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Dec. 29, 2005 Without a doubt it has been an eventful year. A year when the earth and mountains shook and the heavens opened up in fury. And many died. Not only from natural calamities, but also from those that followed them, caused by us humans, as if we were conspiring with nature to torment those who survived, most recently those who live in the embrace of some of the most beautiful and awesome mountains in the world—the Himalayas. What lessons should we draw from these disasters? I wondered. I asked American Educator Peter Lee Kline recently what he had learned from the Asian Tsunami. “Everything in nature serves everything else," he responded. "Survival of the fittest is a nonsensical concept. Survival of the best integrated is what actually happens. If we study from kindergarten on, systems theory, entrepreneurialism, ecological development, and servant-leadership, we will be better able to function in a literate manner in a society in which the ability to read is only a gateway to the much more important ability to deal with the unexpected.” Indian publisher and writer Joseph Kaval's replied to the same question by e-mail from the outskirts of Bangalore, India, thus: “In war, we are made enemies, natural disasters will make us brothers and sisters, members of same family.” San Franciscan Valerie Street, who attended segregated schools in Cleveland as a child, wrote: “If I have learned anything from the Asian Tsunami, I have learned that all who hurt and suffer around the Earth are MY brothers and sisters. They are a part of my human family and deserve all the help, love, and attention I can give and I can do, with what I have in the way of resources at my disposal.” About the lessons from the post-Hurricane Katrina tragedies in New Orleans, a teacher in California’s Silicon Valley, responded that no man was an island and that we are here on Earth to bind ourselves to each other, or else life would have no meaning. While all of these calamities, natural and man-made, saddened me, I saw hope and light in the responses of people of all shades and persuasions from the human family. I was also saddened in 2005 by the institutional and political acquiescence to the man-made tragedy on the Roof of the World, Tibet, one that, I believe, goes under-reported. I am talking about the bone-chilling restrictions that the Communist State—unquestionably, the ultimate example in the exercise of the state’s corporate power—imposes on all religions, from Catholicism to Buddhism. Even more saddening was the participation of American cultural, corporate, and philanthropic institutions in San Francisco Asian Art Museum's June 2005 exhibit—"Tibet: Treasures from the Roof of the World." The exhibit included nearly 200 sacred treasures culturally expropriated by the corporate state so that its propaganda machine could present us a picture of a Tibet re-formed, by state capitalist legerdemain, into a progressive Chinese province. I was moved by the antidote to the exhibit that pro-Tibetan protestors outside the Asian Art Museum provided. "The goal of the Chinese Communist regime,” they explained in a flyer, “is to construct a narrative for the world about all the things it is supposedly doing to protect Tibetan culture, while simultaneously wiping that culture off the face of the earth. "During more than fifty years of occupation, over 6,000 monastries--the repositories of Tibetan religious, cultural and historical knowledge--have been destroyed. Today, Tibetans inside Tibet cannot celebrate their culture or practice their religion freely. Simply possessing a photo of the Dalai Lama can result in arrest, torture and imprisonment.” The protestors’ flyer urged me not to forget that “the culture that produced these wonderful works is being systematically eradicated. Your activism, support, and pressure on the U. S. government for action against China's policies can make a difference. We cannot allow the Chinese government to reduce Tibetan culture to a bunch of museum pieces." There is hope in the fact that every effort to reduce religion to a picturesque offering for voyeuristic tourists have ultimately failed in all parts of the world. The hole in the soul cannot be filled this way. And so I believe that despite private and state corporate commercial imperatives, in the coming months and years, the Soul of America, as also the Soul of China, will cry out for the Real Tibet. Their souls' cry will be no less than when earth and mountains shake and the heavens open up in fury. ------------ About the author: San Franciscan Michael Chacko Daniels, formerly a community worker and clown, and now a re-emerging writer and editor, grew up in Bombay. Books: Writers Workshop, Kolkata: Split in Two (1971, 2004), Anything Out of Place Is Dirt (1971, 2004), and That Damn Romantic Fool (1972, 2005). Read all about his Indian and American journey at: http://IndiaWritingStation.squarespace.com Email: mchackod@pacbell.net Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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