On self-defence
Self-defence means existence. Without it we cannot survive, we cannot be. To understand self-defence we must know: What do we mean by “self”? What do we mean by “defence”?
The self has a universal basis, as part of the whole, of the entire universe. If the self, in understanding, in feeling, only encompasses one’s own world, then actions are disconnected, only concerned with the survival of one’s own life. Like this, society cannot be, because it needs us to be connected to develop. Society needs to create a common mind and heart which is diverse and full of many, like the world it is surrounded by, which keeps growing and enriching itself, understanding itself. The smaller the self is thought and felt, the more distant this self is from the world, from life, the more distant it is from a defence that intents to build an ethical, meaningful and loving society. So this self must exist with respect and meaning, connected to the world in which it grows. It is also a “we” which is also a universal, quantum us.
We are not alone, because nobody is an isolated unit. I, the self, we, us, are made up of the same social, religious, cultural, family and historical structures and influences that have built other selves, but in different combinations. These combinations make each one of us unique, but also, they are what connects us together. Making ourselves strong from our different contexts means to give a solid base to this common identity. Because it needs the strength and diversity of many to defend the world, and the different societies and realities it carries. Who is this “self”? A person? The universe? “I”? “We”? Who is “me”? What is “we”? How do we learn to become “me”? How do we bring “me” and “we” together? It is important to ask, to search and to explore the whole picture, finding the deepness and the connections which compose a creative, loving, meaningful self.
Defending is an act of building structures and bridges in between humans, nature and existence. So that all parts complete each other in the whole. A connected self defends a world with a wider meaning, by giving meaning to all in this entirety. Because, to “defend”, is to create in consideration of this wholeness, which is an ongoing, changing flow. An individualistic and ego-centred “defence” will destroy the tissue which keeps the basis of life and freedom together. Such “self-defence” is a false defence, a self that destroys its connection to itself and life. Today, we mostly connect the meaning of “to defend something” with a violent act against someone. Like that, it becomes about winning and dominating, destroying the threat with the aim of survival. But with this approach of “winning or losing”, the paradigm of “them and us”, the philosophy of separation, we create an oppositional mindset. With this definition and everyday acts, you learn to see and feel the world as a hostile place. You can have a safe life only if you destroy or control all possible threats. It is a “defence” which justifies the attacks against the world we are living in. Killing and destroying in the name of “life”.
What do we learn from it? What does it tell us? Which eyes and heart we look, feel and love ourselves and our world through, decide how we will move through life. Decide what we create, in feelings, in energy, in dreams or nightmares, or in no dreams at all… Are we really that individual, unique self, who is not a result of all human history? Or are we the legacy of our ancestors? Are we the better them? Are we making more? Are we becoming better human beings through knowledge and experience? All your acts always have an impact, and it doesn’t matter how small it is. Are we better functioning with modern logic? Do we believe? In thinking, in feeling? Do we believe? In anything? In us? In others? Why is it important to understand what, where we are, and why? What and why we have to change the mindset and emotions of separation, disconnection and hostility? Does it make a difference if we see us as a vivid part of the world, its wonders and existence… or not? How easy is it to change the already deeply implemented, fear-based, understanding? What does it take to become your own self? How do we learn to be a part of communality? How do we learn to understand‚ the common “us” not just as an human-only construction? How do we learn to become anything? How did we learn to become “us”? Can we become ourselves without the whole common “us”?
