Seeding the Soil for ISIS: we are all complicit in creating and perpetuating these cycles of violence & loss

Before I read this article in The Nation, I could have guessed what the findings of this research would be. It circles around something I've been talking about for many, many years. I encourage folks to read this article and start thinking about conditions (in which we are all complicit) that create incentive and 'feeder mechanisms' for ISIS.

The 'feeder sources' are usually young men cut out of society--economically/ socially/ politically. Many feel worthless and hopeless in their lives. Poverty and lack of opportunity are driving forces (in relationship to wellbeing of their families particularly). Education and literacy are not options for them. They desperately want to do something for the ones they love (their families), and want to somehow make their lives of value, of use.

What (economic, psychological, social, emotional) conditions make young people susceptible to recruitment by ISIS? Marginalization, discrimination, lack of opportunities, complex cyclical patterns of poverty and exclusion--for starters. [A capitalistic globalized colonial extractive economy has a few winners and many, many losers--particularly when social democracy is absent or cosmetic. Exploiter or exploited--are those our options? Or a sliding scale across exploitation and consumption?] Often these are the self-same conditions which make children vulnerable to becoming child soldiers across Africa and Asia (is there much difference?). Quite similarly: youth who become embroiled in gangs in the U.S. and Europe (and Asia and Africa and Latin America-- esp. in favelas and barrios). Are we seeing a pattern here? These kids wind up on death row, with long prison sentences, or dead. And often they wind up hurting others along the way, feeding a cycle of violence and loss.

Children in central Niger-- opportunities, education and family/community support is transformational
 for their futures and the roles they will play on the global stage.
(Photo by Emilie Parry, 2008, Filingue, Niger)

To be sure, other factors are at play. On the day of the evening of the Paris attacks, the BBC carried a story about a British teen who tested 'at the bottom 2% of his peer group for IQ.'  He was recruited to IS and got as far as Turkey before the pleas of his family got him to turn around and come home. The teen was found guilty of 2 counts of preparing acts of terrorism-- for flying to Turkey on his way to Syria with the intent to be trained there. (He was also convicted of fraudulently securing a place in university and then using student funding to pay for the groups flights. Given his IQ is what would be classified as 'mental disability' in the U.S., I think it is highly unlikely he did that on his own, or came up with the idea-- or any of the ideas to engage in this process himself).

We need to look at the manipulators, recruiters and schemers behind the scenes, along with the kids they target for recruitment and why! In the late 1990's, I worked on death penalty appeals cases, in non-profit law in California. I encountered many, many death row inmates whose IQ was tested at 70 or well below. Most of their families were (at least fiscally) impoverished and societally marginalized, so there were few protective buffers for them. These unfortunate souls either took the rap for the actions of other people who manipulated them --or -- they were manipulated into activities/pulling the trigger, etc. - in circumstances from which they did not have the cognitive capacity of judgement to protect themselves or others.

There are many insidious and sinister factors (in which our governments have been complicit --with our tax money) that have led to the instigation, strengthening and expansion of ISIS. The people behind the scenes--those recruiting, training and sending young men to commit heinous acts, sending young men to their deaths--they understand perfectly well the social, psychological and economic factors that make young people 'recruitable' to ISIS. And they know how to exploit this to their sick agenda.

Cornering their prey (thanks to www.walesonline.co.uk for the image)

Paris, Beirut, Nairobi, Bangkok, Dhaka, Borno State, New York & D.C.-- these ghastly, rupturing acts of violence are not the thing itself. They are symptoms of the wounds and brokenness within our BodyPolitic/ BodyEcology/ BodyEconomy. They are painful signs of the disease within.

We must get to the core of a) corruptive power agendas of governments and corporations and b) the impact these systems have on so many young people (and their families) who are discarded as 'useless' or 'expendable' in our production-and-consumption based global economy. If we do not identify and transform the root systemic 'disease,' then we will only see more and more of this fracturing and grievous loss. It may emerge in these moments of 'media-magnetic violence' yet it is experienced by millions of people daily, away from the cameras-- without a bit of compassion or care.

