TRANSCRIPT:
Philipos
In Today’s podcast, we’ll begin a series of conversations on our different justice systems, and what role love and opening up plays in them. So, we have how many examples? Like 10? Yeah.
Kim
Well, first of all, usually, if you say “justice system,” a listener thinks of something run by the government. So, it might be a combination of the municipal courts, the police officers, the jails, the state-run prison system, and including all the lawyers and court staff, and then on into the federal justice system. I think usually when people say or hear the phrase “justice system” they’re thinking of that formal governmental system. When I began the artwork on justice, I started to rethink what a justice system really was, and to realize that the governmental system is just one justice system, but we actually live by a lot of different justice systems in our lives. And so just to list some of them that we could talk about in this podcast series, these other justice systems include: family, school, workplace, neighborhood, organizations, religions. There’s also an informal justice system in our social behaviors. There’s an environmental justice system in interactions we have with nature and our planet, as well as the atmosphere we build around ourselves. …
Philipos
..and within the Self.
Kim
and within the Self. You’re right.
Philipos
Yeah, fundamentally, I start with the justice system from ourselves. This is the foundational justice system.
The listener might think, “that’s absurd!” or “what kind of nonsense conversation is this?!” but fundamentally, if we don’t exercise justice with ourselves, it’s very difficult to extend to others, to family, to anybody. So, how do I practice justice within myself as we frame it for this podcast, from the premise that the law is love? If we love ourselves, we can be just to ourselves. You might think loving yourself might look like you’re being selfish. But the opposite is true. Given all the marketing schemes, the voices of the advertisers, I don’t think we love ourselves. That’s a fundamental understanding I receive. When I go to the store, the things they try to sell to me tell me I’m not good enough. Instead of loving yourself the way you are, you need this kind of clothing, tool, or accessory to look cool, strong, young, etc. The consumerism worldview is not helping us in bringing justice to ourselves.
In our first introductory podcast I talked about justice as opening up. With this concept in mind, when you love yourself the way you are, if you practice justice within yourself, you unlock and open up. Justice within yourself gives you an opening capacity. It gives you unlocking capacity. So fundamentally, if you unlock yourself, of course, that will extend to everyone else, like family, school, workspace, organization, religion, all and all. We can do that.
Kim
I think you made an excellent point to begin this conversation by talking about the justice system within the self and that the evidence seems to show that the general individual is not very good at loving themselves.
There’s a body of artwork that I did called, “Opening the Door,” where each figure has found a door in their torso, which they’ve opened up and I think of these pieces every time you talk about unlocking and opening up. In the artwork, what the figures find when they open up their torsos is that all of this mess spills out, which I illustrate with different symbolic images. Some of the objects represent something sacred. And some represent things seen as wrong, negative, profane, perhaps, or judged as such.
For example, some symbols represent addictions or violence, or black and white thinking, and others represent nourishment, rootedness, or spiritual opening. And this is all in the shadow, right? You have to look at what’s in there, it’s all stuff you’re ashamed of, including the sacred, and start to integrate and accept that before you can get to the point of loving yourself. The famous psychiatrist CJ Jung said, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” One of the really big problems we have with justice is our own projections. They’re what we tuck away and won’t look at, and then put onto other people, like a scapegoat. People are often cruel to others because of their own projections.
And so, in order to have actual justice based on love, we need to start with that internal self and the way we judge what we find acceptable to show others, and what we hide from others and from our selves. If we have a cultural practice that finds it acceptable to, as you say, unlock and open up and look at what this mess inside is, then we can begin to consciously work on the relationship with ourselves and others. This is a critical step in carrying out justice in our world.
I just realized, the way I described what’s inside was a negative judgement. I called it “a mess.” But this glorious, beautiful stuff that’s inside that we’re ashamed of and keep hidden is also the basis of our own creativity, which, as we talked about in our last episode, is the basis of our freedom. So, if we want justice, freedom, creativity, yes, unlock and open up. It’s in yourself, and you need to look at what’s really there.
