the unstitution

One of the most fascinating things about us humans is that we are able to believe very different things.

The trouble starts when we begin judging our beliefs as moral and immoral, or labeling them right or wrong.

Throughout history cultures have valued or committed acts that when viewed through our current lens, totally horrify us; the sacrificing of humans or children to appease a god or gods; the eating of human flesh in a ritual. Most people today are horrified by these notions, and have no trouble decrying then as vastly immoral.

Today, cultures still have varying beliefs with appropriate codes of proper conduct. And punishment.

I just read a story in The Daily Mail that aptly “horrified” me: a man had his own daughter killed because she caused shame to the family.

The crime? Kissing.

Banaz Mahmod of Birmingham England, a young girl of 20, dared break the code of conduct in her strict Muslim family, and left an arranged marriage for “an unsuitable man.”

For this family, and the people in her community, this is a ghastly crime. It is considered so shameful, that those who dare commit it can be punished by death. A death caused by their own family member.

“On the orders of her 52-year-old father and uncle, Ari Mahmod, 50, she was strangled with a bootlace by Kurdish assassins, her body stuffed in a suitcase and buried six feet down in the garden of a house belonging to an associate in Birmingham.”

“Two of the murderers, who fled back to Iraq after this horrific so-called “honour killing”, have since boasted of raping Banaz before she died in January 2006.”

Today’s International Female Value Index falls 50 points because it is still believed somewhere that a woman defying a man, or her father, is a very bad thing. In this same place killing a female family member is a good thing. Somewhere a man thinks he has brought honour to his family by asking murderers and rapists to kill his young vibrant daughter. Family, friends, and neighbours agree, condone, or watch silently.

But the IFVI also jumps up 100 points, because of Banaz’s sister, who was a key witness at the three-month trial of her father and uncle, which this week resulted in their convictions.

Bekhal Mahmod is believed by British police to be the first female family member ever to give evidence in an “honour killing” trial. Even her own mother and three other sisters refused to cooperate with the police for fear of upsetting the community.

The fear of reprisal is very strong and Bekhal has no contact with her family, for fear she will be found. Plus she does not want to put them at risk from the Kurdish community for associating with her.

Behhal Mahmod is very brave to have differing beliefs from her family, culture and community, and to stand up for them. How many of us can say the same?

Read the full story:
‘Honour killing’ sister breaks her silence

Wow. I totally fucked up this evening.

I was talking to some new friends the way I normally talk to my core friends. And they didn’t understand me. At all.

It wasn’t until I had babbled on for quite a long while, with passion, vociferousness, maybe some zealotry, that they interrupted me to say that they didn’t believe in the pecking order I was talking about.

Pecking order? I wasn’t talking about pecking order. The only thing that I mentioned that was close to any kind of order was Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I only mentioned that because they asked a question.

Things got more than a little bit uncomfortable after that.

I got quite emotional. First of all, because I hate making mistakes. Here I was babbling for some time, thinking all the while I was making total sense, that I was making myself understood and that they were following me. I actually thought I sounded pretty clever.

But that didn’t turn out to be the case. They weren’t following me. At all. In fact, they probably thought I was a bit of a nutbar.

But I live by the notion that the onus is on the communicator, so I got even more emotional because after a couple of questions, I realized I pretty much was making sense, only they didn’t understand me. The vocab, the ideas, the reference levels were too “far out” for them. They hadn’t experienced these ideas yet.

Crap. I know this feeling. I lived it most of my life.

The ideas I was talking about were foreign to them. But, if I were talking to a different group of friends I would have gotten a totally different reaction. For example, if I had been talking to a bunch of clown friends, they would have totally got it.

Clowns you say? Yup – clowns. I studied European stage clowning here in Toronto, and we have quite a healthy community of clowns in the city.

Clowning is the art of portraying the universal truth of how we feel inside. That’s a pretty heady sentence, but Charlie Chaplin and Lucille Ball were modern clowns, and it’s far from heady stuff. In fact the key words of clowning are “from the heart.”

The art of the clown is to feel and express truthfully what we as humans are not allowed to freely express. The audience is taken on a journey. The goal? To see ourselves as we really are. That way we can stop taking ourselves so seriously. The less seriously we take ourselves, the healthier the society is. This is especially true for the King – the more seriosly he takes himself, the more tyrannic or despotic his rule.

Clown training it is all about encouraging us to feel and express what we really feel, without judgement of our emotions. It’s one of the few places I have ever experienced that. And it took me a while to find it.

My new friends hadn’t gone to clown school.

Nor had they taken one of Julia Cameron’s workshops. Julia is the acclaimed author of “The artist’s way” and I am currently reading her follow-up book, “The Vein of Gold.”

Here’s the paragraph I stopped at while reading last night. I can clearly see what inspired my rant tonight.

As youngsters, when we are judged by outside authority, we often take that judgment into ourselves. The choir teacher who makes fun of a quavering adolescent voice, may cause a singer to lose that voice. The college professor who tells his students, “your job is to convince me that you are brilliant (not express yourself), may rob his students of the right to self-expression….

 

…In shamanic tradition , the loss of these parts is called “soul loss.” Any severe artistic shaming is sufficient to cause such a self-displacement, and the results can be catastrophic in terms of both identity and productivity. Our gift for design, our gift for poetry – some part of us is judged and then disowned. This disowned gift goes underground.

What I was talking about was freeing the artist within, by supporting the child within. I was saying it would be cool for us to support each other in becoming the best we could be. That we should endeavor to develop our natural talents or childhood desires that weren’t supported, to practice and become skillful – at being us.

The the over zealous part kicked in and I went on to say that it was about self-actualization, and how the great books and mystics describe adulthood as the point where we no longer need anyone’s approval, not even our parents’. We walk on our own two feet. We make our own decisions. We have to know what are our own values are, versus just mimicking those of our culture and community.

Well, that’s what I thought I was saying.

My new friends were thinking that I was judging them for not being the best. They said they were happy where they were. They were sorry that I wasn’t happy. But “if I wanted something, I should stop complaining and apply myself and work hard to get it.”

We kind of got stuck there. I got defensive and teary, saying “ok, then you support me and I will have to do nothing for you. Cool. If you are OK with that, then sure. I was only trying to be fair.”

But in truth, I was sad, because what I was hoping to do was to re-create clown school. Because I miss it and the supportive atmosphere. Because I am trying to do something new and hard, and I will surely make an ass of myself, and I want that to be Ok. Because when I was growing up making mistakes wasn’t OK. In fact, being an artist, or doing artsy stuff, wasn’t OK. And I don’t want to make mistakes all by my lonesome – company and support from knowing friends makes all the difference.

I wanted a community of like-minded souls. And I wanted these friends to be it.

Problem is, they didn’t want it.

Crap.

Onwards.