Shifting Images

    If we thought of ourselves as significant parts of a larger whole, why would we chew on our own foot? The current widespread inability to care about other people and the planet is because they are seen as outside and other. Unacknowledged fears and dissatisfactions attach to the outside other creating the illusion we know where the danger is. The devouring of the weak by the strong is the animal tendency that the first law in human history, the Code of Hammurabi, was written to prevent. A righteous society kept the strong from harming the weak. This was seen as the step needed to transcend our animal nature. As Eldridge Cleaver wrote, “Survival of the fittest is the law of the jungle. Cooperation is the law of civilization.”

     In a specific section “the Code” recognized and penalized unproven slander, that human tendency to call out those faults they themselves possess. I’ve come across this observation in Marcus Aurelius, Marcel Proust and Willa Cather and psychology. Look at current public figures for plenty of examples.

      A precept found in all religions says treat people the way you would like to be treated. I think of it as the law of the mirror neurons, empathy cells, they are sometimes called. We understand what hurts others through our own feelings so damaging others requires ignorance of personal feelings. Prejudice and antagonism can’t be solved with a surface veneer of proper behavior. It requires psychological self-awareness, seeing the things we fault in others as the things within ourselves we need to recognize and master.

     Spending time every week working with the I Ching is my tool for self-development. Its good advice on how to be a “superior person”  is entirely dependent on the qualities in yourself you cultivate, where you give time and attention. This is actually strengthening those qualities in the circuits of the brain so it becomes second nature. To build on your own best qualities creates the self-respect necessary to respect others.

     Respect for every individual creates harmony. Dividing things into categories divides us into groups that emphasize the differences. Labels deplete meaning and sever connections between people. When we call courtesy “Political Correctness”, it turns the virtue into something scorned. With categories, you get sorting and ranking, preferred and privileged, and the association with labels and brands that keep attention on the surface.

    Images communicate through commonality, the way we all respond to what we see. The meaning depends on the whole context and each person gets their version of the same essence, the different details of life unified by the shared patterns of experience. Artists can provide unifying images that offer a visual truth about our connectedness. Though we may be an individual nest of skin containing organs, we are nested in a family, in a community, in a region all the way out to our shared planetary nest which contains us all. We are responsible for the condition of our nest, and with the right images we can change the way we see.