UKRAINE AND ME (ALL IN THE SAME BOAT)
And yet, in an odd way that I can’t get my head around, we are all in the same boat. We are all dropped into the world by chance with the many forms and conditions that we are born into undeserved and unequal or unfair. Some of us have talents and some don’t, some are smart and some aren’t, some have disabilities and most don’t. Some have rich privileged parents and most don’t. Some are born in countries where most people are comparatively rich, and most aren’t. Where and when we are dropped in and depart are random. But here we all are and have to make our way along in the best way we can. No matter what the conditions of our birth are we have one life to live and want to make it as full as possible. And it could be that the things that we are born with and the opportunities we do have are more important than what we are not born with and missing out on. Whatever we are and have is what we are given through chance to make our way through life. So maybe what matters in our individual passage is how fully we live with what we are given.
But this still leaves another huge issue that we have to live with within which I and others have to move, and that is the drive by others, usually in groups, to do what makes them feel fully alive. Parents try to guide or change their children and the children do the same with their parents. And then there are all the constraints and directions that our culture gives us which can be just as constricting if you are very rich as if you are poor, probably more constricting since it is very hard to break out of a privileged position. But within our culture there are tidal waves of groups who find security and meaning by elevating their values over the values of other subcultures, which is what political parties do and what social status enforces with attitudes toward gender, race, religion, age and on and on. Within our own culture we are buffetted by competing American values. And beyond that there are the tidal waves in which one tribe, one nationality, feels threatened by or has a need to dominate another and goes to war. That is what ordinary people in Ukraine are dealing with now. But it is also what ordinary people in Russia are dealing with, certainly what ordinary people in Syria and Afghanistan are dealing with.
For the past two weeks since Susie has been immobilized in a recliner in my house we have been watching the 28 episodes on Hulu of her cousin Maria Schrader’s TV series on the reunification of Germany from an East German perspective: Deutschland 83, Deutschland 86, Deutschland 89. We watched it to be in Maria’s presence after being with her in Germany five months ago. But we soon got caught up in the nail biting drama of the series in which she plays a hard ass, dedicated, East German communist spy. One of the themes of the Deutschland 83, 86 and 89 series was how dizzyingly complicated the secret services of the HVA (East German), BND (West German), CIA (American) and ANC (South African) political forces were all the way through the cold war. I couldn’t keep track of them and of which character belonged to which, partly because the characters, including the chief character often switched sides. Every side was equally cruel and equally immoral. There were no good guys and even the most admirable people by not being able to forgive caused great harm. In the end the East German (HVA and Stasi, East German secret police) were trying to shift over and become innocuous West Germans. The main male character who had had to switch sides again and again to save himself finally had to have his death staged and be given a new name in order to escape all the forces claiming him.
The huge complicating factor is that there millions of good, church going MAGA Americans who are righteously causing great harm to other Americans, marginalized Americans. What do good people do when their society is corrupted and kills those who want to do the right thing as happened with Kathe’s parents in Germany before and during the Second World War? There are great numbers of good, church going, righteous Russians who believe Putin is a strong leader doing the right thing in Ukraine, who prefer an autocratic leader.
My question is how a person can choose the life that is best for him or her when no dissent is allowed or when the conditions she or he is forced to work in are almost slave labor, serving someone else? So many times in history the tidal wave of oppression or war sweep over people giving them no choice. Mandela did what was right for him but spent decades in jail, so did Gandhi.
So the issue that I am left with is that when people do what is best for them and what makes them feel most alive, they are often at odds with their own culture. And yet culture is what gives us identity and enhances our life in so many ways. There is often a great tension between what is best for the individual, with what he is free to do, and the culture that gives her meaning. At times, as in Ukraine, this tension is almost unbearable and unresolvable. But the same is true for many Russians, many Indians, many Afghanis, many Venezuelans, and many AMericans. What are we to do?
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 