Manning Up and Droning Out

I find it so strange to hear a top news story referring to an un-manned aerial vehicle almost hitting a businessman in New York City.    Mostly, I couldn’t help but see the humor in the term un-MANned vehicle.  Does it matter what we call them?

Watch the youtube video. 

In 2009, my country began preparing to fight wars using drones.  This term was adopted long ago by the U.S. military to mean a lazy bystander or a mindless thing or person that just follows directions but never has to know where it is going, like a gunner on a bomber (USmilitary.about.com). Now, a drone simply refers to a flying machine without a pilot.  Using drones, we could send out millions of copies of a remote controlled object to do our bidding, without any risk to a pilot.  Initially, there was a difference between a pre-programmed flying machine, and a pilotless aircraft. Yes, endless resources would be used to create expendable faux life forms, minus the difficulties of self-will to get in the way of the desired outcome.   If they crash en-route, who cares?  If they run out of fuel and cannot return, who cares?  If they kill the wrong folks, who cares?  The vehicle would be un-inhabited, un-piloted, un-manned.  Chalk mistakes up to more collateral damage. 

The development of the drone is much like the development of any other product.  It has many uses, some for being helpful and some for being destructive, others for killing humans.  The technology of the U.S. built drones is a secret.  It’s a weapon.  If our perceived enemies had them, they would just do the same as what we are doing and the power would be lost. 

An incident in Iran, in 2012 (?), changed the goal of drone technology significantly.  Basically, if one crashes or looses contact with the controller, it lands.  If the Iranians get hold of it, it can be changed and used against us.  If the control codes on board the machine are compromised, they can be used against us.  The best way, as it turns out, to eliminate this possibility is to have the drone follow a pre-programmed mission returning it back to us at all costs.  So, now, if we follow technology in the direction of need, the goal is to develop a drone with the discernment of a human, but without distractibility (yes, controlling a drone is a very boring job), risk of compromise, and loss of the vehicle.  The goal has always been to seek out the enemy and destroy it.  The goal is not to find the conflict, get to know the fears and needs of each side, provide solutions, and encourage follow through.  This takes a long time, and much patience with our humanity. 

This metamorphosis of the popular use of the word droneto un-manned aerial vehicle seems ironic.  We even have an acronym, which further removes us from the decision making process the military is using to develop this technology, UAV.  It reminds one of the WMD, weapon of mass destruction.  It seems so absurd to manipulate the name of a product into something so difficult to visualize and to understand when it holds lives in the balance.
 

The use of UAV’s to drop food and water down to religious refugees in Iraq makes this issue confusing.  At the same time, UAV’s are being used to carry out violent attacks on Kurds and Islamic extremists. How do we begin to talk about the difference between the armed un-manned vehicles, and the ones carrying aid to the region?  When we stop organizing humans into enemy and friend, remaining is a deeply disturbing story of a super power’s machines arriving to both destroy and to nurture.  Sound like God?  How will we know the difference?  How will we know into which category we will fall?  How will we ever again feel safe under the grand and beautiful sheltering sky?  

The military, people, and press of the United States are not referring to all other vehicles driven by people as “manned”.  A manned vehicle heading south rear-ended another vehicle at a stoplight.  The woman did not apologize.  I don’t think the US public would go for that.  Over the years, we, as a nation, have evolved beyond the use of automatic masculine language.  We generally avoid using manpower, mankind, and using he or him when referring to an unidentified person.  This has brought us a long way toward equality of the genders. 

So, to have a morally controversial modern war tactic referred to using assumed masculine terminology is curious.  In 2013, women in the military achieved equal status in combat zones.  Wow, what an achievement!  Both women and men now have the right to kill or be killed in defense of our country.  I’m fairly certain women are equal in achieving pilot status in the military.  So, would it be appropriate to call these jets “manned” aerial vehicles?  Probably not. 

Original Cartoon by Glee 8-12-2014

So, where is all of this mannedand unmanned terminology coming from? 

