What’s that Blowin’ in the Wind?
'cause a change is gonna come, yes, it will
Are Answers Blowin’ in the Wind?
Some questions are so profound that there seems to be no ready answer. Bob Dylan framed these with his 1962 hit that asked, “How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see?” and another question, “How many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?” And yet, while the answers, no doubt, blow in the wind, it is the artists and dreamers who pose the questions. For, in posing those question, a people-led movement against the political fantasy of winning an unpopular and unceasing war grabbed Dylan’s song. They made it their own as they pushed against pro-war governmental forces backed by corporate power. The question of the carnage of willing patriotic soldiers and reluctant draftees alike deserved to have answers. So the people marched and demonstrated and challenged and filed lawsuits, went to jail and some left the country.
“How many times…?” the song asked. And the answer? It’s up to us.
The Questions for our Time
If a pro-body and sex-positive framework is the most humane way to see the world, as I think it is, then that vision is also pro-justice and pro-compassion. So, what are the questions that are blowing in the wind coming from the White House? (Yes, I will let that sentence stand as it reads. Enjoy!) And what are the questions being carried by the wind that blow through a self-serving, do-nothing Congress impaled on the assery of its acquiescence?
How many National Park educational programs teaching US history to school children must be eliminated? How many Black Pride festivals are to be cancelled? How many story books or history books of slavery will be banned? Or books on diversity of any kind will be eradicated? Or health research or sexuality research halted? How many poor and how many rural people must be kept in the back of the line, or the bottom of the barrel for access to resources? How many bodies of black and brown, trans and gay bodies, and how many women’s bodies are to be violated and their rights trampled? How many workers for the common good will be fired? How many websites must be stripped of their truths? How many people from other countries -including our own- will be suspected of just about anything, then investigated, detained, deported, or ‘disappeared’? The answers, my friend, are blowing in the wind – blowing in a hot stinking wind emanating from the White House. A Destroyer of Democracy has usurped the mechanisms of accountability and now bodies are on the line. A WannaBe Dictator has control of science, education, finance, and culture and people are being disappeared or escaping or plunging into debt or despair.
The obvious answer as to where this leads us is known: When Democracy is completely dead. When the Emperor can march naked down Pennsylvania Avenue with ignorance flapping in the wind and nobody laughs. When people fawningly tell him of the beauty of his fabulousness. When he steals Panama and Greenland and the whole world suffers from his control of the world economy through fickle on-again/off-again tariffs. We’ve seen this story of privilege and power played over and over throughout humanity’s history: colonialism, empires, seven-year wars, a hundred-year war, and two world wars! And, through it all there’s a kinship among tyrants and billionaire oligarchs, formerly known as lords, who laugh at starving serfs who turn against each other as they grovel for bread crumbs and plead for their lives.
On the Other Hand…
Yet, just as Dylan’s later wrote, “the times they are a-changing” this song written decades ago puts us on notice to be aware. At this current time in history we can now see that this time around is different in two ways. The first is, we now know far more about the intersections of exploitation and the interweaving of pain and suffering that occurs.
Racial bodies: It is not as easy now to manipulate us with the simplicity that our problem is about race. But, it is about skin color of our bodies and the privilege of white people.
Sexual bodies: It is not so easy to convince us to save all those vulnerable white women against the big bad trans people or the anathema that same gender marriages threaten societal stability. But, it is about scapegoating bodies that are outside a gender binary and heteronormativity.
Bodies of class: It is not the fault of the poor living in their cars for lack of affordable housing or the sick who lose their homes because of an obscene health care system. But, it is about the giant sucking noise that is siphoning funds from the lower 99% to the few in the 1% elite bubble.
The second reason it is different this time around is that it is clearer now who is pulling strings with no regard for the well-being of the bodies being dragged under by empire. It is the wounded among us who have no regard for bodies that do not mirror their own and who are gleefully hoovering the world’s resources into their pockets. In this changin’ times we are defining what is going to be the future of the human family. What is it to be a human body living on one small, fragile, and beautiful planet? Is it to bury empathy? Or build silos or walls or gated communities? To ship out of sight any and all who do not look like us or agree with us or who could be obstruct one’s aims for power? Or is the future escaping to another planet after we have used up this one?
What it is to be Human?
Both science and religion (when unpolluted by bias) tell us we are interconnected and we ignore this scientific and religious truth at our own peril. Research shows us that we are all in this together: We breathe the same carbon-filled air and we eat and drink the same micro-plastics while we trade across arbitrary and transient national borders. Surely the vision is to live in a world without fear of our survival for we can trust in the connections of our social fabric. Surely there is deep pleasure in knowing we have neighbors who can be trusted and that we live in a community that cares when anyone falls through the cracks. It is the pleasure of knowing each of us is respected and worthy with equal rights and responsibilities to one other. It is to know that each effort on behalf of others is returned to us ten-fold.
Reciprocity. Hospitality. Inclusion. Generosity. Kindness. These are the building blocks to a just and peace-filled world that thrives and flourishes on the pleasure of living our too-short and fragile lives - together.
The answer to the questions we are asking now, my friend, is blowing in the wind. But let us not be naïve. It is wounded people who always wound other people, who claim all the power for themselves and who take, take, take, while they invent more ways to siphon resources. The disconnected and uncaring people who never give or share cannot possibly provide answers or leadership. For, when there is no personal experience of social connection, this use and abuse of power reveals they themselves have lost their humanity and can lead us only toward destruction. The parade down the Avenue is toward destruction, not healing, toward genocide, not toward a united global community that cares for our planetary home. Yet, even now, as the emperor has no clothes, narcissism is gaudily exposed and too few whisper this truth. For, the answer that we seek will not come from those who have no understanding or experience of the interconnected reality of human nature: the pleasures of connection and caring, of giving and sharing.
Perhaps the answer, my friend, is to remember that even the youngest child knows when bad rules hurt and when bullies are being mean. They also know to listen to and trust in the wisdom of playing and taking pleasure in wondrously miraculous bodies on an equally astonishing planet. Like the most innocent child among us, let us envision generosity and build the trusting world of compassion. The wounded among us cannot see such a world but the singers and poets and dreamers can see the changes that are coming, seek the answers that will protect each one of us from harm. The answer according to Dylan is blowin’ in the wind but as another dreamer, Sam Cooke, reminds us, “It’s been a long time coming, but I know a change is gonna come, yes it will.” In this new day of surviving there is a vision of thriving. It is the knitting together of the hearts of humanity in the bonds of our deep and common connection as a species. It is our kindness and generosity that will protect all of us and help us survive. It is this bold sharing and caring for all these beautifully diverse bodies that we discover: This is where pleasure lies. Let us all come home to ourselves and find one another.
“The Flourishing Body in the Public Square” aims to look at the body politic through the lens of body positivity being mindful that the main premise of empire is, “Some bodies have more value than other bodies.” And, it doesn’t have to be that way.
The songs referenced here are, “Blowin’in the Wind” (1962) and “The Times They are A-Changing” (1963) by Bob Dylan, and “A Change is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke (1963).