Philipos
Wow, that’s a that’s a good discussion point for today. Why don’t we have a conversation based on the art that you made. One fruit of justice is art.
Kim
Sure. I’d love to talk about the Opening the Door artwork.
I also want to caution people thinking about creativity and justice to not hold the definition of art or creativity to rigidly. Don’t just picture a painting or dance or music. You know, it could be how you design a city, or a lesson plan, or treat a patient, or how you decide to work with your children who are fighting today. All of this can be viewed within the context of art and creativity.
Philipos
Let’s take a look at the Opening the Door catalog of the artwork you made. For me, justice literally means “opening up” in Tigrinya, the language that I speak. I see this art you did, “Opening the Door, which I think you did in 2017, is correlated. We can have a conversation, and I have my perspective and you can give your explanation.
Kim
I think that sounds wonderful. When I created this artwork, I was working on justice, although I think most people wouldn’t understand it that way. It doesn’t look like what I think most people expect to see from justice artwork. These pieces almost look meditative, except for some of the symbols that are coming out of them. Some of them are kind of disturbing. The work isn’t as peaceful or easy as it might look at first glance. But if you open the door of your inner self, you’re going to find all sorts of things relating to memories, or things that you do, or things that you react to. Those things, if you don’t look at them, then they turn into projections, or they wind up things that you build walls to protect. Then, between the projections and the walls, come a lot of our outer injustices in the world. Many injustices are based on these projections as well as the separations that people build in order to prevent others from seeing what’s within them or even prevent themselves from seeing what’s within them.
Philipos
I see this justice within as the first justice we should attend to. Once we explore justice within, we can extend it to family and society at large. When I look at the first picture and I see the hand, the hand is for me a symbol of work. Justice is work. This Justice work starts within. The hands, which have opened the door are the work of Justice starting, and the open door gives me feeling of possibility. Can you open up yourself? Of course, to open up yourself you need to have certain love and the art you made shows an opening up. And the heart, the heart is a symbol of love, and means relationship. If you see one of the hands, it’s in the dark. Darkness is often understood as bad or negative, even evil. But I see darkness in many African traditions as the unmanifested God. I don’t see darkness and black as the negative but perhaps is it’s something that we need to know that was inside us that we’re invited to explore.
Kim
The figures are outlined in black sumi ink, and also the cavity within their torso is painted in the black sumi ink as well. The shadow around the figures actually wasn’t planned. When the woodcuts were first printed, the figures didn’t show up distinctly unless the shadow was painted around them. So that was a time when the creative process brought a meaning to the pieces that was needed, but which I hadn’t planned, or hadn’t consciously chosen. The artwork sort of demanded what it needed. But I also love what you brought up about darkness as God not yet manifested. The symbols associated with this shadow do depict difficult things, but also the sacred. I think we neglect this knowledge. This shadow can be the holy darkness. It can represent the creative space of the unknown, the primordial darkness from which all creation comes.
When we suppress the hidden material from within, we allow injustice to ourselves and others. The things that we try not to see in ourselves are things we judge to be negative or harmful or shameful, but also, we judge parts of our sacred selves to not be acceptable, too. And sometimes what we think is negative or shameful is actually part of the sacred self. Gradually teasing out how to live with, and be transparent with these, allows you to realize your most important work, and the truest aspects of yourself.
Philipos
Yes. I learned that idea of darkness from the Oromo Gada ethnic group in Ethiopia. On their flag, there is one black stripe. I was wondering what it represented and I was expecting it to mean African darkness, or you know having black skin, but to my surprise, black on their flag represents the unmanifested divine or the unmanifested God. I thought, “Wow, this is something I never learned about.
So moving forward, you related this artwork with shadow work? That’s also another good point that I’m learning. Of course, some psychologists like Jung wrote extensively about it. Let’s look at the snake charmer. So that’s interesting, I want to hear more….
Kim
Oh, but if I say first what I had in mind when I made the artwork, then it will change your perceptions.
