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Several iconic images from the twentieth century burn brightly within our collective psyches, illuminating our evolutionary arc towards social justice and our awakening consciousness.
These are captured instants of us at our very best: The photo of the massive crowd in front of the Lincoln Memorial witnessing Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech demonstrates the incredible influence that one man’s inspiration can carry. The euphoric German’s sledgehammering their way through the graffiti-filled Berlin Wall is a rousing demonstration of the powerful desire for freedom. And the lone man standing down a Chinese tank in Tiananmen Square was applauded by the entire planet for its vision of courage.
These images stir us because they show us silly humans at our best. My favorite of these iconic images is from the turbulent sixties. It’s a grainy black and white shot of a young hippy gently placing a carnation into the barrel of a National Guardsman’s rifle. Here is this scruffy kid, wearing a puffy, wool sweater, smiling in the face of numerous rifles pointed directly at him by stoned-faced soldiers, spreading his floral statement of peace, one flower at a time. Truly a picture worth countless words.
That very image came to mind recently. I have lately enlivened my presence on social media to share my writing. It’s been an education to discover the knee-jerk and childish viciousness that we the people have been unleashing on each other. It’s a sticky venom with extremely repulsive statements, painted with the broadest of brushes. And I admit that I have been tempted to respond to some of the more revolting and insane declarations that have gotten traction on the feeds.
I want to score wins over the hate-filled attackers slinging vile from the comfort and anonymity of their keyboards. It’s a deep, visceral desire. I want to open up a can of caustic, literary lightning bolts on the hater’s asses. I think I could be good at it—clever enough, pithy.
But diving into that level of back-and-forth is a never-ending, no-win game. And it turns out that half or more of the hate-filled pronouncements are just the latest salvos in the psychological cyberwar that Russia is successfully waging on us anyway. (Why don’t we talk more about this attack on us from another country?)
When I read an arrogant and toxic tweet and the many equally toxic replies, I wonder at the schoolyard immaturity that is getting play. It’s like we’re taking our precious freedom of speech and pissing it away down a communal toilet of idea sharing and public discourse and debate.
But it’s the feeling that those posts, tweets, and memes provoke within my consciousness that I am compelled to examine more deeply. I did not realize how easy it is for the anonymous crowd on Twitter to get my emotional fire so stoked, how easily I give my own power away to those faceless, sick little egos screaming for attention.
This inner fire that these tweets and posts light in me is not me at my best, by any stretch. And any response I make from that emotional intensity is just going to meet the contrived hatred at its own level. I would be willfully jumping into the poo-poo pool along with the rest of the angry egos. Do I really want to meet that silly man who wrote Cat Scratch Fever at his hateful and childish level of discourse, or those talking heads on that “news” channel? Is this why I am here?
I have had to re-double my efforts on restraint of self as I engage social media, especially Twitter. I have taken numerous cleansing breaths and just mindfully paused before striking at the keyboard. And in one of these recent pauses, the image of that hippy adorning the rifle with a carnation appeared in my consciousness, like a visual mantra chanting for an evolutionary growth spurt towards peace. And I thought to myself, “That’s it!”
I printed out a copy of that photo and it now hangs above my computer screen. When I look at it, I see the energy of an unyielding peace in the face of egocentric, ideological storms—it is the energy of us at our best.
For me, the image of those rifles represents our fear, the need to control, the need to be right, and the need to impose that rightness on others. The flower represents choosing and extending peace, regardless of the wall of fear and hatred that one is confronted with. That hippy was being the change that he wanted to see in the world. That is the only way to usher in the energy of peace. If you want peace, become peace and extend it to others.
The skillful approach to national debate is not in responding to hate with hate, to resist the negative energy and project it back, but rather to bring in the cleansing energy of peace, transcending the hate. This is how we raise the vibration of public discourse and begin to make actual progress as a society. And peace is a choice we must make every day, over and over and over again.
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Photo credit: Getty Images