Consider the myth that women are gentle, passive, peace loving, nurturers.  Okay, now look at the history of the oppression of women when women are seen through this lens of gentility.  Along with this myth comes the assumption that a woman will not fight back, will not do violence, that she will give rather than take, soothe rather than defend.  Some even refer to this as feminine power.  The power that brings people together and ends conflict without violence.  One can see this kind of power in the art of Aikido, where the force of the aggressor is used against them, by pulling or avoiding the coming force and allowing it to be party to its own demise. 

Honestly, non-violent action is just a brilliant use of power by those who lack the might to physically overcome the oppressor.  S. Brian Wilson once said, “…power is vulnerable because it requires co-operation.”  There it is; how can those in power continue the status quo when the oppressed refuse to co-operate?  If we continually block, prevent, defend, and protect, when designing our military force in the United States, we are bringing more violence to our country and possibly the world. 

But, what does any of this have to do with the term un-manned?  Well, you see, when there is a man who believes the myth of masculine power, that of physical strength, taking rather than receiving, and pushing rather than waiting, we are all being forced to play out a game of defense.  When he stops to consider the moral implications of his actions, there is often fear or loss behind the need to defend or protect.  When one has power, there is something to loose.  When we all have power, we all have something to loose.  When no one has power, no one has anything to loose. 

So, I feel it is a detrimental misconception, this adoption of the term un-manned.  A vehicle of war that is un-manned might be perceived as less violent than something manned.  By calling it un-manned, we are passively referring to the pilot who isn’t there as “man”.  This supports the myth that men use violence rather than diplomacy.  The difference is subtle, but it is dangerous.   My partner and I are working very hard to show our two boys that they are whole and to use non-violent means to conflict resolution. 

 I would like to suggest we call one type of vehicle empty killing machines and the others automated humanitarians.  That would make it EKM’s and AH’s.  A bit more honest. 

 References:  “US drone strikes are believed to have killed over 2,400 people in the past five years.”  Huffington Post’s World Post Drone Art Project Hopes to Make Pilots Think Twice Before They Shoot by Nick Robbbins-Early 4-7-14

USMilitary.About.com provided a definition of drone.  Drone:  A drone is a collective name for pilotless aircraft.  But original meaning was and is ‘the male of the honeybee and other bees.” 

Huffington Post:  This news provider has covered many issues concerning militarized drones. 

BusinessInsider.com:  Iran Has Changed US Drone Development Forever, October 4, 2012

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_combat: “In 1994 the Department of Defense officially banned women from serving in combat but on January 24, 2013, Secretary of Defense Leon Panettaremoved the military's ban on women serving in combat, which was instituted in 1994. [15] Implementation of these rules is ongoing. There is some speculation that this could lead to women having to register with the Selective Service System. [16]”

There's A Hole In Your Neighborhood

AT&T wireless is interested in putting a set of cell phone and wireless radio frequency antennas on the building behind our home.  Generally, cell towers have been placed in less residential areas and more in industrial, business districts.  In Portland, the quieter the road, the less likely you are to have a cell tower placed near your house.  An AT&T representative told us, that the rate of placements would only increase because customers want “to have Internet and phone access from their car in their garage”.  They are also increasing the speed and size of wireless access by going to 4G.  Yes, that’s better than 3G. 

Many Americans have heard about the goal of doing away with the availability of landlines by 2020.  It makes sense when I think about how many of my friends and family have moved to cell phone access as their only form of contact.  The availability of technology is reliant upon how much we want to have cell phone and wireless access as apposed to landlines. 

There are some decisions we have made together as a society without directly discussing them.  One is to have smaller, portable, easier access to communication.  The other is that we are okay with the presence of radio microwaves in almost all places we occupy.  Another is the rate of technology growth of the cellular and wireless Internet industry.  We buy, they make.  

So often, we find ourselves, as a global community, using technology that is detrimental to our life or environment.  Nuclear power is one of them.  Fossil fuel powered transportation is another.  Agriculture is yet another.   Another simple one is food preservatives and processing.  One we don’t always consider is the drug industry.  In each case, there is a need that applies to one or more of our basic human needs for survival.  Examples are:  food, warmth, human companionship, physical health, properity, recreation.  Many of us know the detrimental consequences of these.  Each time we find ourselves weighing the worth of the increase in level of living to the long-term consequences.  The trouble here comes when we are not able to see far enough into the future.  Some indigenous populations in the United States have tried to communicate this message using the idea of creating only what will continue to serve the seventh generation from ourselves. 

