We live in paradox, all of us, which I define in this instance as being both human and divine. Perhaps what I mean is better put this way: we humans are seriously flawed and messed up, petty, mean, and unkind and yet, we’re also seriously beautiful, capable of so much good, decency and kindness, such love and compassion. We can and must be what we are: complex, contradictory, authentic, false, flawed, scared and stupid, full of doubt, while also hoping for, and occasionally embodying the ideal, our better selves, wiser, kinder, smarter, surer. We can be both; we are both. Complications and contradictions come with and are an integral part of our human operating systems.
In that way, being all things, containing many worlds, women can be both lovers of men and righteously raging dismantlers of the patriarchy, a system that benefits all men, of which system too many men are completely and utterly blind. We can love, as a good friend of mine does, her gay son and still be a devout Catholic, a religion whose doctrine calls homosexuality a disorder. I gotta admit, I struggle with her on this, while acknowledging her Catholicism is bone marrow deep. Mind-boggling, and not my personal paradox, for sure, given this ex-Catholic actively disdains the Catholic Church, but then I’m not a fan of any religion or institutionalized system of belief, because they’re misogynistic by design, policy, and doctrine, and very often deeply racist as well, reflecting the culture or cultures at large.
I also acknowledge the good, the comfort, many religions provide in communities large and small, for individuals and groups. Still, like racism, and racist systems, the misogyny embedded in all religions is working exactly as intended, which is to repress and subjugate women world-wide while elevating men, their aims and needs, while bringing in big untaxable bucks.
Living in a state of paradox brings discomfort, walking the line between good and bad, the daily acts and gestures of kindness versus the overall weight of days, weeks, months, and actual centuries of inhumane humanity. I saw a meme recently where a European guy in a conquistador outfit was saying to a group of indigenous people, ‘You should be grateful! We got you to stop worshipping the sun!’, to which the indigenous said, ‘Dude, the sun is real!’, which is about where I stand on religious belief, period.
We can hope for better, while preparing for the worst. We can be both realists and dreamers, in fact I would say we have to be, especially in an age of despair and global issues that could, and may, overwhelm. We can believe and say we hate racism, yet still be racist, filled with unconscious biases learned at our grandparents’ knees; that’s certainly where I learned it, as well as in the newspapers and magazines covering the race riots and upheaval of the decades in which I was born and raised.
A Republican predecessor of mine in office as Town Supervisor told me he opposed a certain individual, also a Republican, becoming the new county attorney. The attorney in question was black, and this elderly white man went on to say that his opposition was because he hated negroes, all negroes. He then said, which I will never forget as long as I live, ‘You probably think I’m a racist.’ Well, Yes, yes, I do, because you are! But, I didn’t say that. I said, ‘We all are, all white people are racist, but we can be anti-racist, too, not letting our prejudices blind us, leading us to do and say things that are simply wrong or untrue.’ I don’t think he gave a toss what I said, or thought, but I’m glad at least I managed to both respond and stay polite. I guess? I probably could’ve done better.
It was my first year in office, the first of four long years dealing with casual racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-poor people in general statements from white male colleagues on the Board of Supervisors and in meetings all over my rural county, which I challenged every time, making the speakers at least a bit less comfortable. I hope.
Paradox is defined as ‘a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition, one that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, or logically unacceptable’. We are, by nature, by design, paradoxical creatures. I know people with bi-racial or black family members who think Black Lives Matter is nonsense or worse, a hate group; others with gay brothers or sisters who say ‘the gays’ are too ‘present’ in current American life. Huh?
We Americans and people all over the developed world have income and opportunity gaps that are ever-widening, but we also have an immense empathy gap; I believe they’re closely related and interwoven. How we fix it is challenging, but I suspect we all need to step outside our personal comfort zones when confronted with our own and other people’s ignorance and meanness to cross that line, the line between our cruel, lesser selves, toward our better, kinder and – I would argue – wiser versions of who we are.