Bards Update

from Roswila

This post has given me a great deal to think and be hopeful about. Below are the pargraphs that struck me the most:

“People can learn to go thru the motions of making nice even if they don’t understand why they should have to. There can be civility. To make people go the long course of being met with kindness and non-violence is asking for a lot more.”

“Interesting that this collective should happen in Uttar Pradesh where women have higher literacy rates. (Aside: It’s a popular self-congratulatory western bias to link alphabet-knowledge with compassion and illiteracy with brute brutality. It seems to devalue oral cultures as backward when they can be as forward as any. It isn’t the media of knowledge but the will of how people implement the culture. Somehow I’m skeptical that print self-access can empower more than similarly persistent oral tapping into the people-knowledge base.)”

“It’s a delicate walk, especially once we leave the habit of talk and it is face to face with members of the community and all the real complexities of losing face, hurt feelings, anger and embarrassment. Private or public confrontation with a different sure reality must be done to shift the base presumptions, if not of what it right, then of what is going to happen.”

“Shame is a potent weapon to engage and wave around, far more than sticks, more volatile than silence yet may be the only path to lasting change.”

http://www.roswila-dreamspoetry.blogspot.com