Love American Style MAg 1700

LOVE AMERICAN STYLE IN THE TALIBAN TRADITION by Kelly Bryson

LOVE AMERICAN STYLE IN THE TALIBAN TRADITION By Kelly Bryson The Judeo-Christian cultural philosophy is similar to Taliban tradition in these two primary ways. They both support the idea of a punishing god which keeps the majority of the culture under a blanket of controlling fear. The second is the ancient myth that love and jealous possessiveness are inseparable. However as Kalil Gibran tells us, control and possessiveness are obstacles to love. “As long as the traditional sacrament of marriage remains so closely linked to possessiveness, jealousy will continue to rant and rage. No violent-free Earth, no sexpeace and no permanent love will be allowed to develop, neither on an individual basis between lovers nor as a catalyst for an overall culture. In ecological, military, and human terms, nothing has devastated our Earth more than the fatal guiding mechanism of this false conception of love. Nothing else has been more to blame for driving us to loneliness, despair, grief and cynicism. And nothing else has produced so many mental and physical diseases as the eternal waiting for fulfillment which is impossible under these circumstances. This should be included in the diagnosis of almost every psychosomatic illness: patient is suffering from an incurable lovesickness caused by a false conception of love,” says Dietre Duhm, the German philosopher. This false conception of love is maintained through the institution of traditional marriage. Traditional “Holy Matrimony” is really an unholy and wholly unfair business transaction and has the same pathetic dynamics as the institution of prostitution. Riane Eisler points out that “the assumptions behind prostitution as an economic transaction through which men purchase women’s bodies are actually not so very different from the contractual assumption behind ‘traditional marriage.’ For the traditional marriage contract (like the agreement between a man and a prostitute) is essentially also one of power imbalances: one through which the less powerful woman unconditionally sells her body to the more powerful man. Hence the failure even to this day in some American states to recognize marital rape as a crime rather than a ‘natural’ aspect of a husband’s entitlement to his wife’s sexual services in conformance to stereotypical masculine and feminine gender roles.” This false conception of love is also supported by how some of the writings in our great religions anthropomorphize God. This means that many ancient writers projected their own human weakness onto their image of God thereby not only releasing themselves of guilt about it, but making the quality of jealousy holy and blessed. The desire for the jealous control over others becomes a good, noble and righteous quality. In the Old Testament we read that God is a jealous God and will not tolerate any other God. (Sounds a little insecure to me.) There are similar passages in Islam, Hinduism, and other world religions which become the justifications for Crusades, Inquisitions and Jihads (Islamic ‘Holy Wars’), not to mention certain acts of terrorism involving tall buildings. The idea that the gods of these different religions are jealous contributes to the justification for conquering each other’s societies through out history. It also sanctifies religious patriarchies in the hallowed practice of the domination of women, children and sexuality. Of course this domination is said to be done only “for their own good” presumably to protect them from their inherent evil, selfish and sexual nature. There has been much debate among the founding fathers of Christianity as to whether women even had a soul.