When we are grieving through such traumatic loss, it reverberates through our collective body. Our impulsive reaction may be to strike back. Striking back only hits at the wound and makes it worse for everyone. Healing is only possible when we breathe deeply, and answer brokenness and hate with active (applied) compassion and unbounded love. There are no monsters here. There are many, many wounds.

Bellow Unto the Midnight Stars

Bellow Unto the Midnight Stars

Bellow out unto the earth

      And echoing skies:

A sorrow song for

The last child in the woods,

The last dragonfly, the lightening bugs blinking

out one final time into a withering night.

Born into a dying world

                        with

Fierce quiet eyes of knowing,

Iron beams of light hold frame from within:

Children of Indigo.

They hear the whispers of leaves and grass,

See the meticulous renderings of red ants through rough bark.

The aching heartbeat thumping the planet’s core

Pulsates upwards through their feet.

     When ridges shift within, they are not shaken. 

Memory and knowing converge.

The lashing storms over plains and crumbling of mountains into sea

            Carve the new topography into their DNA.

Their parents and guides--

We of the bolting ash and rust dusted 

                Generation of Industry--

Rebirth may not be for us.

Our flames extinguish at the 7th Frontier,

The Great Turning.

For us it may only be to love, to nourish, to watch in awe

This next generation

             As they step out onto the edge of a world 

                                                            about to be transformed.

===============  8^th September 2015, in flight from Bangkok to Tokyo

The World is On Fire

A depiction of an all-consuming red giant star (stock photo).

When I was six years old, I saw a film about the stages of the sun, how this star of ours would 'one day' become a Red Giant, and would incinerate the planet Earth.  (Yes, the filmmakers thought just saying 'one day' rather than a projected timeline was somehow alright.) This catalyzed something close to a year of very quiet and tortured suffering on my part.  I had nightmares of our home and our world ablaze. In my nightmares, I struggled, attempted to get my family and loved ones, and everyone I encountered along the way --humans, animals, trees-- to safety. 

During my waking days and nights, I tried to scheme and problem solve. I'm not certain why I didn't directly communicate to my parents about the film and my fears.  I asked my parents if we could fireproof the house.  They applied 'Tot Finder' stickers to all the windows of the children's rooms and had a family meeting about 'what to do in case of fire.' I wanted more.  I wanted to know how we could get out of our rooms if the fire was in the hallway.  We  could not jump down from the 2nd floor.  I had many scenarios in my head working out how to climb down, but inevitably there was a jump involving many broken bones--not helpful. My parents bought fire ladders for each of our bedrooms and taught us how to set them up; we practiced setting them up and climbing down them to the ground below. 

In Upstate New York, these stickers on household windows were meant to guide firefighters first to children's bedrooms. (Stock photo)

This wasn't enough. The nightmares were constant. If, in this dreamscape, I'd corralled my family and gotten us all out of the house (yes, I had a bizarre and inappropriate sense of responsibility for a six year old), the fire didn't stop in the house.  It was everywhere, all around.  We couldn't drive away from it, we couldn't boat away from it, we couldn't fly away from it. And I didn't want anyone else to be hurt, so in my nightmare apocalypse, we were gathering quite a group of humans, deer, birds, dogs, frogs as we tried to outrun fire. Yet I knew fire spreads quickly and I realized, desperately, we had no way out.

At one point I started doing bizarre things that l knew made little sense, but I felt desperate and needed to take action somehow. I wanted to 'kill fire.' I started collecting all the matchbooks I could find in the house with the intention to soak them in water and bury them. My grandmother found me with them.  I'm sure she thought I was 'playing with matches,' and this frightened her. I received a spanking. I felt very, very misunderstood.  

