When I first met Ernst less than two years ago and realized how horribly
he had been vilified and smeared through no fault of his own, I said to
him: "I have nothing to give to you except my good name. I have lived
an impeccable life. I will just put my reputation on the line as a weapon
against vilification."
And Ernst said something to the effect: "You don't know the tactics
of the enemy. . ." and I just laughed because I could not imagine that
anyone ever could touch me that way. I had made a lifetime career out of
being decent, honest and straightforward, and I believed that if I put my
good name up as spiritual collateral, that's all that would be needed. That
would enrich the message - which was that we wanted a respectable, clean
and safe world, and wouldn't take anything less.
Well, I learned - and it was a necessary lesson because I realized first-hand
that vilification is a tactical weapon in plentiful supply because there
are a lot of hirelings out there with vested interests in the status quo
who'll want to keep their warm nest cozy. It is a handy weapon. It's ever
at their fingertips. It doesn't cost a dime.
Today my name is mud, thanks to those grovelers and toadies. Vilification,
particularly on the Internet, costs them precisely nothing-and if you are
the target, you learn it will take massive energy to strip it off your skin.
And if you hope against all hope you can subtract yourself out of the foul
equation, thinking it will go away and they will go away, you'll get pursued.
You'll get invited. You will get needled and hassled and bickered and stung.
As I have said before, a horsefly has a mission.
Too many people will get easily intimidated by this obnoxious scurrility.
Who wants to have his good name shredded? Most people, valuing their lifestyle
and their loved ones, shrink from the overflow of all that muck and slime.
I have thought a lot about combating vilification, and I believe that it's
a waste of time to spend another thought on it. I know that our energies
are spent much better in other, more constructive areas.
And one of the most useful concept in this spiritual war is that we must
never forget that there are more of us than of "them." We far
outnumber "them." And if each one of us does in our corner of
our lives what needs to be done to keep our spiritual breathing space clean,
there is very little that vilification can do-because the EVIDENCE surrounding
us is to the contrary.
I'll show you by example:
When I was still a school psychologist, I had to serve a loosey-goosey school.
It had a blowsy principal who lived the padded life. He was one natty gent.
This principal's idea of pedagogy was to perfume his midriff so kids could
come and hug him, take a good whiff of him and smell how good he smelled,
and walk away enhanced.
(He used to call me a "Nazi" sometimes - but trust me: only in
jest. Until I started whipping up the Zundelsite to have a corporate image,
nobody EVER called me names in vicious undertones!)
Now Ingrid loves the intellect, and Ingrid was on a campaign. I wanted to
clean up that school. I wanted kids to read and write and think and have
some manners and some discipline. I also wanted them to function in a setting
becoming to a cognitive environment because I believe in habitat affecting
our output. You can't think clean thoughts in a dumpster.
What drove me particularly crazy was that the kindergarten class would use
the afternoon for what was called "sensory-motor finger-painting",
and so we had ketchup and jell-o and chocolate pudding all over the place,
with the kiddies just licking their hands and smearing stuff on tables,
chairs, walls, teacher and each other. It was a revolting show of chaos,
offending me profoundly.
I also felt for the poor janitor who, every night, would have to scrub the
place down and get rid of all that mess. By then, it had dried and was awful.
Each night that poor old man would spend three, four hours in that bedeviled
kindergarten class with SOS pad, soap and rags.
I was then still working on my dissertation. One day I muttered something
about the urgent need to time-test perilous fascistic absolutes endangering
society in general and school environments specifically unless we offered
counter-measures worthy of broad-based, progressive managerial styles.
(All in one breath! I CAN speak jargonese. . . )
Five minutes before the bell rang to dismiss the students for the day, I
walked into that kindergarten classroom with my good janitor in tow and
gave each little kiddie a nice, warm, soapy wash rag. Stop watch in hand,
I said in a firm way:
"Here's what you do. Each one of you first wipe your hands, then wipe
your desk, then wipe your chair, then pick it up and put it on the desk,
then throw that wash rag in that bin and line up by the door. Whoever is
the winner and has the cleanest place will get an ice cream cone."
Within five minutes, the room was spic and span! It was awesome!
There is a lesson here so simple and so basic I do not need to point it
out. One person can't do it alone in cost-effective fashion. Ernst just
cannot do it alone, in the dark of the night, surrounded by chairs that
are empty. I cannot do it alone, and neither can you. But together we can.
In concert we can. It takes very little. A voice, a rag and soap and lots
of willing hands.
Let's not let name-calling stand in our way. We need to realize that where
we live and work and need to think things through it's filthy! Foul! And
sticky. And there are "principals" out there with perfumed belly
buttons. They have a vested interest. Their livelihood, they hope, depends
on their good smell.
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"We must ask where we are and whither we are tending."