Inner Michael

Voices Education Project is a global humanitarian organization and pedagogical institute. It’s a global village, really. And it’s about story– changing the world one story at a time. The newest education packet at Voices is a curriculum for middle schools, high schools and colleges that addresses “Words and Violence.”

Words can be used to heal or to harm. The “Words and Violence” education packet examines everything from bullying to tabloid journalism to illustrate how words can harm people and features a new entry about the “Talking Circle.” Talking Circle is a Native American tradition that makes talking and telling your story safe and comfortable.

There is also a new film at Voices called “The Man Behind the Myth” that tells the real “story” about Michael Jackson. It is now a permanent part of the curriculum under “In Depth Articles.”

You can see both new entries featured front page at Voices Education Project:

www.voiceseducation.org

So what was all that fuss about Michael Jackson, anyway?

The definition of “conspiracy” is when two or more parties enter in a secret plan or agreement to engage in an illegal, harmful, subversive, or harmful act. That definition certainly presumes premeditation and a commitment to cause harm while being conscious of the harm or outcome of such an act.

 “Mass psychogenic illness” occurs when there is an epidemic involving collective obsessional behavior. A form of this mass hysteria behavior is “Mass Sociogenic Illness, defined as “the rapid spread of illness signs and symptoms affecting members of a cohesive group, originating from a nervous system disturbance involving excitation, loss or alteration of function, whereby physical complaints that are exhibited unconsciously have no corresponding organic causation.

Mass Psychogenic Illness is distinct from other collective delusions, also included under the blanket terms of mass hysteria, in that Mass Psychogenic Illness causes symptoms of disease, though there is no organic cause.

A “fugue” is a dreamlike state of altered consciousness that may last for some period of time. The individual in a “fugue” state can forget and lose touch with reality.

Mass hysteria has been documented through history and there are both ancient and modern examples.

Salem Witch Trials:  The Salem Witch Trials of the 1600s defines American character by a collective seizure of Puritan colonists in the New World with a hysterical belief of Satanism having a hold in their midst. A few pre-teen girls began to have “visions,” and were “seized by the Devil,” who tortured them via people they didn’t like. These people were then “tried,” tortured, and, usually, burned at the stake.

 Medieval, Papal and Spanish Inquisitions:  The inquisitions were established to combat heresy and to promote Catholicism. The methods used to coerce believers and gain converts included torture and imprisonment. The inquisitions became violent and those whom the tribunals condemned were sentenced to death, usually by burning. 

Lynchings:   The Reconstruction after the Civil War in the United States gave former slaves their freedom and the rights of human beings or desegregation. That policy was not embraced by the South and for about 100 years, any black person in the South accused (not convicted of any crime) of looking at a white woman, whistling at a white woman, touching a white woman, talking back to a white person, refusing to step into the gutter when a white person passed on the sidewalk, or in some way upsetting whites, they could be hauled from their house or jail cell by a mob, tortured and mutilated—often the genitalia, and then hung, and sometimes burned. All governments – state or federal – and their agencies (law enforcement) simply ignored this. Organized terrorists like the Klu Klux Klan flourished during the post war years.

McCarthyism and the Red Scare:  A truly wild and modern form of manufactured political hysteria was the rise of an alcoholic Senator named Joseph McCarthy after the end of World War II. McCarthy and his accusations, never verified, that the U.S. government had been thoroughly infiltrated by Communists, led to rampant paranoia and fascism. Thousands of people – teachers, public workers, or anyone targeted– lost their jobs because they either wouldn’t sign “loyalty oaths,” or because they wouldn’t “inform” on their friends and neighbors and point to them as “communists.” It was one of the darker periods of American politics.

Satanic Day Care Scandals of the 1980s:  In similar fashion to the American witch trials, some day care providers in the U. S. during the eighties, were accused of abusing children in satanic rituals. Their accusers were children who had been coached by traveling “experts” to “remember” satanic child abuse by day care centers. No cross-examination of the children was allowed; most of them weren’t even present in the courtrooms. A national moral panic, fueled by trash books like “Michelle Remembers” and dozens of unbalanced fundamentalist parents ensued. Trials were held and the most famous of these, the McMartin School case found the defendants  exonerated but only after many years had passed and after the most expensive criminal trial in US history concluded. Almost all of the people accused were acquitted, and successfully sued their accusers for millions of dollars in damages and settlements. But the newspapers and TV networks reported the whole story with straight faces, in the same “he said – she said” fashion they report any modern accusation. 

So we know that sometimes the  why of how people treat other people borders on some kind of mental illness; it’s a collective insanity  that spreads like an illness and makes everyone sick by exposure or association. It’s a state that is separate from reality—a fugue, perhaps; or a dissociation from the elements that make one human. It’s a repression of that which acknowledges another human as a human or “family” but instead confers upon them the distinction of “other.” “Otherizing” real flesh and blood people can justify everything from torture to death by ritual or war.

It’s possible that all the ways in which people “otherized” their fellow humans in the past influenced how this one figure in the twentieth century culture was disassociated from his fellow humans to become something else. The tabloids who constantly conjured reasons to separate him out and effectively dehumanize him making it easier to vilify, make fun of, joke about, and demonize a man who did nothing wrong.