Smokey the Bear was a childhood friend in the the 1970's and '80's in the U.S. "Don't play with matches."
(Source: www.state.sc.us )

Every scenario I worked through, every emergency simulation of my mind, I could not find a solution or a way to save us, to save all the beautiful beings on this amazing planet. Perhaps with too much of the imagination captured by the science fiction books I encountered, I recall going so far in my problem-solving scenarios, as to play with the idea of somehow knocking the Earth off its orbit, spinning away from the sun. This was something I could not implement on my own, now at seven years old--I would need help.

Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods-- read it!
Create working groups with his education and action plans!
( http://richardlouv.com/books/last-child/ )

Finally, I worked up the courage one Sunday afternoon to break the bad news to my napping father. We are doomed. One day, any day it could be, the sun is going to turn into a Red Giant and consume the planet Earth in flames.  He laughed. How could he be laughing?   'Emilie, that won't happen for billions of years. You don't have to worry about that now.'  Oh.   In that short response, the burden of the planet cascaded off my shoulders. The relief I experienced was ground-shifting. I could go back to being a kid, climbing trees, whispering to the birds, holding congress with the bullfrogs. 

Children today don't have the luxury of that 'out,' that release from worry about the immediate fate and wellbeing of our planet and everyone they love. I can't chuckle to my nephews and nieces and say, 'Climate change? Oh, don't worry about that now! That won't be happening for billions of years. Go outside and play!'   

This August, the wildfires are billowing up across the globe, from Spain to California and Oregon and Washington, Alaska, across Canada, in Asia-- and earlier this year in South Africa and Australia. The world is on fire-- and it is due to climate change induced by human activities. The more the world burns, the more greenhouse gases are released, the deeper we fall into our cyclically destructive, anthropogenically generated environmental emergency-- environmental collapse.

The World is On Fire: This August 2015, from Alaska through Canada, across the states of Washington, Oregon and California, in Spain and Indonesia, the world has been ravaged by the hungry, all-consuming flames of unusual and out of control wildfires.  (Photo sources clockwise: Canada, The Globe and Mail; the Pacific Rim, San Francisco Chronicle; Spain, Associated Press (AP); California, Los Angeles Times; Australia, AP; Alaska, Bloomberg)

What are we doing to our children? Is this the life we wish for them?  What are we doing to our friends, the beautiful trees and congresses of bullfrogs, our weeping willows and gliding dragonflies? What are we doing to our Sacred Earth?   Do we lay this burden and suffering upon this emerging generation, or do we join with young people, old people, middle people, all people, to stop this mad structural violence, this suicidal gutting of our very homes which sustain us?  We all can act now, in behavioral changes great and small, and build a movement to counter a ravaging of our Earth.

(source: answersafrica.com)

It is true, I can't tell the next generation there is nothing to be concerned about now. I can, however, encourage them to go outside and play-for all of us to go outside and play! (When safe from forest fires and other PM's of course.)

If we are to change our relationship with this planet and our own fate within it, we must reconnect to this living Earth, forge relationships with each other and all other beings who move us to care for and protect this amazing gift of LIFE.

Beyond the Mountains...

I find myself often thinking of the Haitian Proverb, "Dèyè mon gen mon," or "Beyond the mountain, more mountains." There are many ways to understand this proverb. For me it is about "the long haul." It is about developing endurance, but also about celebrating along the way, enjoying rest sometimes under a tree, stopping to drink water from the stream, deepening relationships with those who are climbing that mountain alongside me, feeling jubilant when reaching a pinnacle or peak, yet also knowing, always, we are not yet finished. There will be more mountains to climb. We must be prepared for the long haul.

Watch the entire film "Disruption" on Youtube

The film "Disruption" on the biggest, most essential and life-contingent social justice issue of our time, Climate Change:

Run Time: 52 Minutes
Release Date: September 7, 2014
A Film by Kelly Nyks & Jared P. Scott

The Biggest Global Climate Justice March in History, livestreamed on Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/

The Great Social Justice Movement of our Time-- the Climate Justice Movement!

My blog post re-posted on iied's website:

http://iied.org/can-voodoo-help-resolve-climate-change