It feels like there is enough doubt from people in the US and in other countries about the safety of radio frequency and wireless Internet to humans, animals, and environment.  Maintaining the phone lines was just as detrimental to the environment as the cell phone industry.  With landlines, we used copper cable dug from copper mines, using a lot of clean water to do so.  We needed wooden phone poles, wires in homes, trucks to service them, and some way to charge for the service.  So, in comparison, cell phones seem like a wonderful solution.  But now, we are starting to hear about the health hazards of increased radio frequencies in our living environments.  I can’t help but wonder when we will reach a level where humans don’t die from exposure, but live a life of diminished health.  

How will we answer to this if we have to choose to go backwards in technology.  Would we go back to landlines?  One way to think about it is to consider whether you would be willing to go back to using horses for transportation.  Would you cross the ocean on a boat?  Would you eat only with the seasons in order to eat locally?  Would you use only food and herbs to heal your health problems?  It’s hard to imagine going backwards without feeling like it would be worse. 

So, there’s a hole in our neighborhood.  Though the people in my neighborhood are asking that the cell antennas be put in a less residential area, we are told that no matter what we do, another location in this 8-block area will be proposed.  If we don’t have coverage by 2020, there will be people without constant access to communication in an emergency.  This feel like an artificial concern in order to move toward customer satisfaction, which means better business ratings, which means more money and customer, which means higher stock market prices. 

This whole thing reminds me of that old song about the hole in the bucket…

It seems like there is room to start visualizing what our cities and economies would look like if we started to go non-linear with our technologies.  I wonder if we should start a non-linear technology community, where our creativity guides us rather than a push for a "better" world.  

Learn More:  Slow Technology Movement?
                      Visions of Sustainability 
                      Cell Phone Addiction and Einstein's Quote

Getting To The Heart Of The Matter: Crossing The Gender Divide With the Radfems and Trans Friends

“Let us begin where Quakers claim to be most comfortable when tackling difficult questions – with our own personal spiritual experience.  Quaker discussions traditionally start from this point, or are recalled to it if the discussion seems to be losing its way.”

–      Margaret Heathfield, Swarthmore Lecture 1994

When I think about the word discernment, I realize it is a shiny new word for me.  Previously, I might have used decide or choose to describe this process of uncertainty.  Now, when I use discernment as a process, I realize I am looking at the nuances; the subtle ways in which I am tempted to approve of one over the other because someone, or something, once told me it was better. 

This process of choosing often has subtle emotional implications.  I try to sense a nudge to choose one over the other because someone somewhere once felt pain or joy in relationship to it.  I want people to heal and to feel loved.  Other times, I am jealous, angry, or insecure.  Choosing one over the other would release some ache in me or in someone I love.

Difficult decisions often come to me in community with others.  I want to feel connected to and approved of by all.  Because this seems an insurmountable task, I pass through moments of fear, exhaustion, suspicion, self-preservation, and a hunger for perfection. Remaining open to the possibilities of that surprisingly good feeling that comes from unanimous decision-making is something I return to again and again in difficult moments.  It is a physical memory, like the feeling of being hugged by someone I love.

Target Practice, acrylic on wood,
7/2014  by Glee 

Occasionally, I am given the gift of community discernment that leaves me transformed.  

Recently, my Quaker community in Portland found ourselves deciding to either honor the right to free speech of the Radfems group, who has openly denounced the rights of transgendered women to seek refuge under the umbrella of anti-patriarchal activism.   Or to cancel the space rental of their conference entitled Radfems Respond, intended to bring peace to the conflict between their movement and transgendered activists.  Radfems want to move toward a world without gender discrimination, but due to its overt invalidation of the transgendered experience in America, it clearly falls under the description of a hate group by Southern Poverty Law center. 