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© Kelly Bryson 2003

LOVE AMERICAN STYLE IN THE TALIBAN TRADITION by Kelly Bryson It is ironic that although women are seen as worth less in fundamentally religious cultures the degree of the male’s possessiveness of her is much greater than in other cultures. There have been many news stories lately of the “honor” killings of women in fundamentalist Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan under the Taliban where wives, sisters and daughters are legally stoned to death if they are suspected of fraternizing with an unapproved male. They are also killed if they have been seen or touched or raped against their will. They are killed by their fathers, brothers and husbands, not to punish the women but to simply dispose the damaged property. She has brought ‘shame’ on the man or family not through an immoral act or fault in character but because she is no longer a virgin or has been sullied and therefore her value as an object has been lost. Schmookler writes that “Sexual possessiveness is the pulsating heart of honor.” But this kind of possessiveness is not limited to fundamentalist Muslim countries, as I have discovered in my marriage counseling practice with thousands of couples. The primary paradigm for “Love American Style” is one based on mutual possessiveness. Cultural anthropologist James Prescott did however find that this possessiveness occurred much more often in societies that emphasize military glory and worship aggressive gods. Schmookler agrees that ‘there does seem to be a connection between the high valuation of sexual fidelity (the granting, particularly by the woman, of exclusive sexual possession) and cultural bellicosity.” Schmookler later suggests that this scarcity and possessiveness that drive men to war also kills the flow of love between men and women. He thinks that it is “less moral evil than spiritual ignorance.” He calls this ignorance “a fundamental misapprehension of the way life is” and a “misguided approach to relationship because it comes from a spiritual condition antagonistic to true fulfillment.” True fulfillment must follow the ‘flow of life.’ This flow requires we not try to possess or horde life, but allow air to come into and out of our lungs and food to inter and leave our bodies. Schmookler writes about how the basic unit of society, the man/woman relationship is corrupted by man’s false pride and lack of faith: “The man of honor’s possession of his cherished female reveals a kind of Midas touch: the possibilities of genuine relationship are forfeited, killed by the transmutation of a living human being into a mere object. An image of this is found in the grotesque chastity belts employed by the medieval man of war to safeguard his treasure of flesh and blood during his absence. The flesh-and-blood channel of life’s express is turned into a mere thing, like so much lifeless gold, to be locked away. This way of clinging to the world’s goods reflects an anxiety, a constriction of the spirit, that kills love and the rest of life’s flows. The desperation to have, to hold, to build a permanent empire is an effort to deny what we are; mortal creatures through whom life courses but for a while. We are the channels of life’s sacred empire, but unable to accept our place in the flow we would become instead emperors.” Riane Eisler says that the distortion of sexuality – the equating of masculinity with both sexual and social domination, and equating femininity with sexual and social submission -- is critical to the maintenance of a dominator social organization. This distortion of sexuality into an issue of honor and a ‘pride of possession’ is central to the male’s socialization for domination and violence. It is this same false conception of love that is the meat and potatoes of Pop psychology in America. In huge red letters on the front cover of the June 2000 edition of Psychology Today it reads “JEALOUSY – Why we need it as much as love Page 2 of 3

© Kelly Bryson 2003

LOVE AMERICAN STYLE IN THE TALIBAN TRADITION by Kelly Bryson and sex.” On page sixty it says “If he reacts to her flirtations with emotional indifference, she knows he lacks commitment; if he gets jealous, she knows he’s in love.” Wow! There it is in black and red, white and blue. I can see a new dot com company forming now: “Girls -- tired of the same old commitment-phobic men? Get on line now and get hooked up with a man who will never leave and knows how to commit. Just log on at www.Stalkers.com, a subsidiary of OJ Simpson Enterprises. (Just kidding OJ. I would not want to piss you off.). Jealousy is a part of Love in the same way that asthma is a part of breathing. Nor are fear and shame a part of Spirituality. I think that in order to have a true conception of love we need to develop “unconditional trust” in our relationships and “personal potency” within ourselves. Without unconditional trust we cannot have unconditional love. By unconditional trust I mean a trust without a “that” behind it. So unconditional trust would not say “I trust (that) you will always take care of me” or “(that) you will always feel affectionate or sexual towards me” or “that you will always remember my birthday or “that you will love only me.” True trust or faith, as in faithfulness, sets no conditions or expectations. I trust you to follow you soul’s agenda for love and growth and I trust myself to do the same. And as we support each other in this process our trust in each other grows. I trust that as we reveal our selves to each other nakedly and honestly we will meet each other in a place that will make anything we want possible. As we learn to trust and nakedly reveal, All that we need and all that we feel, Our connection with soul and self will heal, And finally allow our love to be real. This supports the free flow of true love. When we have expectations of others to love us in certain ways, they will either submit to us or rebel against us. Submission creates resentment, which creates deadness in our relationships. Rebellion creates endless conflict. I think it is very difficult to hold this consciousness of unconditional trust outside a field of energy, which gets created by a community of people holding a certain consciousness and intention. This group of connected potent people must value unconditional trust and transparency. Let there be peace on Earth and let it begin with us coming together in small communities that hold these values.

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© Kelly Bryson 2003