A Life Is Not a Life Is Not a Life (Apparently)
Issue 20
Many years ago, long before I became aware of my own spirituality, long before I took to heart the admonition to be compassionate, I came across a gem of a Native American teaching passed from an elder (Grandfather) to a child that has stayed with me for more than 30 years. I endeavored unsuccessfully to locate it so I cannot properly attribute it here to a specific writer or Nation. Nor can I recall it nearly well enough to repeat it as I encountered it but in the main it went something like this: The child, upset about the death of an animal, expresses grief to the elder. Grandfather then compares the death of the animal to a blade of grass plucked from the ground. He counsels the youth that the measure of grief about the animal should equal the measure of grief about the grass.
Sketchy recall of the story’s details notwithstanding, I resolutely attest to its gist: all of life is equal and all of life means everything that lives. Thankfully, this quote attributed to Oren Lyons, a Native American Faithkeeper addressing the United Nations circa 1977, provides some redemption: “I must warn you that the Creator made us all equal with one another, and not only human beings, but all life is equal.” An accompanying image includes plant life so I think we’re good.
Does the life of an American troop equal the life of a foreign soldier or a local civilian?
Americans live today in a country on land originally populated by people who embodied a healthy respect for all of life and thrived here for thousands of years before White men from another continent infiltrated the landscape and messed with their way of life. The foreigners kept coming and proceeded to treat the indigenous quite unevenly across more than a dozen generations until British colonists ultimately assumed superiority over Native Americans. Meanwhile, it had been a good 150 years or so since people from yet another continent, Africa, had been brought here as slaves against their will. So America’s founders created America largely by subjugating everyone who was here before and everyone they brought here from Africa with a bold and rapturous "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
It’s confusing, I know. And illuminating. It helps to understand the never-ending ways in which today we Americans — when viewed through a “mainstream” lens as this conscious politics practitioner is wont to do — fail to treat all of life equally. As I’m you’ve likely heard, more people died of covid-19 in the United States four days ago than died on September 11, 2001 in New York City. In the aftermath of the towers falling, I remember walking for hours and hours, day after day, along what might have been miles of chain link fencing erected throughout downtown. Living reflections of our collective, global and local experiences were affixed to it. I saw thousands of messages of solidarity with America. I saw thousands of messages with pictures inquiring about loved ones, thousands of flowers and candles and poems and expressions of grief. I heard an eerie silence replace ubiquitous horn-honking, an unspoken, sustained reverence for lives lost. Four days ago I feel as though I heard a collective yawn, big deal, more Americans died today than on 9/11. Who cares? So what?
War shows us how much a life is not a life is not a life. Try to learn how many casualties there are from one. Does the life of an American troop equal the life of a foreign soldier or a local civilian? No, according to records and reporting, it does not. And have you ever heard much of any kind of mainstream reporting about the death and/or destruction of any element of Nature as a result of war?
When it comes to life and death, what gets mainstream-reported anyway? I know the name Breonna Taylor. I also know the names Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice and Michael Brown and Sandra Bland and George Floyd, but I do not know the names Dijon Kizzee or Adrian Jason Roberts or (likely more now) than 83 Black people killed in Louisville, KY since Breonna Taylor was killed in March of this year. A life is not a life is not a life or so it certainly seems. Fifty-five thousand — or so — Vietnam war dead. Almost three hundred thousand (and counting) covid-19 deaths. A police officer killed in the line of duty. A teen suicide. A drug overdose. Twenty six- and seven-year-olds gunned down in their school. A death row inmate, executed.
We can be forgiven for being confused. We can be forgiven for faithfully learning from our culture that a life is not a life is not a life. But as conscious politics practitioners we cannot go forward from here without creating in our culture an imperative to uphold the great promise of our country, an imperative to treat all of life equally, an imperative to teach our children that a life is a life is a life. I hear from people near and far how hard it is to be compassionate and treat people equally. I, of course, always respond: it’s infinitely harder not to.
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This is right in line with the other current event (that mass media dubbs important enough to drill into our heads with several different (same) reports) of "The Vaccine". Doesn't it seem sickening how our rich, white country is talking/complaining about how and when and to whom the vaccine will be distributed but completely ignoring the fact that we aren't working doubly hard to get that vaccine distributed worldwide? And more importantly to poor countries? Why isn't there one single story about how this GLOBAL pandemic needs to be addressed on a GLOBAL scale in it's solutions? Life is life. Period. We need to do better. Starting today.