Angry at Jared Fogle and want to do something about it? Bob Schwenkler writes on the change that YOU can make.
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Jared Fogle got in trouble.
I don’t know anything about this story except for what I read in one Facebook status update. He’s apparently accused of committing some heinous sexual acts against children.
What REALLY caught my attention was the amount of hate that was being directed toward this man, and the question “What is going on with our culture that this is happening?”
The answer to this question, I believe, is simple. It’s just that very few people want to feel what they’d have to feel to acknowledge it (their own personal lifetime of wounding).
Men’s (and women’s) hearts and souls are stifled and boxed in from the day they are born. We’re taught to be who we’re not. Our sexual energy is repressed, made wrong, and transmuted into a thousand different ugly forms that have nothing to do with the beautiful life force that sexual energy is at all of our cores.
When it’s repressed and made wrong it comes out in ugly ways.
NOBODY who has been well loved and feels connected to themselves and their community would do something like this.
So where has the community been the whole time? All their hearts and souls are stifled and boxed in as well. Very few of us are taught how to love ourselves, let alone other people, ESPECIALLY when they commit such ugly acts.
This quote that I read a while back struck me profoundly. What would a world look like where parents raised all of their children like this from day one?
“In this African tribe, when someone does something harmful, they take the person to the center of the village where the whole tribe comes and surrounds them. For two days, they will say to the man all the good things that he has done. The tribe believes that each human being comes into the world as good. Each one of us only desiring safety, love, peace and happiness. But sometimes, in the pursuit of these things, people make mistakes. The community sees those mistakes as a cry for help. They unite then to lift him, to reconnect him with his true nature, to remind him who he really is, until he fully remembers the truth of which he had been temporarily disconnected: ‘I am good.'”
If you aren’t interested in honest reflections you can stop reading now.
For anyone who is ready to take a good hard look at their own self: If you’re spewing your own hurt, pain, and venom out into the world and directing it at a man who’s clearly already had plenty of hurt, pain, and venom directed toward him (and who will never hear or read your words), how’s that working out for you?
Seriously. Is it getting you what you want? Is it opening up your heart to more love? Is it making you a better parent, partner, or child?
Is it making you happy?
If not, what can you bring to the world that will create openness instead? That will soften the walls people carry around inside? That will heal your own heart and soul, as well as everyone else’s?
Freud’s steam-boiler, safety valve model has been discredited. The presumption here is that Fogel wouldn’t have come out the way he did if it weren’t for our terrible culture. Indeed, what would an article like this be if it couldn’t talk about our terrible culture? Pretty short, likely.
Thing is, the writer presumes Fogel wasn’t built like this from the get-go. How does he know this? If he doesn’t know this, we don’t have much of a point.
Richard, thanks for your reply.
My intention isn’t to assume or guess what might have been the case with him, or what might have caused him to act differently, if the circumstances had been different.
This article IS based on what I know to be true about people: That our culture has a million different ways of disconnecting us from each other, that these disconnections cause pain, and that we sometimes act from that pain.
This article actually isn’t about Jared. It’s not an analysis of one man. It’s a call for self reflection. You’re included in that call.