Thanksgiving Reflections

The unspoken, the rules within a family, within a society, that favor some and disfavor others, burden us. We wrestle with them, seeking to overturn, subvert, while at the same time living comfortably within the confines of the familiar, like the Pink Floyd song Mother:

Hush now baby, baby, don't you cry.
Mama's gonna make all your nightmares come true.
Mama's gonna put all her fears into you.
Mama's gonna keep you right here under her wing.
She won't let you fly, but she might let you sing.
Mama's gonna keep baby cozy and warm.
Ooh baby, ooh baby, ooh baby,
Of course mama's gonna help build the wall.

Privilege is the wall that gets built to keep out the danger that threatens the social order, the feudal rules of succession that guarantee that the show will go on without bloodshed or instability. But sometimes the wall gets to be too big a burden, too large a price for anyone to accept. That's when the resentments surface, the banner of egalite is lifted and the unspoken erupts to the surface.

Some rush to Mother in the form of some certainty, either DNA, (think eugenics), the Lord, (think Fundamentalist any religion), or the Devil, (think Steve Bannon or Ayn Rand), in order to defend what seems eternal and true.

Some rush to Mother in the form of some future certainty, either social structure (think Marx), the Lord (think liberation theology), or revenge (think Storming of the Bastille), in order to justify tearing down the walls.

Sometimes the battle lines are clear, other times they are blurred. Allegiances and alliances shift and shape. When the smoke clears, new biases emerge and the show goes on with new leaders, new privileged. 

The unspoken must be spoken and acknowledged. That is the basic truth of Black Lives Matter, the Me Too movement, and also groups and causes such as the Palestinian people's fight. A system of privilege based on slavery, racial supremacy, or gender chauvinism must be overturned. Of course it makes some people uncomfortable, might cause some to have to adjust to new realities, might take real struggle to achieve.

When things are left unspoken they blossom and flower into madness, paranoia.

Thanskgiving is when we come together to acknowledge the grace of God, which is to say the privilege that has blessed us, as Americans, and to say that we all are on the same team, at least for the day. But how much better we could be if the reins of power were held in the hands of those that acknowledge the unspoken and the need to struggle. Before they are torn away by the inevitable forces of re-evolution.