Vulnerability

Saturday 3/14/2015 6:02 AM

Our modern world seems to be governed by fear; at least in my corner of the world this seems to be true. News reports are filled with murders, suicide bombings, kidnappings, threats of nuclear proliferation, unrestrained religious fanatics gruesomely murdering their captives and mercilessly attacking villages, and other such acts of violence. In that kind of a world one feels vulnerable, almost as if one is living on borrowed time. We hunker down and isolate ourselves in our houses, barring the windows and doors to keep the evil from reaching us. Our government creates the Department of Homeland Security to protect us from threats, both foreign and domestic. Everyone is viewed with suspicion even though we are all in the same situation, experiencing the same threats.

Today I read the writing of John Mogabgab in which he writes about vulnerability. “Recently a workshop leader invited participants to voice their associations with the word vulnerability. Responses included adjectives such as meek, intimidated, naïve, inferior, ugly and foolish. Vulnerability is not seen as a gift to be given but a weakness to be overcome. Not vulnerability but security is the ideal that most often governs our national, communal, and personal decisions. Perhaps one of the greatest sources of loneliness in contemporary life is that our vulnerability, which unites us in a common humanity and enables us to be woven together in love, now is cause for our isolation in fear-filled cells of spiritual solitary confinement.”

I would argue that this feeling of isolation is not simply one of spiritual solitary confinement but also of social solitary confinement. Earlier this morning I read an article written by Johann Hari based on his book, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, in which he cites research that suggests that addictions of all sorts are caused, not by chemical hooks that attach to receptors in our brains, but, by the effects of an individual living in isolation from community. When those suffering from addictions become part of a community in which they have a meaningful role they are more likely to be able to recover from their addiction and become a contributing member of the community. It seems that Hari’s observations are illustrated perfectly in groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and other similarly structured groups in which members become vulnerable with each other and, through the support of the group, are enabled to overcome the addiction.

The society in which I live is fiercely independent. Individual rights are placed above nearly everything else, resulting in pockets of isolated individuals that have a hard time seeing themselves as members of a larger community. Those with differing opinions, customs, cultures, and so forth, are seen as enemies to be avoided and overcome rather than sources of growth, enlightenment, enrichment, and healing. We want to appear strong and invincible to others, insisting our way is the best way, my way or the highway. I wonder what would happen if we would share the doubts that we all have deep within our hearts with others? Perhaps we could learn from each other and we could be released from our loneliness, the cultural addiction and solitary confinement to which we have all been sentenced.