The Southern Poverty Law Center's (SPLC) definition of a "hate group" includes those having beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics. [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_group

Our community did not come to unity as to whether we should cancel the proposed conference, but it was cancelled after members of our own body of Friends (Quakers) came to share personal stories of the pain they have experienced as a result of the Radfems activist work with sex workers and an urgent environmental movement advocating force.  Here is an excerpt from a petition written by an attender at our meeting:

As Quakers and transgender activists, we are calling upon you, a community dedicated to peace and non-violence, to cancel the Radfems Respond conference. Radical Feminists are a hateful group, increasingly defining themselves by their hatred of trans people as this stance becomes less and less acceptable in mainstream feminist dialogue. By allowing this group to use Meeting space, you are choosing to alienate trans people and be complicit in the violence against them.

http://www.change.org/petitions/multnomah-meeting-clerks-cancel-the-radfems-respond-conference-at-multnomah-meeting-house  -Hollis Proffitt, Seattle WA

Both views have the potential to bring our world into a place of healing unity, at least as a theological/paradigmatic change. As a Friend, I believe humans can accomplish deep and lasting peace among all beings by using non-violent means.  I also believe in the right to free speech, even if what one is saying is hurtful and wrong.   If we can’t learn to listen, their silence may become violence.  Dialogue is essential.

Forever Free, acrylic on wood
7/2014 by Glee

During the above mentioned discernment process, I was left feeling that there was potential for a charismatic leader to influence a group of people seeking a vision of utopia (equality and acceptance) by doing away with individuals who do not fit into, and perhaps even invalidate the premise of, the vision of the movement.  In this case, it is the leaders of the Radfems. I was surprised, at the end of this process, to hear that many individuals in our Friends community were not in favor of the cancellation.  I did not feel that good feeling of unifying community discernment.  Instead, I felt the ache of uncertainty and divide.  Somehow, I had to go back to my work co-clerking a planning committee of a Quaker Women’s Theology Conference taking place just a month later.  I had just returned from attending the first ever women only 13 Indigenous Grandmother’s event, carrying a message of peace beyond factions and environmental healing of the Earth.  Even though these two groups were open to transgendered women, how could I move forward carrying the weight of exclusivity? 

This began my process of discernment. 

It is difficult to know where or when this story begins.  I’m forty-three years old and I can’t recall the moment in my life when I decided, chose, or discerned my gender.  As a child, what I did and how I acted seemed separate from the esteemed title of “girl”.  How others treated me seemed directly related to their perception of my lowly assigned condition of being a “girl”. (Note that putting quotes around something, my six year old pointed out to me recently, is an indication of falsehood.  In this case, however, quotes are being used like an agnostic would put quotes around “God”, as if ascribing truth to a word would indicate certainty in the heart of the author.)  

The inner knowing I understood in me differed from what others perceived.  So often, as a child, there were no words given to describe this condition.  I think language is powerfully disempowering in this way for children. 

My friend is learning Russian and was baffled by the omission by his teachers, thus far, of the word for fire.  He’d learned air, water, tree, and things like this, but the one word he needs to describe the movement of Spirit in him was not yet available.  I am left wondering about the overt disempowerment I experienced through the language and culture in which I was raised. 

I recall very clearly the moments when I re-awakened to the external perceptions and treatment of my unfortunate title of “girl” and then “woman”.  It is the implicit categorization according to the title I carried that differed from my inner knowing.  To describe my inner knowing would have involved something that feels like arguing without words. 

So, wordlessly, I came to associate with the sensitive nature of the frog.  I could find my true self in the life of an amphibian, in its effortless movement from one world to another.  It gave me so much joy, to know that a frog knows how I feel, and that I had a kinship with the non-human world.   I could not become a frog, but I could feel like one.

New Beginning, acrylic on wood, 7/2014
by Glee 

I have a visceral memory of the times I re-awakened to the condition of my body and of my learned vulnerability as female in my culture.

  I knew I was the meat into which the fork and knife were to pierce.  I knew I was the creature who would be consumed.  It was only a question of when my weakness would become noticeable.  I was aware, in those moments of my place in the hierarchy of life.  I didn’t feel weak, though.  I felt invincible.  I felt free to love and to be loved.  But, the more I lived into my power and strength, the harder it was to move up.

