Is Donald Trump the King of Disconnection?

Not a single day goes by without hearing about the perils of a Donald Trump presidency.  Both traditional and social media are full of comments about the never-ending abhorrent messages that he proudly proclaims in front of all the world.  In my circle and in many others, Mr. Trump is the modern-day villain that can singlehandedly destroy our democracy, alienate our allies, and destabilize the fragile world order!  

While I certainly understand the personal criticisms of Mr. Trump and the doomsday-like predictions if he’s the elected leader of the free world, it implies that he alone has the power to change our world for the worse; and it suggests that if we defeat him at the ballot-box, our democracy and the world will be saved from the chaos of a Trump presidency.  I agree with the point of view that Mr. Trump is not good for our democracy. He does not bring people together, neither does he inspire our higher natures. But it is very dangerous to focus most of our attention on the personality (albeit, disgusting at times!) and not pay enough attention to the following facts:

·      Mr. Trump is nothing without the support of people who think like him - he can’t vote himself into the office of the President.

·    The ideas embraced by Mr. Trump will still be alive in his mind and in the minds of the people that support him, even if he does not win the Presidency.

It does not serve us well to criticize Mr. Trump, defeat him at the ballot-box, and bypass the questions that focus on the reasons why people support these horrendous ideas and behaviors that glorify incivility, separation, racism, misogyny, and protectionism.  What dynamics are at play in our beautiful country that nurture these ideas and behaviors? How are we conditioned to accept these awful things in our minds? Why is it so easy to disconnect ourselves from our individual humanity and from each other?

The real villains, the true kings of disconnection, and the imminent threats to our democracy, are in how these awful ideas (advocated by Mr. Trump and others) enter into our thinking and behaviors from cradle to grave.  If we do not pay attention to this, and focus our efforts primarily on defeating the personality, then it’s only a matter a time before the next “Donald Trump” is the President of our United States of America.

DISCONNECTION IS THE REAL VILLAIN!

Disconnection is the one word that can explain the fatal shootings of black and white people in Baton Rouge, Minnesota, and Dallas. While race is the factor that most of us will accept as the primary reason behind these tragedies, it is disconnection that lies at the core of these killings. The true smoking gun is in the “hands” of a force that is nurtured by the lack of meaningful connections to other souls. This energy has a stronghold in our culture and in our consciousness, and has conditioned us to discount the humanity in another human being.  Human beings are more likely to do heinous things to each other when they look into each other’s eyes and see something less than human.

Disconnection discriminates equally. It whispers its poisonous messages in the minds of its hosts, transmitting sinister reminders that “they”- blacks, gays, Muslims, Jews, Americans, women, transgendered, the poor, Asians, whites, etc. - are not like us; that “their” lives are not as important as ours; and that the society is threatened by “their” existence.

All is not lost, however, if we acknowledge and study the causes of disconnection and endorse the saving grace of connection! I’ve been fortunate in my life to witness the amazing power of different incidents that nurture connection, some of which compels me to ponder the existence of forces beyond mere coincidence.

I’ve watched the birth of a baby, whose father was black and mother was white, miraculously change family members whose hearts were hardened by racism, and whose minds were trained to be closed off to diversity.  In some cases, the change happened almost immediately; but sometimes the change occurred over a longer period of time, after family members spent years confronting old and outdated thought habits and contemplating the ridiculousness of rejecting their baby simply because her father’s skin color was brown. Regardless of the length of time, I was uplifted to see an innocent, powerless child, with the blood of both races running through her little veins, subdue generations of bigotry and intolerance in her immediate family, while creating a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for these family members to broaden their horizons and make a meaningful connection with people of diverse backgrounds.

The process of disconnection, how one becomes separated from his individual humanity and from other human beings, is concurrently mysterious and obvious. I plan to share my unscientific insights about this process in my upcoming blogs. I hope to make the point that renewing the connection to our humanity and to each other is the most important goal of our modern times.

While we mourn the loss of lives in the tragedies that occurred in Baton Rouge, Minnesota, and Dallas, let’s share our stories about the triumph of connection!

Our species will become extinct if connection is not nurtured!

Our willingness or unwillingness to connect to our individual humanity and to each other will determine the survival of our species.  I truly believe this. The heinous, inhuman, and inconsiderate things that we do to each other, to our environment, and to the beautiful creatures that inhabit our planet, makes us excellent candidates for the fate that destroyed the dinosaurs!

To be clear, I don’t believe our unnatural detachment from each other or from our individual humanity will magically attract colossal rocks from space to fall on our planet and destroy the human race!  But I do believe our reckless disregard for each other’s well-being over successive centuries have created “meteorites” of disconnection that continue to shatter the thoughts, words, and behaviors that nurture connection. These callous comets of our own making appear to have permeated the earth’s atmosphere, rapidly fraying the delicate fabric of the oneness of humanity, and unraveling the emotional, mental, and spiritual strands that our souls harbor when we leave the shores of heavenly mystery and are born to our mothers.

