More hope, please.

[gement]

So, California has declared discriminatory marriage policies based on sexual orientation unconstitutional.

You could have learned this from a number of other journals on my friends list, or probably by walking outside. It's not why I'm posting.

I'm posting because this feels like a bit of a sole bright spot lately. I've been researching history. A lot of history. A lot of how people have treated each other. And the more I read, the more I think I shouldn't bother writing anymore.

I don't even have to go looking for it. When I see themes from my writing in the news, I can't help but look, and see the parallels. I'm not going to link, because I don't feel like making the car-wreck fascination as easy for my friends as it was for me. But in the last month I've seen...

A definition of "picquet" (picket) which was not the definition I was looking for, but was an old punishment for junior officers(!) in the military. Control of information in North Korea. The logistics and political theory of modern hostage exchange. An article in the P-I on the psychological effects of solitary confinement in our current prison system. An LJ entry where someone wrote down her second-hand Holocaust survivor story, one she has not seen elsewhere in the public media on the topic, involving the Auschwitz brothels (public record says the women were not Jewish, and does not mention the adjoining boys' brothel at all).

Today I did a little math and adjusted my mental understanding of a British pound during the Regency period to be more like $1000 (I had been thinking of it as $100). Doing the math about what people were living on led me around to calculations on what people are living on now.

I can't take this anymore. At least my vampires have an excuse. And they usually pay for what they take. Because, well, hell, they can afford to.

Sorry to go all emo here, but...

How do we stand it? As humans, how do we stand what we do to each other?

Can I please have some more links like the marriage news? I need to understand why we keep going right now.

Edit: I would also appreciate links to the bright spots of history, times and places where women have owned property and had more than decorative authority, where different cultures have mingled without bigotry in polite society, where people have carved out corners of sexual freedom, where those above have served those down below (to borrow a line). Where people have been decent to each other, and found joy.

Comments

[morinon.livejournal.com]

Actually, according to accounts I've read, Ghengis Khan's empire was actually one of the more tolerant and SAFER places in the world. It was said that a woman could walk alone from Samarkand to Beijing without fear.
Women owning property is actually common among 'primitive' tribes, many of which still have matriarchies to this day.

[gement.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Note to self, learn more about Genghis Khan's empire. But probably not so much more about him, because you don't build an empire like that without being a right bastard.

[jairen82.livejournal.com]

Yes...Genghis was a right bastard...Long quotation from Herman Hesse here:

"I am a sinner and you are a sinner, but someday the sinner will be Brahma again, will someday attain Nirvana, will someday become a Buddha. Now this 'someday' is illusion; it is only a comparison. The sinner is not on the way to a Buddha-like state; he is not evolving, although our thinking cannot conceive things otherwise. No, the potential Buddha already exists in the sinner; his future is already there. The potential hidden Buddha must be recognized in him, in you, in everybody. The world...is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people--eternal life. It is not possible for one person to see how far another is on the way; the Buddha exists in the robber and dice player; the robber exists in the Brahmin. During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore, it seems to me that everything that exists is good--death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me. I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed lust, that I hat to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it."

Maybe not a helpful passage, but one that helps me feel better about the world. Also from the same book:

"It seems to me...that love is the most important thing in the world. It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect."

Siddhartha by the way. Great book if you've never read it. It sounds kinda disassociative with life, but if you consider that just by loving everything you find a way to heal the wounds of those who can't love...I dunno...works for me :)

[jairen82.livejournal.com]

As a quick P.S., some believe the first Japanese Emperor was actually a woman, and one of the last Chinese imperial rulers was a woman (and a bitch of a woman too...think she ended up killing most of her family, and all who opposed her, kinda like the mother of Ceaser Agustus, Atia of the Juli, who killed her own daughter and paved the way for Octavian to become Emperor. You could argue she helped usher in the Golden Age of Rome)...and the Japanese venerate the sun as a female Kami named Amaterasu...probably the most important Kami in the Shinto religion.