The conflicting stories I heard about my body were tearing me apart.  I was afraid.  I felt like my body was going to be separated from its power and strength if I were raped.  The stories the women around me were telling me were about loosing their souls.  They were telling me about being separated from their bodies through violence an disregard and that they were no longer whole.  

I carried their anger, sadness, and separation.  I wanted to unite us all with our bodies again.  It almost seemed as if there had been a larger, more devastating separation, the great separation between male and female, masculine and feminine. 

To me, it was a matter of science and evolution.  A trained anthropologist, I had become enthralled with knowledge of sexual selection, and of Lucy, the missing link.  I memorized the description of her pelvis, her smaller body, and her upright posture.  I had been introduced to feminist anthropology, the assertion that female anthropologists were privy to a different perception of the culture being studied simply by virtue of their gender.  It had become apparent to ethnographers that male anthropologists were not allowed into female spaces and therefore had a skewed view of the culture.  So, now anthropologists had to sort through gender and perception.  This also meant that we, as outsiders, could describe our own divide by observing and recording other cultures.  How confusing! No matter how hard we try to become a fly on the wall of understanding, we are still imprisoned by our gender identity. 

All of this describing through science wasn’t helping me heal this great separation in which I found myself very personally involved.  I suddenly knew what I didn’t know.  I felt I could never know how it feels to be a man and that I would always be excluded from knowing.  I had learned to pull things apart, to categorize and to describe.  I had learned to categorize myself as female.  This felt like a process of rationalization. 

So, I returned to my inner knowing, because, after all, it had been the only constant from my earliest memory.  What was it, I wondered, after so much hardship in my female body, that made me wake up each day with renewed vigor to continue a search for truth and wholeness? 

I laid out in the back yard to sleep one summer night and woke up at three in the morning.  Looking up into the clear California star-filled-sky, I had the overwhelming sense that I was not alone.  It was more than a sense of being in the presence of something greater than myself.  It was a feeling that I had become the Earth and everyone on Earth, and that I was witnessing as all of humanity, that we are not alone in the universe.  Beyond that, I felt that my body is never separate from the whole.  I was so excited, so overjoyed at this news.  I have no idea how long I laid there enveloped in this certainty. 

I live in Portland, now.  I am a member of the Religious Society of Friends, where I feel validated and loved.  I am married and have two children.  As I sit on my porch, writing, I hear a newborn baby crying and my body becomes alert.  I remember feeling the milk in my breasts drop when my babies were hungry.  I see the mother and a baby come down the street and sit down under the old oak tree on the lawn of the vacant house across the street.  The mother pulls the baby from its pouch and begins to nurse.  The baby quiets for a time.  I cry with relief that I live in a neighborhood where a mother can do this.  Where a body is a gift to life and life a gift to the body, and it is a choice to bring life.  Even more, I feel it is possible that this mother has a symbiotic relationship with this child and with another who is co-conspiring with them to walk through life together.  My hope is that they will all have a relationship free of inequality. 

My Rainbow Flag, 7/2014, by Glee 

I need a word, now, for the experience the nursing mother is having that is so much a part of my own experience, both painful and beautiful.  The ability to share this common experience feels like compassion.  As they sit now, a calm baby in the arms of the holder, I see between us the rainbow flag my kids and I bought and put on our house two weeks ago.  I am happy to live in a state where this flag can mean tolerance and the power of love.  I feel as if I have finally pushed past the black and white of pigments and moved into the full spectrum of light.  

I am reminded of the description, heard on Radiolab (http://www.radiolab.org/story/211119-colors/), by the first people to realize that a crystal is splitting light to reveal its whole spectrum and not that the crystal was transforming it into something new.  Yes, this perception makes a big difference.  The crystal, for me, is science, the search for truth, the need to see more.   The light is what I am looking with.  Without light, I could not see. 

Now, the person nursing the baby is gone and I am left with my soft belly, changed breasts, warm softness, and the frogs to define my gender experience of forty-three years. 

