Monday, December 2, 2013

If Good Customs are habits of the heart, why do we expend energy on law?

When sociologist Andre Beteille mentioned about the distinction he made between laws and customs, I reminisced another evening where HR professionals were gathered to discuss implications of diversity in the workplace. I mentioned with regard to sexual harassment, that law would be a remote approach, even in the near term, as it hinged on rule by fear. As I can now reflect, laws that evoke fear, may give rise to bad customs. Good customs endure due to its integrated essence with nature.



For man to know woman and woman to know man, the mind and body needs to live through the emotions of either gender. The liability in society is the abject neglect of parenting in this respect. Adolescents confuse literary (and these days digital) knowledge with awareness, whereas knowing the other gender is an awareness of embodied integration.   The movement in awareness from deep masculine to deep feminine cannot rush with neglect of our shallow masculine or feminine aspects.

Our recent press brings about the explosion of information that reveals the penury of our hearts and of course the burden of bad customs. Good customs after all, as Andre put it, are habits of the heart. I wonder then what frank conversations occur when a training administrator assembles employees in a room for an ‘expert’ on such matters to educate or ‘train’ them in gender sensitivity. In the meanwhile, we live through the fallacy of ruling the heart by law and the rituals of society in this respect - in an illusory notion of civil reins on male libido.  

Male has female in it, and female has male within. Good conversations can begin one at a time, one person at a time. Broadcasts are control instruments. They train our fears. Conversations are rapport instruments. They endear our hearts. Pick your choice and realize the energy within yourself – in mind, body and emotion.


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