Vampires and Other Random Thoughts…
From the editor….
Have you noticed how popular vampires have gotten lately? It’s like we’re living in a vampire obsessed culture, they figure in all kinds of popular literature and films, where they are portrayed as both blood thirsty killers and irresistible sex objects.
For instance, the “Twilight” series gives us vampire love and lust for teens, and “TrueBlood” offers a more…uh…adult version of vampire blood and lust.
One thing about vampires, though, that has been constant since the very first vampire tales were told, including Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”, is that there are certain rules that vampires have to follow. One of them is that they must be granted permission to come into your home. They can’t just come in and start gnawing your neck and sipping your blood, you’ve got to tell them “Sure, come on in” in some fashion.
Vampires have had such a prominent place in our human mythology for so long that it seems that some how, some way, the vampire story is based on real stories.
And, judging by world events, this certainly seems true! Even if we all aren’t necessarily losing our actual blood, nonetheless, the people and the planet itself are being sucked dry.
We’ve even subconsciously granted permission for this sad state of affairs because we have not risen up yet and said “Enough already”.
When a person gets trapped into an abusive relationship, personal or at work, it usually didn’t start out too obviously.
We take an insult, or blow off an occurrence, thinking….no, hoping, that it was just a fluke. But, little insults escalate as the perpetrators become empowered by the lack of resistance. And then, you find yourself in a full blown abusive situation…. whether it’s a spouse that hits or a boss or co-worker that makes your life a living hell.
The time to stop abuse is the very first time it raises its ugly blood and energy sucking head.
Here’s an interesting, if horrifying story of how insidiously a deadly pattern of abuse escalates. In Germany, as the Nazis took power and began their devastation of the Jewish communities and businesses, many people turned a blind eye, hoping things would calm down.
That was not to be. Kristallnacht, or “Night of the Broken Glass” occurred in Germany over 2 days in 1938. Jewish homes, schools and hospitals were ransacked as the attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers. 1,000 synagogues were burned and over 7,000 Jewish owned businesses were destroyed. At least 91 Jews were killed during the attacks, and 30,000 were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. The term Kristallnacht refers to the shards of broken glass that littered the streets in the aftermath of the insanity.
A woman who lived through this, Helga Russow, said this: “Up until then it had all happened so slowly, so gradually. You could kid yourself that if you accepted this or that new measure, perhaps they wouldn’t go any further, and you kept on hoping that somehow or the other they wouldn’t stay in power; but by the time 1939 came you found that you were trussed up like a turkey and it was too late to do anything about it. Their progress was such that you became acclimatized to the new way of thinking unless you were very careful. Now and then a new law would come in against the Jews which would give you a jolt, or a newspaper would be suppressed; but after Kristallnacht the beast was out of the cage.”
I’ve been thinking about how, in the course of our daily lives, how easy it is to unconsciously grant permission to use and abuse us, whether it’s to the government, corporations or in our personal relationships.
It’s the same with the vampires…. Whether they are the corporate vampire squids who stick their blood funnels into anything remotely smelling of money, as was so colourfully described by journalist Matt Taibbi, or government programs that dis-empower and dis-enfranchise citizens to suck ‘em dry, the time to speak up to stop the abusive situation is as soon as you see it. Staying silent is the same as giving your permission.
The only thing
necessary for the
triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
