What Are You Doing with Your Outrage

Energy Medicine and the Politics (Politeia) of Health

“Politics” is derived from the juicier Greek word, “politeia,” which implies an active engagement in which people empower each other to enhance their communities. – Jean Houston

“The Earth is what we all have in common.”

—Wendell Berry

6th of Series

If you didn’t read the earlier installments, we suggest you start here.

What Are You Doing with Your Outrage?

Donna Eden and David Feinstein

A recent series of decisions by the Supreme Court in the wake of everything else that is unfolding prompted us to write, within the same e-letter, another article in the series.

In our January e-letter this year, we initiated the “Energy Medicine and the Politics of Health” series with an article called “Political Choices Are Health Choices.” It showed how social policies, based on state-by-state comparisons in the U.S., impact life expectancy, sometimes by as much as seven years!

We believe that the majority of people, whether progressive or conservative, support policies that are favorable for health. We all want our children’s and grandchildren’s generations to thrive. We are writing this to encourage you to champion health-affirming policies.

Our reasons for concern are accelerating. In the past month, we’ve seen 19 elementary school children murdered by a teenager with a legally purchased assault weapon. Another 13 mass shootings occurred during the first weekend (yes, weekend!) of this month, resulting in a dozen deaths and 70 injured. Also last week, we witnessed the terror in election workers getting hundreds of death threats to themselves and their families, with mobs coming to their homes, for just doing their job. We’ve seen how the events leading to January 6 put democracy in the U.S. on a razor’s edge and how millions of Americans are totally dismissing incontrovertible video-taped evidence of a nearly successful violent insurrection attempt, including close calls on the lives of the Vice President and Speaker of the House! We’ve seen a former Missouri governor, now running for Senate, air an ad suggesting that right wing Republicans have a right to shoot other Republicans who don’t adhere to the party lines. Following all this, we saw the Supreme Court reverse a state gun control law.

In addition, the Court has, in rapid succession, made it easier for police to lie to suspects, made it easier for the government to meddle with religion, and in the much-publicized decision last Friday, made it virtually impossible for many disadvantaged women to have an abortion. A decision the Court made last year was also perturbing. One of the horrors of Nazi Germany and many other totalitarian regimes is the way citizens were/are pitted to inform on one another. That could never happen here, we thought while learning of these despotic methods in our high school history classes. Yet the Supreme Court acted last September to uphold vigilante laws that make anyone discussing abortion as an option, even with the woman’s doctor or parents, vulnerable.

Such decisions could very well also be precursors to even greater intrusions into control of one’s life. Justice Thomas was clear that the reasoning used by the majority to overturn Roe and Casey could also be applied to limiting access to contraceptive options, criminalizing consensual same-sex relations, and banning gay marriage.

The right to personal choice in contraception is common sense healthcare and a fundamental freedom. Being able to love who you love rather than who the state says is appropriate for you seems so basic that it startles us to see it being revisited in 2022. It is hard to imagine that you don’t know and respect people involved in same-sex consensual relationships. Our company and our extended community are blessed with many such loving couples.

In the area of our specialty, when protections against fundamental rights are being targeted, the right to choose holistic health care is at risk. This is not a leap in logic. We have already in the past year had to ask for your help in battling legislative attempts to, in several states, restrict access to innovative health care practices.

We know that our views do not reflect everyone in our community. We know that some are offended by our position that it is the mother’s personal and weighty moral responsibility, not the government’s, to make choices about her pregnancy until the fetus reaches the capacity to survive outside the womb. In fact, we have people on our core staff and faculty who vote opposite of us on most issues, yet we treasure them. We respect and value different opinions. But we are also aware that many in our community look to us for our opinions on matters that impact emotional and physical health, and we feel compelled to take a stand when the right to love and be loved is threatened; when the right to decide if conception or birth should be avoided for health or other personal reasons; when health care choices are being limited to protect the interests of traditional health care providers; when the basic rights of certain segments of the population are at risk because they do not meet the approval of a minority that has power.

The historians who study the ways democracies go authoritarian talk about “gradual, gradual, gradual . . . and then sudden and unstoppable.” We imagine that most of you in our community who have read this far feel outrage over at least some of the above developments. We want to suggest that feeling it is not enough. We want to suggest that you use your outrage to fuel constructive action.

In fact, we want to suggest that you take an action every day, however small, so that your outrage becomes a force toward shifting the situation. What actions? Three of the articles in our Politics of Health series – by Jean Houston, PhDAnneloes Smitsman, PhD, and David Gruder, PhD, in this issue – address that question. These include not only simple steps – such as liking a post, sending an angry emoji, displaying a bumper sticker, or going to a rally – but deep considerations of all the issues involved in ensuring that your children and grandchildren will live in a world that supports the best in humanity. These principles will create a mindset for envisioning how to put your intentions into motion, for formulating daily actions, small or large.