Where do we start? Where does our journey begin? Our journey begins before we are born. Our journey, whatever gender we have, is the journey of women through history. It is the history of the breaking of a balance between humans, between genders, between all livings, creating hierarchies of who has “the right to life and who does not”. Everything we take in, all feelings, impressions, thoughts, are part of the history of this breaks, of our mother, her mother, countless mothers before them, countless women before them. We feel what we are not told, not explained. We feel the history of women, throughout thousands of years. Unfiltered and growing in the womb, the reality of these feelings create us. The life of a woman. There, in the comforting warm nest, in our mother, we first learn what she feels, what she learned; about herself, the world, the sense of life and how this all is connected to her as a woman, determining her place in this life. What she feels when she thinks of us, we feel whether we are wanted or not, we feel the doubts, the uncertainty, the helplessness. Feeling how much security there is, how much on the future she believes in, she sees for her and us with us. Does she love? Is she loved? Respected? Does she trust? The less of all this there is, the more insecure she is. We are not an exact copy of our mother, but she shows us first through her emotions, into what kind of world, into what kind of reality we come into. This could mean feeling whether or not you’re welcome as a girl. Feeling that your existence is limited to all the rules made for you. To grow up with it, every step of the way, this first learning. Everything that follows, what family, friends, society, teaches us about our role, will deepen what we learnt so early. Many factors will be involved in influencing our self, our motivations and decisions, our ways.
How many of them will we learn to see as destiny? Which ones will make us deny our self? Shame, fear, punishment, constant observation by God, by traditions, by family, by the Self, who learned to observe and ignore itself according to this reality. And with this baggage, asking again: what do we learn to believe in? Who and what has the right to life? The “right to life”? What we are we hoping and living for? Respecting and loving life and existence? Why and until where? Does it make any difference?
To understand which values we have lost, and what are the results of that, is the beginning of defence… self-defence. We need to recreate and bring back these values to our common life. Understanding where the way of thinking and feeling based in separation comes from, what fear, prejudice and rejection are rooted in, why some are seen as worth more than others… this will lead us through this history of schisms and constant destruction. But also, it will take us through a hidden history of resistance and the defending of another approach different from killing everyone who doesn’t bend or fit. Long time ago, the values of existence were protected by the mothers. Society’s smallest problems had communal solutions mediated by matriarchal roles, which carried the deepness of a humanity which is a part of all existence. They were the pillars of life, of communal life, and the biggest form of self-defence. Self-defence, which was defined by the acts of creating and building, connecting and loving, feeding and healing. It was the time of the Mother Goddess, our Mother Nature. She was defended by all, and was the one who defended everything. Societies gave her a meaning, she brought her values into daily life, sharing and caring, for the common whole. With her guidance, societies protected themselves with strong bonds and a common understanding of their own existence, a life in freedom rooted in their togetherness.
Around 5,000 years ago came the end of Neolithic times. Humans were learning fast, always developing in different directions. What we understand from history is that around that time, a dominant mentality started spreading and creating a new concept of the self. It separated humans into categories. It created hierarchies based on the ruling of a dominant male mentality, which changed the whole understanding of human being inside the world. It constructed differences based on the oppression of the other, understanding freedom as a form of preservation of material goods and individualistic understanding. Making cracks between peoples. Burning bridges. Burning women. Burning the roots and the knowledge. So that today, we step out into the 21st century, far away from this world of guiding mothers. The concrete pulls our souls towards its cold body. We do not feel it, our hearts have not come to know or appreciate the embracing depth of this vastness and unstoppable diversity. The primal trust has given way to a destructive restlessness that calculates, weighs, asks for benefit, for itself, for today, without regard for resources, without gratitude for life. The stories we hear today picture us as the most sublime of all creatures, godlike, and possessing everything. We are no longer part of everything, we were never made of the same material, we are worth more, different and so original that creation has to bow down to us, and not the other way around. Our duty is to control, to dominate, because nature is hostile and must be conquered, because it is against us. Patriarchy and domination at its finest. It slaved living beings by giving them the power to see themselves more worthy than women, nature and everyone who is not understood as strong and powerful. Methods of oppression shared, to oppress in a smarter way. Let the slaves feel free, by enslaving each other voluntary in favor of getting a part of the destructive power. Everybody seems to know, a lot of people feel it, but how to get out of this circle of destructive desires? And… do we want really to get out of it?
