I'm unaccustomed to dreams like this as well as talking early in the morning, but I came downstairs and immediately blurted the dream to Jerry. When I finished, he held up the newspaper and said, "This may be why you had your dream."
The main story in the local section covered MTSU an area university's new drone program sponsored by the US Army, Department of Defense and NASA. Drones are used by the government to kill long distance and gather intelligence, but these drones we're assured will be used in agriculture for example to to study "plant health" by providing instant data to farmers of large fields so they can quickly assess pest problems, water issues etc. Humans are more of a pest to Mother Earth than are bugs but that's another story. I want to go to MTSU and say, "If you're really concerned about plant health, do something to stop corporate made pesticides." The news piece didn't cover the fact that large fields today are connected to AgriBusiness Corporations like Monsanto nor did it reference the incestuous ties between these corporations and the military.
I had oddly enough already been thinking of drones. Sunday I met a dulcimer player who strummed a few chords to explain something to me and referenced certain strings being drones. Even then I thought of the drone bee who mates with the queen as well as the military's killing machines.
I walked away from the dulcimer player wondering 'Who's in charge of twisting words related to Nature and beauty and appropriating them for violent, invasive use?'
How is it a bugging device came to be called a bug and a person who spies is a plant? A bug pollinates crops and flowers and plants provide food, medicine and beauty. Plants aren't people and bugs aren't devices. They are both very alive.
A couple of years ago I read 1,000's of words related to Nature had been removed from the Oxford Junior Dictionary. The dictionary's spokesperson said the majority of children were now urban making words like wren, dandelion, acorn and lavender obsolete!
It is so not okay that Nature is pummeled, devalued and dying while Nature's words and mechanisms are co-opted by corporations related to the military and agriculture and used to describe things and processes that dominate Earth and kill humankind.
Yet on a deeper symbolic level I am not surprised. This all strangely makes sense. The drone bee dies after mating with the queen. The dear drone bee gives its life so we can have honey and food. Honey bees are responsible for the pollination of 1/3 of our food crops. (Insects as a whole pollinate 90% of plants.)
I think of those drones who die as representing the wounded masculine especially the millions of men who give their lives to defend and protect while all the while they're dying inside. They live with unacknowledged, vulnerable, hurting heart lives often walled off from this awareness even themselves. I weep for the wounded masculine and men who have never known or have gotten disconnected early in life from the beauty of who they are inside. It is tragic how millions of men and now women are swept up in war, real war and the war of competition, trying to make their millions or just survive, labeling other human beings as collateral damage or bad guys, insects as pests and Mother Nature as the enemy. We have gotten it so wrong.
When I'm overwhelmed, undisciplined and not using my healthy masculine self, I hope to wake up and discover this whole thing is just a dream. But it's not and there is waking up to be done.
It's time to reclaim the greater dream of what can be, to love drones as related to dulcimers and honey bees, to be grateful we've Nature and claim our true Nature.
It's time to Wake Up to who we came here to be!
-Dawn! The Good News Muse, 3 May 2012
dawn@imaginetheshift.com
*Here's the link to the Oxford Jr. Dictionary piece.
The related Musing "Of Birds & Words - Let's Come to our Senses."
The Tennessean piece MTSU Creates Buzz Over Drone Program
1 comment:
Dawn - thank you so much for this! Really wonderful coming together of images and understanding, and I'm blown away by the piece about the dictionary. This will stay with me for a long time. Miriam
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