The hope I find in this experience is the possibility of symbiotic relationships between masculine and feminine.  I learned about symbiosis in high school.  I remember the moment I got it.  I walked around trying to change my perception of moss, lichen, and bacteria.  Thirty-eight years later, I realize that my entire experience as a being is symbiosis with all living things and maybe even the Earth, and that nothing exists separately from anything else.

I imagine how it might feel to bring the inner knowing together with the way one is perceived externally.  This seems like a spiritual experience.  The question is whether it is the effort of the person to express the truth, though there are not words for it?  Or whether it is the effort of the observer to allow the true colors of the inner knowing to emerge?

I want to say something here about the quandary of gender and of the gifts I have received from the notion of gender.  Healing from the great gender divide somehow requires a battle in the United States, one of balancing power and expressing our pain.  I have come to this after two years of searching for a way to describe spirituality beyond the gender divide, even looking for a way to balance the damage already done, especially in Christianity.  I felt deep healing when I found myself in women only gatherings, recently a Quaker women’s gathering and a first ever women only Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers gathering, where kindness and compassion toward the men in our lives was encouraged.  I learned that women have to live the kind of power we would like to see in the world. Why was I learning ways beyond violence in circles of women?  What do we gain from separating ourselves from men? 

I feel that if we humans can return to a symbiotic relationship of rainbow genders, we may be able to see a new paradigm, the paradigm of those who cross over. 

Last week, in deep silence with Quakers (Religious Society of Friends), I came fully into a different paradigm.  It was one of awe and gratitude for those who cross over.  I understood those who have braved the great divides, those of color, gender, disability, age, sexuality, culture, religion, and more.  If not for these brave souls who can choose no other way but to leap across the abyss of our categories, titles, and external perceptions, we may never realize that the rainbow is none other than the light that allows us to see. 

How can we let the light heal us from our separations? 

 Learn More:  

New Yorker Magazine: What Is A Woman (read the article)

Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that focuses on the hypothesis of patriarchyas a system of powerthat organizes society into a complex of relationshipsbased on the assertion that male supremacy[1] oppresses women. Radical feminism aims to challenge and overthrow patriarchy by opposing standard gender roles and oppression of women and calls for a radical reordering of society. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_feminism

The mission of the San Francisco Trans March is "to inspire all trans and gender non-conforming people to realize a world where we are safe, loved, and empowered. We strive to create a space for our diverse communities to unite and achieve the social justice and equality that each of us deserves."[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_March

“A few weeks ago, I was reading Eleanor Roosevelt's "Tomorrow Is Now," which was recently reissued by Allida Black, a mentor and former college professor. President Bill Clinton and Dr. Black wrote in its introduction how it was one of ER's most important books. While I was reading it, I was blown away that half a century after her death, she still has the power to speak to the challenges of a dangerous and uncertain world.

"Learning to be at home in the world," she writes, "is, I believe, the surest way we have of reducing our fears. For fear, after all, is too often fear of one's inadequacy in the face of the unknown."

If we care enough, we can give ourselves permission to journey into the shoes and lives of others we don't understand. You choose the language and identity that you are most comfortable speaking: "I'm queer, Muslim, Christian, Iranian, American, South African, straight, trans, male, female, black, white..." it really doesn't matter. What matters is that underneath these identities and within these beliefs is a real intention to "be at home" in the world.

"[We] must learn to live with other people," ER writes. "If [we] are going to belong to a world society [we] must be trained to cope with it, neither to follow nor to dominate, but to cooperate as mutually self-respecting human begins."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-ward-iii/caring-for-others-will-save-the-world_b_3428309.htmlCaring for Others Will Save the World  Posted: 06/12/2013 11:31 am by Joseph Ward III Director, Believe Out Loud

Long Live Reggie Watts

I rarely post a simple link to another artist,

But this person is doing something really good with creativity, 

keeping us awake, delighted, and inspired.
I think I sound like this guy sometimes when I am talking.
Listening to him keeps me from taking myself too seriously.
Enjoy!

Reggie Watts on TED

Interview With Reggie Watts: Performance Artist

Don't forget to laugh!