ALEXANDER HAYES

View Original

Lateral Violence

I dont give a fuck whether you think the word 'fuck' is over used or not part of your common everyday vernacular.

In fact, if that first sentence above illicit's a response in you then imagine what it's like if the laterality of it's form takes shape in everything that shaped your day and night. That constant belittling mechanism of control.

Let me expand on that a little and give you a context for that term 'fuck'....that spit that emanates with it when we think of lateral and imbued social violence.

It begins at birth. 

It began the moment you realised you were dependent on others and in being so they were able to control what it was you had, did, felt .....yet it didn't form who you were.

You eventually regained control of that incrementally later in life....which you called 'coming into yourself'. No amount of self help books made any difference did they ? :)

In a fascinating discussion with my own Mother recently I unpicked where it was I felt that had occurred in my own life. I spoke of it as it was for me. I am entitled to do so - it is my life and I am not forcing you to read this post. I will speak it from my perspective and you have every right to speak it from your own.

Therein lies the message. In asserting our rights we realise how many wrongs we live through everyday. We must be cognisant of the empathy we afford others as they march relentlessly on their own path and "be true unto thine selves"

“… Sure.... be true to yourself but for fucks sake (lol) have some decency of taking into account what it is that you force onto others as being true too. There is no value in you forcing your moral imperative when you have no idea of a universal ethic.”

We are not alone in this world so what I've learned is that by accepting others as they are (as painful as that may be) we have the opportunity to encourage other people to grow by simply doing one thing ourselves...by refusing to re-perpetuate the moral imperative blindly, by refusing to extend the intergenerational lateral violence of here-speak ("... because thats the way we were taught" ) and to live a life worth living that is empathetic of others, free as in freedom. 

By that cognisance alone we have the positive possibility of breaking the racket (Landmark language) and being here in the now (Eckart) and perhaps even allowing our children to be themselves with their own mission free of our expectations and needs.

Empathetically providing others with an example by leadership.