We are the generations who are able to see, feel and live the extreme results of this mentality change thousands of years ago. And when we research, we find the traces of resistance, of rebellion, of the beauty in not accepting the destruction and exploitation around and inside us. Which is, since then ongoing, every day, every hour, every minute, every second… an ongoing struggle. It is a war of mentalities. The aim of this war is to eat up the faith we have in our common strength. To defend ourselves inside the communal self we need to organise with another mindset, away from patriarchy and domination. But there is also a wound inside all of us. We are ready to fight, to defend, to give everything… but the mindset we are fighting against lives deep inside our souls and hearts. If we don’t ask questions from another angle, we will just get logical and measurable answers, cold and lifeless. If we do not analyse with other eyes, we will not be able to believe in the change of this fearful mindset. We do not dare to do what we need to. We have to relearn love. Our actions can be a violent resistance, able to hit the oppressors physically and economically, very hard, able to kill our executors, able to make a power shift inside the state-construction. But, we are recreating their mindset with our actions. Because violence used with that approach, is an attack against all living beings. Answering destruction with destruction.
So, if the answer for destruction is love, then we should ask ourselves what love means. Or, first, to look at what it is not. We shouldn’t mix it up with this mindset and emotions of ownership, destruction and sexualisation, which are very common when ‘loving’ in today’s societies. We need to go back to how we grew up and what we were taught about us (in I and we) and life. The “love” we see and feel today is mainly the reason why people are in fear and mistrust of each other, as a result of the same mindset which lets us own the world or a pet, or whatever. Sucking and spitting out our expectations on the “loved one”, in the race of feeling something positive. It’s about owning hearts, owning souls, owning and controlling the whole life, because only then it is real and special, because “love” can just be something special and exclusive. In many households, all around the world, people are killing each other, themselves, oppressing, raping, assaulting, punching, in the name of this “love”. Mostly women are the target of this “love”. It’s killing us. But it’s the very deep expression of hatred and not loving anything. It’s fear and pain, which just create more fear and more pain. With this “love”, we will stay stuck inside this individualistic and separating reality we feel around us.
Love can only grow and live through communality. Inside the freedom of growing, learning emotionally and mentally, how to feel connected and loved for who you are. It’s about learning to feel and think in a diverse way, appreciating the miracles and questions of life, loving differences and similarities. It’s about values and the borders of them. It’s about responsibilities, about taking care because of love and not because of fear. It’s about freedom, which means to create a free life. This free life cannot depend on a location, on a type of person or being. Freedom is for all and everything, because the existence of an individual self, of an individual society, even an only thought or feeling, does not exist, it is part of everything. Freedom is love, and love is responsibility and communal connection. It’s organising life together with love. We can’t wait for a perfect moment of love, we have to create it every day, again and again, creating love and hope inside every moment. By organising our love, which has no priorities other than to grow everywhere, we can find it is a primary source of liberation.
Everything we do has an impact. It represents a mindset. It represents how much we value who we are, who we are surrounded by, what we are living, how much we love, everything, always. When we talk about the quantum moment, then we talk about the creative magic of being in the moment, every moment. Being a revolutionary in the “now”. We understand the dynamics of change as a state of constant revolution.
Ez rojê 40 caran şoreş çêdikim (Reber Apo)
(Every day I make 40 revolutions)
If we don’t fight with this approach, everything we create will be a repeat of a destructive mentality, which already taught us so much distrust, frustration, hate and fear, bringing us to the world we are in. We don’t own this world, we are part of it. Our acts of defence should counterbalance the history of oppression with dignity and hope for each other, with the love for freedom, life and all our world. Our existence cannot be above society. Society, Organisation and Love are the most basic and effective ways of self-defence. It is this legacy that we are defending. The warmth of the fire which kept the spirit of society alive. Thousands of years ago kept through the matriarchs in society. Until today kept alive and strong in every little step, in every decision to fight against this toxic mentality of separation and hate. The path towards a worldwide women’s revolution is bringing back the communal self defence which will liberate the whole of society. We have to defend. Our selves. Us selves. Together.