Ending violence

I want to reflect on violence because today is One Billion Rising day.

To me the most primal form of violence is violence against the self, as in smoking, taking drugs, eating unhealthily, or other things.

There is also violence against life, against the Earth, against the web of life of which we are all a part. This type of violence is insidious. It often masquerades as its opposite. A mother may have a “Baby on Board” sign on the back window of her combustion-powered vehicle and not realize what hypocrisy that represents.

Of course the use of fossil fuels is so ingrained into the misguided material infrastructure in which most of us live that it is almost impossible to really be 100% pure. But one can be aware and not simply harm things impunity or flagrant disregard. It is important to 1) be aware and to care; and 2) to make effort.

But there are many, many who commit violence by not even taking these basic steps. This type of consciousness or lack thereof needs to change. Perhaps one simple way to change it would be to heavily tax fossil fuels, particularly petrol.

As a bicyclist I am accustomed to fairly primal violence. I just read an article at bbc.co.uk which was a psycho-social analysis of why many motorists are so unbelievably hostile towards bicyclists. Regardless, there needs to be primal recognition and acknowledgement starting at the highest levels of authority on down that bicycists have a very fundamental right to use the roads and that the way they use roads is in fact more tied to actual physiologic considerations which in my opinion should always trump things like algorithms related to traffic signaling. A person on a bicycle is a breathing being whose muscles, heart, lungs, etc. are activating on a totally different level than a person sitting on their ass behind a steering wheel, and this should be understood and respected to a deep level if we are going to begin to heal.