Cultures of internal violence— cultures of judgment, hiddenness, and retribution— find the prospect of open conversation, or free consideration, and the open throat (vishuddha) to be daunting.
Open conversation, free consideration, and the open throat allow for organic changes in human feeling and attitude, and changes in feeling and attitude often change culture itself.
Those who see themselves as the true servants of a culture, but who truly are “in control” of culture (or ideology, behavior, and narrative), tend to fear organic change caused by the open throat. And more than that, they may also have come to fear the consequences of seeming to be “wrong”, or self-mislead, in the very same 'violent' cultural milieu they themselves have helped create. They may close their own throats as a result. You can see this circular pattern of egoic self-protection everywhere you look these days.
A violent cultural milieu may not yet be physically violent (or excommunicating), but still may indulge in gross patterns of psychic and emotional violence — projections of shame, blame, judgment, and the idea that others in the culture may be “bad” or “wrong” by virtue of not being in alignment, either with prevailing thought patterns or with the closed narrative already made by cultural elites.
When you see a leadership living in fear of change, or in fear of open conversation that may lead to organic change, or in fear of the simple declaration that things may not merely be “OK”, then you may be operating in a culture of some internal violence, in which members engage the art of self-censorship, holding to the cultural norm so as not to be socially targeted. A simple test of this is whether or not free conversation can actually be had among a general population without repressive consequence.
Overall, wherever we see this pattern, we see a profoundly unhealthy situation. The labor it takes to heal out of it—by person, by group, by community—can't be underestimated.
I have a few friends left in the Western ivory tower, and they are saying: “Don't you see. We’ve already lost our ability to speak freely. We've already lost our civil society. And now we are in a great struggle to get it back.”
Put another way: is there anywhere on this earth where—if I do harm to no one—I can be guaranteed the right to remain alive, and yes to speak or write freely, without fear of reprisal?
It's the free expression part that's hard for many to tolerate.
2015, year of the Green Wood Sheep. A time of mystery and worry around every corner, but with resolution for those who choose well.
As the yarrow sticks spoke this morning:
It is only when we have the courage
to face things as they are,
without any self-deception or illusion,
that a light will develop out of events
by which the path to Unity may be recognized.
— I-Ching
Or as the great Master often said:
What do you not want to talk about?