Oh little town of Ferguson. I do not know where you are.

25 Nov 14 I was going to write about my two day conference but as I opened my mail this morning, I see the verdict for the policeman and the town of Ferguson reacting with a mob mentality. Last night as I was watching Dancing With the stars, the show was interrupted to talk about the results of the verdict. I was hoping he would get to the point and let me watch my show, but it did not take long to understand that he was preparing the viewers with the outcome. I felt very sorry for the policeman for what he has gone through and what he is going through. I hope that the police department have their own therapist and that he is seeing him or her at least twice a week. It is not that I do not have compassion for the youth who has died and his family who is grieving. However, this is about the policeman. I am thankful that we are in this century, though I do not think we have advanced emotionally, nor intellectually, as we have electronically. When there is no balance, there is a problem. I saw my own city go mad, with riots in the city and of course the police were blamed. We train police, the best way they can be trained and then we put them in the streets and tell them to make spontaneous decisions, and the correct ones as well as the politically correct ones. We have a legal system in North America and else where, where people are innocent until proven guilty. People because of their own prejudices or sufferings may not like the verdicts. When I was watching the news of my own city spiralling out of control, I was wondering why the newscasters were bashing the police. It was not the police setting their cars on fire or smashing windows. The press has a lot of power and I am very grateful to the press because they are very important in democracy for exposing truths. However, they are also trained to my understanding from previous studies, that instead of a five (numerical scale) output for example, there should be extreme polars to generate interest. At times especially, at small excerpts releases, snap shots are provided and not necessarily full truths. I remember a professor being quite annoyed when a study of fish was compared to the sexuality of humans. I found it amusing, but I also found it misleading for the general public. As I was watching my own city being torn apart because dissidents did not like the political G2 meetings, I kept changing channels so I could focus on what was happening, rather than how they thought the police were performing. I remember some time ago a woman commentating to me that it was expectant of a bus driver to be abused by passengers, that it came with the job. Funny thing about that, I thought we had bus drivers to transport us. I told her that, much to her annoyance. Was I wrong? Are people expected to be abused just because of the nature of their jobs? In the legal system it is important to determine truths by separating facts from fictions. It is much more involved than that but it is about determining what was really happening, leading to a specific act. There are procedures to determine truths. Recently a previous colleague of mine said, “It has gone to the opposite extreme.” I knew what he meant in relations to the political arena of the job he is doing. Times have changed and with times we should progress with changes. People join positions where they protect others for various reasons, but for most, though I am speaking without research, but from experience, most people who join organizations to help others, really want to help people. In cities there is a diffusion of responsibility, where people will wait for others to call the police and they may stand by watching someone be killed. They are not bad people. They just expect someone else to do something. Research has shown that police or other emergency services personnel, off duty, will respond to help more so than anyone in the general public. In small towns or bigger towns but not cities, the general population is more inclined to help. Even a study of theology students rushing to class, ignored someone needing help. I found that amusing too. I find much amusing because I find it all very hypocritical. That in itself is amusing. Now I will share something, since I am on a roll of injustice. It is a story I heard during the weekend that was very painful to the person telling it, however, it was very powerful to me as I heard it. The woman was telling the story of her background. Her mother told her that her own mother was a very devout Catholic and that it was her wish that the speaker would be a nun and her brother a priest. The son was favoured. When her mom became a nun, she chose a feminine version of her brother’s name (notice it was the son who was considered more important and by taking his name, it would put her in par in some way). After 17 years living a cloistered life, she could no longer do it and she left the convent. Her brother who was now a priest and her entire family disowned her. She was excommunicated by the Church as well. She met and married a Jew and adopted his religion. It was when a gossiping woman began telling others that she was not a “real Jew” that she began to notice people from the Synagogue react differently towards hers and always looking at her. She left that as well as it was too difficult for her, not to be accepted. She never told her husband about her background, fearing that he too and his family would abandon her. However, she did tell her daughter. Her daughter told her father after the mom had died. His response was surprise and that he had loved her very much. That would never had made an inkling of difference to him. Such tragedy from abandonment from organized religion (of the time), family and the destructive effects of idle gossip. Where am I going with this? There is so much suffering. There is so much expectations of how others should behave. Why not step back and take another view? Is it possible that when an act is committed either good or bad, that it is innocent? I remember telling a Priest once how hypocritical I found the people going to church to be. He responded quite casually, “Silva, don’t you see, they are the ones who really need to go to Church.” That made so much sense to me. So for you people who enjoy to gossip and stir the pot, you are getting the attention you seem to need, but remember that something you are saying may cause an enormous pain to another to the point where their entire lives can change. Why not take a good look at yourself and ask why you are doing this? Why not embrace someone instead of bashing them? Why not welcome them instead of mocking them? For the policeman in Ferguson who has so much hatred against him, would this had been different if he was a Black American Policeman? It is very difficult to take a life for many, even if it is thought that it is a matter of life or death for oneself or others. From the weekend Conference it was gleaned that American Soldiers return home traumatized by what they have seen or even done. They return home not thinking that they deserve their families. And one of the most devastating experiences for them is losing their belief in God. In couple therapy, what I always need to do first is defuse the personal attacks couples direct at each other. Once the emotional outbursts are diffused, then each can really begin to listen to the other, really listen. Once one can hear, than change is possible. There are really good people out there in the world. They suffer and they say and do terrible things. However, by stepping back, calming down and really examining a situation or cause, one may be able to separate the fact from fiction and really want to know what is truth and how to find it. What do you think?……….. Now I have to go outside and check out the damages from last night’s windstorm.