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Again I have been awake since long before dawn.  Awake – and full of ‘it’.  Full of thoughts, yes, connected to my own self and my own small life, my own small corner of existence being granted to me for as long as I breath.

But I am also full of thoughts about this community where I reside, this nation, other nations, the state of the world.  Through all of these tangled thoughts with their underlying yet undetected variety of emotions I find myself thinking about trauma.  Of course.  Thinking about trauma — one way or another — is my THING — as the existence of this blog suggests.

No sane person on earth, I shouldn’t think, would suggest that INCREASING levels of trauma in life is a GOOD thing.  Yet how much power does any single person actually possess to fight back against both the threat and the reality of increases of trauma in our lives and around our planet?

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I have my own background in trauma.  Enough so, given my first 18 years being captured in my mother’s psychotic insanely abusive hell that I can at least begin to imagine what larger and larger ripples around the globe of increasing levels of trauma can do toward bringing about the end of human civilization if not human life.

What might I do to help fight back against trauma and its increases?

Is this fight a worthy battle?

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OK.  I will attempt to look for a moment at the BIGGER PICTURE.  Perhaps there is something about this bigger picture that will comfort me.

The simple place I begin is in my understanding of the research that shows that our human species had finally grown up enough on all levels by 140,000 years ago to wake up the potential of what’s called the FOXP2 gene that led to our development of language.  We are certainly not alone as a species who utilizes the potential of this gene.

But what we have, as a species, been able to accomplish with our FOXP2 is so far above and beyond what any other species seems to have accomplished as to nearly bar comparison between species — even though the gene is, well, just a gene!

So, there we all were together as a small band of people in Africa doing what all human babies can do — learning how to talk.

This process must have taken 50,000 years.

I guess in the bigger picture that’s NOTHING!

So, then around 90,000 years ago some group of very adventurous and evidently capable individuals decided to tour the world and off into the wild yonder they hiked.  (See National Geographic’s genographic project)

The series of migrations out of Africa for our species lasted for another 40,000 years.

In the end the human species/race beat out around 17 other hominid species.

Here we are.  Spread around the world.  Growing by billions in short spans of time.

Thinking we are so smart.  A collection of people enclosed within national boundaries acting like a bunch or spoiled-rotten preschoolers duking it out as if we can go on like this forever.

I don’t THINK SO!

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We can go on perhaps for a little while longer fighting with one another over the stupidest things only human beings can imagine.  We can continue to allow as a species ever increasing ripples of trauma to spread and spread, contaminating the future for everyone on this planet.

Or we can wake the hell up!

The wake up call that we need to hear is NOT for somebody else.  It is for each of us as individual members of a social species whose individual lives are intimately linked to one another and to life of this planet.

We can keep our vision focused on our belly button or our left big toe.  We can continue to lose sight of what really matters in this lifetime by holding on as tightly as we can to our superstitions, our vain imaginings about what reality is, our prejudices, our ignorance.

Because the problem with humans is that God gave us all a vote.  He gave us all the power of free will and free choice.  He gave us the right to choose what is best for our species or not.

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My mother, God bless her dead cotton socks, had absolute tyrannical evil abusive power over me for 18 years as her daughter.  Nobody stopped her.  She terrorized my 5 siblings through their proximity to the abuse Mother did to me.  But her range of power to act like an evil madwoman did not expand outside of her own home.

Yes, she was a dictator in her own sphere.  But she was not a nation.  When individuals bind themselves together as a nation with harmful intentions and ignorance, there is a vast price to pay sooner or later.  The price is and will be — trauma.

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As individuals it is very hard for us to look inside our own hearts and examine our own actions – including our thoughts – to see what it is we believe and do that is actually adding to trauma rather than to peaceful balance.  When we left Africa to roam the planet there were very, very few of us.  Groups found their spot, stuck around, changed the shape of their body and facial features, changed skin colors, developed languages and cultures that suited the environment they lived in.

Now we hate one another for these differences.  We close ourselves ever more tightly into the cocoon of our individual lives, shut our eyes — and what?  Wait for someone else to solve the problems of the world?

In a magical universe of childhood imagination perhaps that would work.  But in real life positive change happens as enough individuals decide to, choose to stretch their individual abilities and link up with one another to come up with a plan of action and then accomplish positive changes.  As we combine our life forces in an increasing effort to look tough traumas straight in the face — and say “No!  We wish to live a different life” — we can change the direction our entire species is heading into for the future.

Passive compliance with an inadequate status quo is not responsible living.

Combining our positive personal resources, heart to heart, into grassroot change on every level of human community is a choice we can make.

Or not……

But in the BIGGER PICTURE what each one of the 7 billion people on this planet chooses to do — or not to do — matters.  That we are at a ‘tipping point’ for the betterment or for the traumatic obliteration of human civilization seems obvious to me.

But, then, what’s another 140,000 years?  Or longer?  Would we rather erase ourselves and start over than make the effort necessary to ensure humanity moves from this point forward rather than backward in our development?

Are we willing to let the bullies win?  Not a wise choice……

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