I just talked with my ex for about an hour. I wanted to ask for his help in supporting the child mentioned a few posts ago. For some reason this conversation went deep. And he ended up apologizing for everything he did to hurt me. I believed him, and became very tearful. Everyday miracles are happening. I feel like the word is changing, but I think maybe I am changing and allowing things to be different. He would not have been able to apologize if I had not become more vulnerable.
We are changing...it's happening!
I have continued my relationship with the Quakers in my backyard, now imagining what the world looks like from way up high. Maybe trees offer perspective. I wonder, if I could get way up there, if I could spot all the broken bits of myself still lying about like pieces of rubbish. Perhaps I will work on this later.
The problem with Darwin's theory, and Darwin apparently recognized it himself, is how do we explain altruism. There are altruistic members of every clan, the strongest, bravest, noblest who will sacrifice themselves for another. I read some scientists trying to write it off as ways of preserving their own genetic pool. I think scientists are missing the point. Why do I have a dove, who has almost regrown her wing feathers, in my office? Why did I want to save her? It doesn't preserve my gene pool, or even my species - since the best we do is overhunt and eat them. I do it because she is alive and I want to save her one individual life. Each individual is important.
What happens when we find stray kittens? We adopt them, make them part of the family. That is not survival of the fittest. That is love of life. That is in us, the familial connections we have with life. And with oddballs like me, it extends to the trees, to the water, to the Earth. We learn that baby girls are being abandoned in China - we adopt them. And we would lay our lives down for these daughters. This is not survival of the fittest. This is humane behavior.
I am back to destruction of humanity. We all have our biases, and I think Darwin's was toward competitiveness. It was what his class saw, how his class-gender-historical perspective defined the world. Look at who we honor - those with power and money. They are the ones who survive nowadays!
Maybe there are Darwinian humans and humane humans. The Darwinians seek power in order to survive, and seem to believe there is a fixed amount of resources. The one who is best at gathering resources for self survives, and so we honor them, try to befriend them, suck up to them, hope for the trickle down effect. We see that in nature because that is the way we interpret everything. What if there were more ways to see. I have heard that the Native Americans believed the leaders, the most powerful, were the first to give. An Indian biologist would never have seen 'survival of the fittest' behavior and described it in white, colonial terms. The same behavior would have been interpreted another way. Probably they would have seen the altruism first, and recognized the love that permeates life.
Something happened to the people who use and abuse children, who see women as objects or belongings.
I may be wrong, because this is coming from heart and not brain, but maybe not...
The term white, colonial is hitting me. I remember when I realized our background was English and Swedish, in addition to Irish. I thought of the Vikings and the British Empire, and I was so sad. All of our ancestors were conquerors who used violence to take the world. When I found we were descended from two of the Mayflower families, I writhed. Part of that Puritan ability to travel out in search of religious freedom, then torture and kill anyone who believed differently, is in us. My brain is racing too much to go further here, but there is something in this culture that allows the behaviors that own and objectify. Then other cultures imitate in order to survive.
Thank you for noticing my courage and pointing it out to me. I have a hard time finding it in myself. I am glad to see you are softening, and accepting that our sibs truly don't remember. But I think you needed a rant to release some pressure to allow room for acceptance. The education helped, too. I wonder which is worse, though, B#1 who has rewritten our history, believing we were a perfect sitcom family or S#3 who knows it was bad and that her lack of memories protects her sanity. I think S#3 is in more pain, but actually healthier. And to have B#3 say he "deserved the ass-kicking" Dad gave him chilled me all the way to my soul. He doesn't know he was worth more than that. He doesn't recognize that he was tortured and abused. He doesn't know what a precious child he was. He thinks the way we were treated was okay.
But none of us know.
While talking to my ex, I talked about this work we are doing. I talked about the sexual abuse. He asked if it happened to me, and I said I don't know, I can't remember. But tears began, and I don't know if that was me or you or all of us.
Love and hugs back to you, my little sister!
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