by Ray Jason
It was one of those “University of
Life” moments. I recognized once again that
I had learned so little in school and yet so very much by simply listening to
the messages that the world provides.
There were three of them in the cayuco - an elderly
woman and a grandson and grand-daughter.
I had just given them some cookies as a little gift, when the woman
asked me if I had a wife. When I said
no, she asked me why. Realizing that
bachelorhood is very rare in Latin America, I knew it would be difficult to
explain. So I carefully answered in my
best Spanish that I had never married because “I loved my freedom so much.” There was a profound pause before the woman
responded. Then she fixed me with her
eyes and answered me with seven decades worth of sadness, longing and
resignation. She said, “I
understand.”
As they thanked me again for the little gift and paddled
away, I was heartbroken by this very personal example of how utterly unjust so
much of the human condition is here on our wet, wondrous planet. That’s because the reason that she understood
my passion for Freedom, was because she had rarely experienced any in her
entire life.
When she was a young girl-child of five she was
probably already helping to raise her three year old sister or brother. At seven she would begin to combine
schoolwork with her daily household chores.
Sundays brought the additional obligation of going to church. But even more ominously, it burdened her with
the threat of the forever flames of hell if she practiced birth control. So in her early teens she was already
pregnant and any wisp of freedom had now vanished. And from there it would be a half a century
with barely a day off from serious labor.
The unfairness of her life of ceaseless obligations as
compared to my own carefree existence, troubled me in that deep place where the
question “WHY? Why? why?” echoes incessantly. And what is even more disturbing is that her
predicament is shared by BILLIONS of people struggling for survival on this
lonely living planet orbiting amidst millions of lifeless stars. But my distress is further aggravated by the
knowledge that most of the fortunate people in the so-called First World are
oblivious to the plight of these billions of fellow members of the human
family.
How can this be???
How can a planet this abundant and diverse allow social stratification
that dooms so many people to a life of ceaseless toil and struggle and worry? How can so many spend their one life on Earth
in servitude merely because of an accident of birth? How can we look at ourselves in the mirror
when hundreds of millions of families never get to take their children to a
zoo, or treat them to an ice cream or laugh with them on a carousel?
During the next few days I tried to understand how
such grotesque injustice had entrenched itself in the global status quo so
thoroughly that it is barely noticed. My
verdict is that the two main guilty parties in this travesty are Organized
Religion and Unfettered Capitalism.
*******
THE MIGHTY CHURCHES – Here is an interesting challenge
for you - name the prominent religions that encourage small families. That is obviously a trick question - since
there are none. The Big Three -
Christianity, Islam and Judaism - all compel their flocks to go forth and
multiply – and with great vigor.
In the case of the Christians it is not just suggested;
it is commanded. And the penalty for
failing to procreate according to church policy is eternal, fiery
damnation. If a person is unlucky enough
to fall into the hands of a terrorist, they might end up being tortured until
they die. But if they violate the rules
of the Catholic Church, they will supposedly experience horrible agony even
after death - for all eternity.
Why do the churches demand large families? Their true motive is to expand the membership
in their particular cult, and to increase the money that they receive from
their flock. Here is a simple way to
test my contention. If the Catholic
Church’s bogus birth control policy is not designed to enlarge their membership
then they would not object to every other child born to Christian parents being
raised as a Muslim. But if you mandated
that, you would be shocked by how swiftly the Pope decrees that large families
are no longer God’s will.
When the churches force their females to have unwanted
children, they are dramatically narrowing the range of opportunities for those
women. Due to the responsibilities of
child-raising, they usually discontinue their schooling. The around-the-clock needs of the youngster
greatly diminish the mom’s ability to travel and experience new things. And having an additional mouth to feed means
the mother has to sacrifice life’s little pleasures such as a new dress every
once in a while. And then when this
cycle is repeated a half a dozen times, the poor woman is physically and
emotionally drained.
And why do these hundreds of millions of women have to
experience this hardship and poverty and serfdom that these religious dictates
impose upon them? They suffer it so that
a horde of male priests, mullahs and rabbis can experience greater wealth and
power.
*******
CARCINOGENIC CAPITALISM - When the basic operating
principle of the dominant economic system on the planet is GREED, there is
almost no chance that it will foster human happiness and the greater good. The pathological pursuit of maximum profit
does not raise all boats. It lifts the
mega-yachts but sinks the boats of the hard-working, ordinary people.
And the system is so cancerous that instead of
scorning these economic alpha males, we worship them. The Media, which is owned by about a dozen
extremely rich men, portray these gluttonous tycoons as admirable rather than
despicable. Besides being ruthless,
these corporate giants are also clever.
They now virtually own the government through their campaign
contributions and battalions of lobbyists.
And so the elected officials - who should be a deterrent to thwart the
excesses of unfettered Capitalism - are instead its enablers.
This leads back to the poor and dispossessed of this
world. Obscene fortunes cannot be made
unless hundreds of millions of human worker bees are toiling in the sweatshops
and laboring in the fields for wages that barely support their survival. But there are plenty of wise and
compassionate thinkers who know how to break this cycle. They know how to redistribute wealth and how
to end starvation and how to conquer injustice.
However, those at the peak of the pyramid have so much power that they
seem to be invincible. And even worse,
their surveillance and control capacities keep growing and mutating – just like
a cancer.
*******
A couple of days later the grandmother who inspired
this meditation paddled over to AVENTURA again.
The two grand-children were not along this time. I handed her a packet of cookies for herself
and one to take back to the youngsters.
Then she reached under a tattered rice bag and pulled out a beautiful
coconut and passed it up to me. My years
in the Banana Latitudes have made me a bit of a connoisseur when it comes to “drinking
nuts” and this was a large, gorgeous one that would surely be delicious.
For a brief instant we both held the coconut
simultaneously and our eyes connected. I
could see in hers the sad resignation that she had mastered down the decades in
order to cope with the unfairness of Life.
But there was something else in those dark, Indio eyes – and that was the
gleam of goodness and dignity and generosity that sometimes shines through the
human spirit.