“We are waking up and beginning to realize that the love of power kills but the power of love heals.” –Rev. Barbara Kaufmann
Rev. Barbara Kaufmann’s Inner Michael website may have escaped my attention previously but it became impossible for it to continue doing so after her recent posting of Tabloid Taliban III: Guerrilla Decontextualization. The word “posting” does not seem sufficiently appropriate in this particular context because the article is one that overflows with such big and deeply-penetrating ideas that it could almost be described as an important publishing event.
A thoroughly precise, invigoratingly insightful, and compassionately constructed work of exposition, it takes to task the unseen powerbrokers behind the Oz-like curtains of tabloid operationswho apparently delight in in abusing first amendment rights andcreating chaos in the lives of others. It also delineates cultural biases that did so much to help cause Michael Jackson’s downfall. And yes, it goes a long way (as a great deal of Rev. Kaufmann’s writings has) toward balancing the narrative of Jackson’s individual truth and the legacy of empowered love he labored to bestow upon the global community.
It is possible, however, that one of the more important accomplishments of this specific article, which is in fact only 1 in a series of 3, is Barbara Kaufmann‘s finely-rendered illustration of how individuals and organizations guerrilla decontextualize their own humanity when they elect to disregard, or attack, that of another. Michael Jackson is one unavoidable example that shall haunt public awareness for decades simply because so many people continue to discover and rediscover the rarity of his genius and what he managed to give the world for as long as he could.
Yet there are numerous other examples which in their own way are just as profound. Such dehumanization occurs when an individual acts on the violent impulse to sexually assault another with regard for nothing else other than to satisfy an impulse. It occurs when corporations view one-of-a-kind rain forests as potential profits rather than as the homeland of the indigenous people and remarkable animal and plant species that live there.
To engage in the conscious dehumanization of another is to sabotage one’s own soul. The scenario is one in which nobody wins. The real tragedy is that with just a bit of expanded consciousness, such as that applied in Kaufmann’s article, everybody could not only win, but win big.
by Aberjhani
co-author of ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love
and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
A thoroughly precise, invigoratingly insightful, and compassionately constructed work of exposition, it takes to task the unseen powerbrokers behind the Oz-like curtains of tabloid operationswho apparently delight in in abusing first amendment rights andcreating chaos in the lives of others. It also delineates cultural biases that did so much to help cause Michael Jackson’s downfall. And yes, it goes a long way (as a great deal of Rev. Kaufmann’s writings has) toward balancing the narrative of Jackson’s individual truth and the legacy of empowered love he labored to bestow upon the global community.
It is possible, however, that one of the more important accomplishments of this specific article, which is in fact only 1 in a series of 3, is Barbara Kaufmann‘s finely-rendered illustration of how individuals and organizations guerrilla decontextualize their own humanity when they elect to disregard, or attack, that of another. Michael Jackson is one unavoidable example that shall haunt public awareness for decades simply because so many people continue to discover and rediscover the rarity of his genius and what he managed to give the world for as long as he could.
Yet there are numerous other examples which in their own way are just as profound. Such dehumanization occurs when an individual acts on the violent impulse to sexually assault another with regard for nothing else other than to satisfy an impulse. It occurs when corporations view one-of-a-kind rain forests as potential profits rather than as the homeland of the indigenous people and remarkable animal and plant species that live there.
To engage in the conscious dehumanization of another is to sabotage one’s own soul. The scenario is one in which nobody wins. The real tragedy is that with just a bit of expanded consciousness, such as that applied in Kaufmann’s article, everybody could not only win, but win big.
by Aberjhani
co-author of ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love
and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
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