Making Amends

Making Amends:

The Tao Te Ching says:

A great nation is like a great man,
when he makes a mistake, he realizes it.
Having realized it he admits it.
Having admitted it, he corrects it.

Every person, every nation, makes mistakes. Making amends can be a noble act, and is ultimately a necessary one. Noble, if no one is forcing us to do it. We choose to recognize our mistakes and correct them. Ultimately necessary, because the universe simply doesn't support imbalance for long. It just doesn't work that way. Making amends is a pro-active measure toward balancing our universal books before the universal IRS, with icy, non-negotiable indifference, does it for us. The magnitude of a mistake influences the difficulty of correcting it. We have some very difficult amends to make, and thus far, we're failing miserably. I intend to examine some of the reasons for that.

Born in the USA, post WWII , we perceived ourselves as the most righteous, most powerful, and most noble people on earth. We were the “Good Guys”, the “White Hats”. As we grew, we learned that our wealth, power and comfort was afforded us by imposing oppressive poverty, suffering, indignity and death upon billions of less fortunate people on every continent. We came to recognize that we weren't so very “White Hat” after all. For many of us, the need to make amends is a persistent, unavoidable awareness. Unfortunately, for internal and external reasons, making these amends seems virtually impossible.

One powerful obstacle is the inertia of our deeply internalized sense of entitlement. We may care about the oppressed billions, past and present, but to make any significant correction calls for sacrifice. It calls for broad, unconditional sharing of the wealth - genuine generosity. We're not much good at that. We're willing to care, we're willing to share, but generally, only if it doesn't disrupt our personal comfort groove. We instinctively resist any interference with the lifestyle we've come to believe we're entitled to. Making amends may impact our level of convenience and comfort. That concern alone justifies setting our responsibility on the back burner. With further consideration, we to turn the burner off.

Another potent and legitimate obstacle, is the ineffectiveness of charitable organizations. Charitable contributions are frequently mismanaged by the organizations who claim to serve the needy, but primarily serve their own boards, consultants and vendors. Additionally, contributions are frequently stolen by the leaders of the most desperately impoverished peoples. Adding salt to the wound, these are commonly leaders that our government have or do currently support. This knowledge dissuades us from contributing and further disables our efforts to terminate our complicity in the our governments intentional and systematic abuse of humanity.

And what of the needy and the suffering in our own neighborhoods, in our own country? We know that the poorest of our poor are better off than the poor of other nations. Additionally, we know that laboring within our economic system, binds us (through taxes and tacit acceptance)to actively and passively enabling the very system that's responsible for the wrongs against humanity at home and abroad, that we're attempting to remedy. We increase the number of poor - we prolong and exacerbate the harm. We're putting out fires with gasoline. So, in our genuine pursuit of making amends, that door too slams shut in our faces.

Understandably frustrated , with no apparent way to correct our wrongs, we can only deny or suppress the instinct to make things right. But, that pesky instinct doesn't go away. We live with it everyday. It manifests cyclically in small reminders followed by attempted repression of the feelings. We suffer from feelings of wrong doing and hypocrisy. We suffer from our apparent helplessness to correct it. As our options for redemption are systematically eliminated, guilt, shame, grief and anger grows within us. Unable to effectively withdraw from the creation of the suffering, we default to salving our spiritual distress in the best ways we know. Ironically, those “ways” reinforce the problem we feel helpless to address.

For example, we often dive headfirst into a distraction fueled, self service frenzy. We redouble our efforts to make and keep more money. We work desperately to attain and hold power, status, and righteousness. We deny the suffering we create. We simply stop paying attention. We rationalize our choices. With sufficient denial, we can temporarily mask the symptoms of gnawing guilt. But it tends to resurface. We treat the dis-ease we feel with distraction, denial and self-medication – all of which are self-punitive, self sabotaging and ultimately self-destructive. Sometimes we default to the perverse paradox of minimizing, dehumanizing and demonizing those we wish we could help, but can't. If we can deny their humanity, we can deny our obligation to help. We even deny something so obvious as our own deep, inner dis-ease. The problem with denial is that it doesn't work. Denial doesn't solve the problem. Denial doesn't make amends. It doesn't relieve our dis-ease.

Perhaps the most damaging long term effect is that for "denial as remedy" to be effective, we must dumb down. We must ratchet down our awareness of self and others, mute the voice within, blind ourselves, ignore our conscience. We must deny that we have the power to stand for what's right. We force ourselves into a state of helplessness. Effective denial requires that we become less conscious, less aware, less compassionate and less connected.

This leads to atrophy of the prime motivator, the innate drive to expand our comprehension of reality, including ourselves as part of humankind. We cannot simultaneously expand and contract our awareness. Consciously or unconsciously we choose - we expand, or we shut down. If we shut down, we acquiesce to accepting a small and impotent version of life. In choosing helplessness, we guarantee that we'll soon occupy the hell we've created for others. In dumbing ourselves down, in denying our responsibility we increase the depth and breadth of the destructive panorama. Paradoxically, we somehow manage to simultaneously accept and deny, our freakish commitment to self destruction on the personal and global stage. We become internal wells of denial, indignity and suffering. The internal toxicity expands within and around us. This testifies to the veracity of the timeless adage – As within, so without.

In our endeavor to “balance the universal books” we encounter overwhelming resistance. We must accept overwhelmingly uncomfortable self-examination . If we choose to dumb ourselves down, to entertain ourselves into oblivion, if we fail to confront it, the results will be almost unthinkable.

Yeah, it's right about now, that denial and distraction start sounding pretty good. We can just pretend we never think about these things, and neither does anyone else. We can just have a drink and some witty, distracting dialogue about the “important” stuff . Your place or mine? We can plop down in front of the electronic narcotic, share a soothing big plasma mind melt and have another drink. A good solid alcohol brain bath will help us pretend it isn't there. It'll go away all by itself. God Bless America., or God Help Us. We must find a way to correct the suffering and the grotesque, murderous inequity we've visited upon the rest of humanity. If we don't, rest assured that soon we'll hear our own collective, desperate, shrieking plea “God Forgive Us” emanating from beneath the crushed white hat of a shattered America, on a devastated planet.