Philipos
Shall I go ahead with what it means to me?
Kim
Please.
Philipos
So yeah. Speaking through symbolism, I see the snake or serpent is like Jesus said, “to be wise like a serpent, and innocent like a dove.” So, in the work of justice, most often we focus on the dove, which is about bringing peace and connecting people, but we can’t forget the snake. Snake for me is the understanding of what many writers are calling the reptilian mind. Reptilian mind is in all of us. It’s in our evolutionary process, it’s the fight or flight response. When you meet a snake either you run or you kill it, but if your mind is at another level, you try a different way, to work out your differences and learn to live together. At one point it was useful to kill the snake, but that is not the end of the conversation with us. Fight or flight has been the way people have understood justice for thousands of years. I fight and I win or lose, or I flee, stay hidden, and lose freedom. But we can move out of our reptilian mind, into a different practice of “and” and “both,” where you look for a way in which everyone is celebrated.
Kim
ahhh, “and” and “both” – yes, that’s so important
Philipos
So what does this figure who’s holding the snake do with his reptilian mind and the work of justice? That was how I see it. Did you work your way out of your reptilian mind?
Do I have at least a conscious deliberate understanding of the snake in the hand. Can I charm it? Can I understand it? Can I work it out? This is the process of shadow working. Can I outgrow it instead of denying it? A lot of people are scared of the snake. They say, “No, no, no, I don’t have a snake in me.”
Or they say there is no snake in my group, or in my religion, or in my country. But whoever you are, you need to say, I DO have a snake. I need to address that. That is very helpful to my growth and to my community growth, and to the growth of everybody. This growth is the work of justice.
This is the work of justice and healing. It’s why the snake is a symbol of medicine, too. It’s like making the antivenom from the snake within you, you get your own medicine. This is how I see it.
Kim
The medical association of the snake with healing stems from the Book of Numbers where the Jewish people in the desert had been complaining about food and lack of water, and about wandering around for so long and not having a home yet. The serpents started to show up and bite the people and some were dying. Moses asked God what to do, and he was told to make a bronze sculpture of a serpent on a staff and raise it up for the people to look at, and that anybody who had been bitten who gazed on the bronze serpent would be healed. That’s why the image of the staff with the serpent is a medical symbol. Here in this piece, the man is holding up a poisonous snake, a viper, in his hand. A snake charmer is someone who plays music for a snake, and the snake moves and sways but doesn’t strike. There is more to it than that. The music doesn’t really keep the snake from striking, but the illusion is that the music hypnotizes the snake to do whatever the charmer wants it to do.
When I made this, I was thinking of how people will make their words pleasing, like music, telling others what they want to hear, in order to cause a certain outcome, for example to sell something. The desired outcome is not necessarily what’s in the best interest of others. The snake charmer thinks it’s good for the snake charmer. But it doesn’t have any basis in real connection or healthy relationship. I saw the snake charmer fairly negatively when I was making it.
In his other symbols, he’s holding the egg that’s been broken open from the outside before the bird was developed enough to hatch and live. It doesn’t bother the snake charmer if another being is destroyed for his gain. There’s the symbol of hemlock in this piece, a poison. The black widow spider is another poison. The trophy cup, which is a prize, is turned upside down, as is the bowl. Even the prize isn’t valued. There is no offering and no sense of fulfillment. The only positive symbol that I really see is the salt. This person can have a lot of personality, add a lot of flavor to conversations and gatherings.
In the rest of these, there is more of a blend of imagery that symbolize things commonly thought of as positive, and commonly thought of as negative. But in this piece, I was frustrated with people who are trying to sell things irrespective of whether what they’re doing is harmful, and I guess I failed to include some more positive symbols.
