they would say all the names just to see me duck under the blanket! Finally it go too much, I said, "Enough!" ("dai!") and started behaving in a stoic manner, so that they will follow suit (and stop playing around and saying God's Holy Names so callously). It worked. They calmed down and we continued the lesson.

But I wonder if the  MSM reporters do the same thing. Might they report things in a stoic manner to invoke stoic responses to these horrific tragedies? Well, whatever the motive, I had learned the lesson.

Then I entered the Jewish world. In that world, they had their own media so I heard Jewish news about Jewish people --quite different from how MSM portrayed them.  Even in the African American world, the news by Blacks themselves were quite critical of themselves. It was still hard to arouse sympathy, connection...compassion. (nowadays, its alot better!). But in the Jewish world, when one soldier was kidnapped, it was a tragedy- a precious soul into the hands of angry, hateful people who have no problems torturing for the sake of torturing.

Whole communities would gather together to pray for rain. Schoolchildren took time away from their studies to gather in the auditorium and pray for a communal need.

People cared for each other. I learned. And thank God, this heart of flesh expanded into having compassion for the rest of the world.  To hear callously that hundreds of Sudanese Christians were burned (burned alive!!) hurts me more than I could ever describe to someone who is still numbed from MSM pioson of stoicism.

Now, the following may sound arrogant to the ears of non-Jews, but there is this belief by some that Israel is a microcosm of the world. That every Jew represents a part of the world. Which explains why, whenever something bad happens, it could be the furthest thing from Jewish life, the world likes to blame the Jews for it. This seems to be a belief that some Jews carry as a burden, and the world (unwittingly?) carries with venom! They'll publicly say that Jews are nothing, but have conspiracy theories that Jews are just about to take over whole planets, they have all the money, all the gold, all silver, everything theirs. They basically give them this authority.  But if, IF this is so, then what part of the world do I represent?

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A friend of mine went to a Chinese medicine doctor. The doctor said there was a part of her that is underdeveloped.  I was surprised to hear that! Can Chinese Medicine help in that regard? Truly in that realm that is where I heard the most -the closest- explanation of sexual molestation's spiritual effects. Feel free to check it "Chinese Medicine and Sexual Abuse".  While I don't believe everything she wrote (he?) there, its food for thought.

I also suspect there is a part of me that has not matured enough.  Its the output part of me. The way I respond in public settings.  I am working on that. I think ever since I started wondering about, and doing research on dancing, and actually dancing,  I've been towards that path. But I'm nowhere near where I need to be.  I want to be able to dance more freely, to say what's on my mind in a tactful way without fear of offending (especially if I said it in a most tactful way!) in appropriate settings. I want to get that part of me out from under the boots of fear of man.

Once that happens, only then can I truly explore what can I do for the world? What good can I dance down?  How can I elevate those I care for and love? Too much time is wasted already. Frivolous phone calls -Waste.  Being down and sad about something -Waste. Mulling over guilt -Waste! Enough Wastes already.
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It could be that the world simply can't care about Sudan, and the many other nations in dire need of help.  Perhaps everyone fell under the influence of Esau's way of thinking: pretend to be good, hunt men, and dwell on the mountain of she'ar (which is similar to the word "hair" in Hebrew).

musing...