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Practice Module on This File

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan - Transcend Art and Peace
Created: November 4, 2002
Latest Update: November 4, 2002
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Acknowledgment and Despair

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, November 2002.
"Fair use" encouraged.

On Thursday, October 31, Kristina Marie Ramirez wrote:

Hi Jeanne, Tuesday's class brought about many thoughts on the subject of female gentital "cutting". I've realized that there have been very few "civilizations" that have been peaceful. There have been very few where both genders in that "civilization" were of equal importance. Politicians pay lip service to women's rights and even less to the rights of children. Most of the world is populated by countries where women are hardly considered human. As lesser beings women and children are treated as movable possessions,and slaves. The women of the world are considered a "minority" despite the fact that women make up over 50% of the world's population. Female infants are murdered because they're not boys. Girls are forced to endure gentital mutilation to make them more attractive in the marriage market. Women and girls are murdered as a matter of family honour. I keep hearing about the "new millenia" and the "dawn of a new age" and I don't see it. I don't see this supposedly enlightened world. I see hatred. I see violence. I see death. Yes, there are a few voices in the wilderness crying out for change but they are lost among the noise created by those who want women "in their place". Sadly, women are still dying, mostly at the hands of the person who claims to love them, their partner. Shelters are filled to overflowing with women and children escaping partners who insist on thinking of their spouses and children as possessions. It is still socially acceptable to beat, rape and even kill family members. It is still behind closed doors. We haven't worked hard enough as a country or as a world to make all our places safe from violence. Sadly, my future children will to have this in society shall the problem never be solved. Kristina Ramirez

On Monday, November 4, 2002, jeanne responded:

Kristina, This is an important comment because it illustrates many levels of learning at once. I called the file acknowledgement and despair because you clearly are not denying humans' inhumanity to humans, which is what most denial is about on the international and global level. You indicate well, through detail, that you understand those things I try to persuade you not to deny.

But there's something wrong here. I didn't mean to lay all the responsibility for the world's troubles on your shoulders. Nor do I believe that you'd really accept it. Surely there's a happy, healthy part of you somewhere that's saying, "Now, wait a minute. What can I do in a mess of this magnitude?" And that's healthy. The care of the world is not for any one of us alone, but for all of us together. We need collective awareness, and collective morality, and collective aesthetics, and collective ethics. There needs to be a "me" and an "us." Pace George Herbert Mead. That "I" seems to have gotten a little out of control.

. . . Kurt Lewin and looming life space and denial. . . .I'm going to say that you're denying denial by refusing to process it as denial. That's pretty complex. We'll need lots of theory for this one. And a willingness to hear each other.

For practice module discussion: How does TV practice the denial of denial? By making the effects of the denial go away - disappear within hours - looks just like a TV show - ask Kyra about the effect of that denial - she just experienced it with 9/11.

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