Let your daily actions be designed to influence others to also take action, actions that are informed by the ancient Iroquois wisdom that weighty community decisions should benefit the seventh generation into the future. With the dizzying pace of change, the choices we are collectively making today will have profound consequences even for our own generation. In case we haven’t been clear, we believe the November election will be the most consequential in our lives. Until November, in addition to your other daily actions, be sure you are registered to vote. Vote. Inspire others to vote. November is almost here.

We are interested in and value your thoughts on this series. Your comments will not be censored. We expect differing viewpoints and hopefully rich discussion. Comments do, of course, need nowadays to be screened for trolls, bots, being respectful, understandable, on-topic, et cetera, so there will be some delay between your submitting them and their being posted.

Even though Donna and Donna won’t be responding to these comments directly, our purpose is to get dialogue going among the members of our community. We will also have a staff person answer questions that are directly pertinent for our organization to answer, such as questions about our policies. Finally, Donna and David and the subsequent guest contributors will read all of your comments when they are writing subsequent articles so they will have them in their minds.

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Bilabong

Molly Ivan’s once said I think, “I would rather be wrapped in the Constitution and burn the American flag than be wrapped in the American flag and burn the Constitution “. Right on for your statement today!

Elizabeth

Thank you for this thoughtful, brave and intelligent commentary on this most turbulent of weeks. I needed to hear it and appreciate you for offering viable action steps for us to alleviate our sense of helplessness.

Anon

It is my belief, based on what I have read, that “our” government has been almost totally taken over by, essentially, what used to be the Nazis, with the purpose of a world totalitarian government, which is being called the New World Order. This has been going on since the end of WWII, and it is a “boil the frog” approach, with most steps small enough that after people get done “venting” about them, all just continues with no change. The most obvious, and the most insidious because people are STILL accepting it, is the entire Covid Plandemic. The withholding of effective early treatment (look up Utter Pradesh,) the assassination of leaders of countries who refused to use the gene-modifying injections referred to as, but which are not, vaccines, and fear-compliance by the majority of people to this when it was SO OBVIOUS to about 1/3 of the population what was going on, and still is. What used to be “our” government is no longer, and the religious right is just another, very convenient pawn in the process. I used to have a Top Secret clearance at one point in my life. One thing I know is that what is getting your attention is NOT what SHOULD be getting your attention, if you took the trouble to access data not presented by the owned-and-controlled media; it is there to distract you from what is really going on. So we have one thing and then another, and then the next thing to get (rightfully) very upset about, and most are blind to the bigger picture that is proceeding as planned. Go look up Davos Man. This is not about R v W. R v W is just another step in the world-wide process. Go read Dr. Robert Malone, who has somehow miraculously avoided being killed. You will find nothing in standard media except attacks on him. Go find what HE is writing.

Toni Keeling

Thank you for this wise, caring and compassionate post. Even though I live in Australia, and am a senior person, I can remember when I was a teenager and women died from so called backyard abortions. I can remember when women had to retire if they married. I remember when when grown women who earned their own money were not allowed to buy 5heir own property, which was one reason for my brothers being so far ahead of me with buying our own homes.
All of this has changed and one of our prime ministers changed gun laws rapidly after our rare probably only mass shooting ( apart from the massacres of our own indigenous people.)
I have visited the US many times and loved the people I met. I wish you well and trust that all these big issues will be deeply reflected upon. Other countries including my own loved country may follow on from any changes that happen.

Victoria

To all: Check your voter registration to ensure that it is correct, and update it if you have moved or if there are any errors in the registration. For most states, you can look up your voter registration online by googling your state and “voter registration”. Do not delay. Be sure to check even if you signed through the DMV or a voter registration drive. Also, if you haven’t voted in recent elections, your registration may have been removed from the voter rolls. If any information in the voter registration is wrong or missing, you may have to cast a provisional ballot, which runs the risk that your vote won’t count. I speak from experience, having answered the hotline at one of the voter assistance centers on previous election days. These issues always come up, so double check your voter registration.

Ann Peters

Thank you so much for your compassionate letter. I agree that the November elections are critical. But I also have emailed my elected officials so they know where I stand, and that these issues are critically important to me. Many votes will happen between now and then that can have an impact.

Gina Reinhardt

I appreciate the options you provide. I have been working with the elements for some time now and know that with wood we need to turn anger into purpose and constructive actions. I believe that big positive changes are being fed to the field and people will awaken to knowledge that the village does not have to comply with dysfunctional leadership.

Ann Haaland

Hello there. I am new to your newsletter and am a new student, finishing up the first of the four Fundamentals Classes I am participating in. I must commend you on putting this out there. I can feel and almost hear your gentle voices in gathering energy that will benefit so many. However many of us who see or read this, I believe it will be a wave of hope running through all. And I just want to say thank you for this compassionate request. May we pass it along?

Lori

Amen, Amen, Amen to all of this, David & Donna! I am so happy to be part of a company that believes in the basic rights of ALL people, and that actually walks their talk and stands side by side with those of us who might fall into these categories!! I deeply love you both!
~ Lori Kats

Gloria Simon-Gould

Namaste Donna and David
Well stated

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