The psyche of humanity has been bombarded by asteroids of disconnection for such a long time that we are more likely to accept the illusion of our differences and are often amazed when we find so many things we have in common with our fellow Americans, immigrant neighbors, or the so-called foreigners that are separated from us by the oceans. 

This is not a doomsday prophecy from ancient or biblical scripture.  No spiritually inspired guru revealed this prediction in an overpriced book on Amazon.com, and neither did I go into a super trance after smoking some powerful weed to receive a divine message from a deity in the heavenly realms! This theory about our demise was developed from the personal observations of an aging, American baby-boomer whose childhood experiences taught him a lot about what human beings are capable of when they’re disconnected from their humanity. 

Throughout my childhood and adulthood, I’ve watched this disconnection in its many forms play out on the world stage, confirming that detachment from our humanity has humble beginnings as the infant (but annoying) inconsiderations that our fellowmen perpetrate every now and then in our daily lives. We rarely link the behaviors of these “infants” to the heinous actions of disconnected adults. But, if we look closely, we will see that full-blown disconnection starts as little inconsiderations. Over time, these behaviors mature into harmful forms of detachment.  

Intolerance of diversity of any kind in our neighborhoods is a microcosm of the worldwide cruelties of ethnic cleansing, religious bigotry or sexual assaults of women that we read about on our smart phones; the degree to which these cruelties are levied is the only difference.  When disconnection matures and severely deteriorates the conscience, human beings are capable of the heinous things we see and hear about way too often.

On a daily basis, we’re witnessing the awful outcomes of disconnection, when humans cut themselves off from their individual humanity and to each other.  As the tragedies of harmful detachment unfold on our televisions, over the internet, on the radio, in our newspapers, and in our water-cooler conversations, it appears that we’ve become a species sadly desensitized to the horrors.  Desensitization is a wicked consequence of our heartless behaviors from one age to the next era. It’s an indication that we've become conditioned to expect the worst behaviors of our lot, accepting the horrors as the rule and the beauty of humanity as the exception. How sad is this?

Only when one is disconnected from his humanity can he inflict the devastation that occurred in Orlando. But did this really surprise us? Haven’t we witnessed this type of inhumanity in our past? The horrors of the holocaust was the direct result of humans that chose to cut themselves off from their connection to other souls. Slavery or servitude still exist in our modern day, and the perpetrators - mostly men - will continue to enslave as long as they dethrone their humanity and empower their rationalizations.  

The decisions of governments and corporations that favor profits and/or cost cutting over the health and safety of people are sinister forms of disconnection that hide behind the veil of free enterprise or rationalized public interest. A few years ago, in the city of Flint, Michigan, a decision was made to draw the drinking water from the Flint River, which was known by all parties involved this decision to be highly contaminated. This was a purposeful act that exposed anyone who drank the city tap water (especially children) to lead poisoning. Very few people want to connect this decision to a glaring demographic: that the citizenry of Flint is made up of mostly African Americans. Shhhh...don't tell anyone that race played a role in this decision, because color is no longer a factor in how decisions are made in America since Barack Obama was elected leader of the free world!

The Michigan decision-makers were able to sleep at night, knowing, but not caring about the inhumanity of their decisions. I have to believe that the families and loved ones of the decision-makers did not live in Flint. And, if my assumption is accurate, I am forced to conclude that they considered the health and safety of the citizens of Flint, dispensable. The only way one can do something as callous as this is when they have little or no connection to souls outside their small circle. Disconnection is a disease of the heart and mind that calcifies the conscience of humanity, transcending race, color, creed, religion, and gender.

I could go on and on about many horrific examples of the poisons of disconnection throughout history and during our modern times.  I could spend all year aggregating countless instances of man’s inhumanity to man, but it would only serve to bolster a sad truth: that as a species we have evolved intellectually, but our emotional evolution, the key to meaningful connection, has either devolved or evolved at a significantly slower pace. 

We can't afford to change the woeful patterns of a disconnected world at a slow pace. We need to act quickly, decisively, intelligently, and consistently to counter the internal (psychological) and external (societal) forces of separation that weaken the connection to our individual humanity and to each other.  We must learn how to restore and strengthen our connection to each other and our environment or continue on the same path as the dinosaurs. In other words, if we don't change, we are going where we’re headed!

So, how did we get to this place? How did we disconnect from our individual humanity, from each other, from the beautiful creatures on the planet, and from the planet itself? How did we not know what was happening to us over the centuries? How can we send men to the moon, conquer polio, or exceed the speed of light in our flying machines while forgetting, ignoring, or purposefully destroying what is necessary to maintain a genuine connection to our fellow man?

In the upcoming weeks, I will try to answer some of these questions and hope that you will chime in and provide me with your thoughts and insights.