Philipos
Ah, yeah, I can see it from that perspective now too, that sense is very toxic and poisonous. But on the other side, we have a poison to deal with, too, in each of us, is my message. The animosity of the snake is present. It’s here before us now, and is actually a gift. So, when we are young children, our first time gazing at the snake, we see it with innocence. We’re not afraid of it. We learn over time to become afraid, ashamed. When we’re older, gazing at the snake, it’s all about awareness. When you give it enough attention, then you find the medicine you most need for your healing. To do the work of justice, is to look at the snake within.
Kim
Yes. I agree with that.
Philipos
I have a question for you – what does the snake charmer have to do with justice conversation for you?
Kim
When I made the work in the series, I was looking at what has to be dealt with within the self, so that it isn’t acted out in community or society as an unjust or harmful action. Even the person trying to sell something unnecessary or harmful, if we didn’t have the snake within us, we couldn’t be charmed into buying it, right? We wouldn’t go in that direction, no matter how sweet or musical the snake charmer’s words sounded. So, it is that snake within us that allows us to be led, en masse, in unhealthy directions.
Philipos
Yes, I hear you. In addition to charming, he’s exposing the snake within us.
Kim
Yeah. And then, there’s something that I’ve learned recently. It didn’t figure into the creation of this piece, but I think it’s really interesting. Earlier, you brought up the “wise as serpents and innocent as doves,” quote from the Gospel. I was reading a reflection on that recently by somebody who commented on how sensitive the snake is –that its whole body is like a sensory organ. I didn’t realize that snakes were that sensitive. But it does make some sense. All its movement is along the ground. Its body is in contact with the surface that it’s moving along, and that sense of touch with its surroundings is heightened. And if you think of taking in all of the information around you in a very sensitive way, that gives a whole different perspective on what a serpent is, or what it symbolizes. I haven’t finished unpacking that one. It offers a lot of additional meaning.
Philipos
Yeah, yeah, how beautiful that is. It gives us the pragmatics of it. When we do the work of justice within ourselves, instead of living away from the ground, living on the ground is most important thing. So, I think we have said a lot about this one. That’s a very good, insightful point. I like it.
Kim
Okay, should we go to the next one?
Philipos
Yeah.
Kim
This one is The Prize Winner. What do you think of The Prize Winner, Philipos?
Philipos
Yeah, I see in the picture is the prize, –the cup. Is that right?
Kim
Yeah, it can be a cup, a chalice, or a trophy. It’s a trophy cup, or a trophy chalice.
Philipos
So, my question is, what is the prize? The prize is what I’m gonna get for making justice within myself. When I open up, am I rewarded? When you open up you become vulnerable. Being vulnerable, we might be understood by society, or we might not be understood. But it’s still the work of justice. We have to do it regardless of the outcome, regardless of whether we receive a prize, we might not receive understanding and connection.
Kim
We might not be rewarded if our doors are open but others’ doors are closed…
Philipos
Since we are interdependent, justice within the self cannot be the end in itself. It’s for sharing with others. If justice stops within the self and isn’t extended to others, it can be a poisonous thing, this can be like a poisoned chalice. We can drink it thinking the prize is for myself only, and by doing that, we can obstruct justice for others.
Kim
That’s seeing the prize as something that can be positive or negative. I had a sense of both while working on this piece, too. One side is to be motivated to action by having ambition and goals, yet going after certain objects is often superficial. I’ve noticed myself and other parents playing into this a lot while raising children. We offer prizes to accomplish tasks. Like we might say, “if you do this you get this little matchbox car.” The little toy doesn’t mean much to us as parents, but the child gets excited and they do what they need to, to get that prize. We put incentive systems in place in our schools, in our families, and our workplaces. Many of our kids, and even many adults, choose their actions based on such incentives. There are some who want nothing to do with it, but, a lot of people do respond to it. As we get older, the goals get bigger, and the prizes more consequential. Sometimes the prizes are very useful, and sometimes they maybe cost us more than what we think they do, or they even wind up being dangerous. Let’s say you’re a professor, and your goal is to have tenure. That’s job security. And that’s respect. And there are all sorts of reasons why society respects the goal of working towards tenure. At the same time, what compromises are made in a person’s life in order to achieve this? and are those worth the costs? The answer is different for each life in which the tenure position was a prize that was sought. I just gave one example. But most careers have prizes like that. They drive people to the top of their career and the top of their abilities.