In fact, while they demonized this man and conscripted others into having nothing but contempt for him, he was—the whole time—loving humanity. He sang about saving the world through collective action, healing the world by caring for its hungry, sick and dying population. He wrote the eco-anthem for the twentieth century in Earthsong—an epic musical piece that lamented our treatment of the planets and its inhabitants.

In his lyrics, he took on the social issues of gang violence, war, poverty, ecology, hunger, the shadow self, corruption and more. While Michael Jackson produced music for the world, he sang intimately for and to his fans whom he called “his legacy.” He couched a message of humanitarianism and unity in all his work as well as contemporary cultural themes.

He raised a generation that marked its milestones with Jackson songs and eras. He mesmerized the world with his song and dance and his expansive magnetism. And as he reeled them in (his audiences,) he built a future world based on the values he taught through his music.

As his repertoire, reputation and contribution to music and social concerns grew, he attracted jealousy and envy and more than a little Schaudenfreude—from those who were just waiting for crack in his persona, anything that could be his downfall. After all, nobody can be that good, that admirable, that genius, right? Visionaries are rarely recognized in their own time. Many of them are outcasts of their contemporaries and their culture.

Anybody with that kind of magnetism, fame and money must be in league with the devil, don’t you think? So the sexiness he displayed and the deliberate and direct references to anatomy in a hypocritical society based on psedo-puritanical values  is evil isn’t it?  

Besides, he was raised a Jehovah Witness and they are considered a strange kind of cult by some. So he either must have made a deal with the devil or practices some kind of witchcraft that will corrupt the youth. Whatever is going on with him, it isn’t mainstream and therefore has no place in society, right?

And a black man has no business being so popular in a predominantly white culture. Doesn’t he know his place? He’s hanging around white women and the white teenage girls are fainting at the sight of him and that is definitely unacceptable! Just because it isn’t legal to lynch someone in the modern world doesn’t mean you can’t teach someone a lesson. Just mimic lynching. He’ll get the message. That’s the way it’s done isn’t it?

Who does this guy think he is fraternizing with the enemy? Doesn’t he realize we are at war with the Commies? We don’t talk with them; we don’t acknowledge them as human and we certainly don’t dance with them. The only way we dance with an enemy is to shoot them or hang them from a tree. This Michael Jackson character is going around the world calling everybody our friends and condemning war. He must be some kind of Commie himself, correct?

And the guy is strange; he speaks in this soft squeaky voice and says stupid things like “I love you” to his audiences and that’s just weird! He looks like a girl for god’s sake, he talks like one and wears makeup, eyelashes and lipstick. That’s just freaky. He doesn’t bed the women throwing themselves at him and he likes to hang out with children so—he must be gay. Any real man wouldn’t behave that way, right? A real man would drink beer, bed women and belch. And on top of all that, he’s a vegetarian. What kind of man doesn’t eat meat? Doesn’t go deer hunting? Doesn’t hang out in beer joints and clubs with loose women.

And so what if the guy never had a childhood? It’s creepy to hang out with children all the time. Everybody should be alert because there are those stories of people who prey on children and use them for sex. Since he is seen with children all the time, and he has that place he calls Neverland, and he hangs out with kids, there must be something wrong—something dark going on. The women are falling all over him and he could have any one he wanted. He could have a new sex toy and babe hanging on his arm every week but instead the guy hangs out with children and says he prefers them. There has to be something wrong with the whole manhood issue. He must be gay and he prefers hanging out with children. Well add all that up and you get…

Something they call by nasty names who is considered subhuman. You get lots of ammunition and lots of copy for tabloids who exploit famous people and paste them on the front page and tell their “Secrets” or condemn them only for…. profit. You get someone who others call a “bad guy.” You get someone you can love to hate because you are not him. Or you get someone you just love to hate for reasons you hide from yourself.

You get a jaded human history—a history that someone has now heaped upon the unsuspecting and undeserving. You get other people’s ego projections about a man they don’t even know and will never meet. You get someone to point fingers at and heap your shadow upon. You get someone you can call names. Especially when you don’t feel so good about yourself. You get the butt of all those late night jokes. You get a fallen star that helps you to not feel so bad about your own empty and boring life.

You get a compilation of what and who someone else thinks this man is. You get a character right out of someone’s mental world and imagination. You get an idea of who someone else has an idea of who another person is being. You get a mirror that reflects your own shadow nature back to you.

You get a hysterical public looking for an enemy. You get tabloid journalism and tabloid TV exploiting someone to make money off them. Sexy sells. Sensation sells. Mr. nice guy with a strict religious upbringing and a strong faith in god doesn’t sell newspapers. So you get hysteria from an out of control press that doesn’t bother to verify information or check facts. You get a media that is frightened to be left out of the next “breaking news” story. You have editors that pressure their reporters to scoop their competitors so the reporters make it up or stretch the truth or print a lie for their circulation or profits. You get a lot of cultural memes wrapped up into one story and heaped on one human being. You get a bunch of dark human history jumbled together. You get hysteria. You get an inaccurate meme You get media-gone-wild. You get imagination run amok. You get a caricature.

But you don’t get Michael Jackson.

Man Behind the Myth from Walking Moon Studios on Vimeo.