“Divided No More” 10~12~08
I wanted to blog about the article “Divided No More”( Palmer, P.J. 1998). This reading really stirred up some emotions in me and it is probably because there have been so many times in my life that I have realized I can live divided no more. But some how I subtly get pushed back into it. I realized when I was about 20 that I was different than society expected me to be. I didn’t want to follow all the rules or norms that made you a good person. Because a lot of the glorified “good people” in the news I did not hold high respect for. I had achieved all the way up until step 2 from the article (community). I lived in Athens GA. and we were a community of artist ready to speak about how life could be different. We held 3 parties called Star Seed where we had music and art, live artist painting and booths about yoga, massage, meridians, percussion, Mayan Calendar, Composting, Alternative energy ideas and how to maintain enough in your own house to help the energy crisis. It felt like I was on a high and we were getting through. Then we all graduated and moved different ways. I would say in our own little ways we are all still contributing to a collective movement of living divided no more. But without the community you start to feel abandoned. One thing I recognized in the article is I believe we were stopped by fear. After we all graduated we had our parents pushing us, societal framework pushing on us and we were too easily swayed by the consumerist system of, work to make money so you can buy a house and be a happy person. I worked for 2 years and was very unhappy and unmotivated creatively. The only thing that kept me feeling whole was my work with the foster kids that I had in my life. When I found this program I was very revitalized. I had found a new community that allows the subtitles of conditioned thought of why we do the things we do as a society, begin to be questioned. I have found that being in the classroom gives me a power to make the youth think about why. I often tell them when they ask me why, “I don’t know why do you think it should be that way, there might be another way to think about it.” It makes me feel satisfied at this point to at least know I can influence the youth to think for themselves and hope that this ripples out to families and communities. I hope to do more ripples when I get into the classroom on my own, but for now, I already feel less divided one again.