Philipos
So how about if we say, every goal, every achievement, every success, has its own injustice? We need to look at it from the cost perspective. We have to assess the cost from the narrative of justice.
Kim
I agree with that in part. I don’t know if it’s true to say that *every* goal has an injustice, but certainly choices that we make have a cost. If you choose something, then you didn’t choose something else. And what was the thing you didn’t choose? And what was the value of what you didn’t choose? I agree that we need to look at which choice leads to the most wholeness in relationship – and that might be with the self, with the family, with the community or even with the world. The path that leads towards the most wholeness in relationship is the most just choice, but it isn’t always an easy thing to determine.
Philipos
Yes, to see wholeness in a relationship is not an easy choice. To live in ambiguity is part of being human. From that ambiguity we step in to examine our life. Socrates said: “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Deciding between one path over the other is often not an easy choice.
Kim
There’s one other story symbol I want to bring up about this piece, and that is the Holy Grail legends. It’s an archetypal story about a knight, or a hero, who seeks the grail. The hero encounters trials as he goes through the kingdom, which is a wasteland. He comes to the Fisher King, who is wounded. The land is waste because of the king’s wound. The hero is supposed to ask the king certain questions, such as whom does the grail serve, and what ails you? but he doesn’t ask because he fears they would be rude, and the king and palace and grail disappear and he winds up back in the wasteland. He goes through trials, and when he is able to return to the king, and has learned that he should ask the questions. The king is healed, and the land is restored and bountiful. The chalice, the prize cup in this piece, seems to me to fit with the Grail legend, and with seeking justice. Asking the questions to understand where harm is, and how justice is served can help with healing and making a bountiful prosperous community. If one doesn’t ask the questions, there will be many trials until one does.
But here’s a question: Is the Grail a shiny, gold, fancy cup? Or is it a simple cup, like the one off on the corner by her knee, which contains a crocus flower?
Philipos
Oh, that’s a good point. So that little cup, that little flower growing up out of there, that is the trajectory, the direction of justice within, not the trophy. So, searching for Holy Grail we do encounter dangers.
Kim
Maybe as a journey that we’re all on though…We’re all our own hero in that holy grail story.
Philipos
Yes. I see the work of justice in a small cup that it gives us a flower.
Kim:
The particular flower coming out of that cup is a crocus, the flower from which we get saffron, which is an extremely valuable spice.
Philipos
Okay, good!! The difference between the two cups suggests to me the true self and false self. The cup with the saffron flower is at the end of the true self journey. The trophy cup is the false thing that we try to get to compensate for our detachment. We are often driven. That doesn’t mean it’s bad by itself, but we should be attentive not to work against justice in our lives. The true self always gives us the justice we need. It keeps us open for new possibility, new vision.
Kim:
Hear! Hear!
Next, let’s look at “The Controller”.
Philipos
In the piece where the woman is holding the remote control, to see and understand justice from an objective perspective is like that remote control. It lacks subjectivity. With justice, you have to feel it, you have to live it. You have to start with it, instead of having it given to you or explained to you. Justice has to be within, and that remote control, in other words, control from outside forces, is one thing that has misguided us. It represents times when we seek justice from the other party and move from the subjective to objective ideas such as the rules in the law books. I don’t mean to be negative about objectivity, but we have to see justice happen within. We need to have a lived experience of justice.
Kim
That’s a great interpretation of the remote control. It wasn’t the reason I put it there, but if people don’t bring their own interpretation to the art, the art doesn’t live. I love your interpretation of the remote control. When I put it there, I was thinking of times when people have a need to control the situation or environment. To some extent, some control over what’s happening around you is necessary. But it can easily go overboard and create problems for you and the people around you. So for me, the remote control represented an obsession a person might have for control, and the knife is in the other hand–
Philipos
I have a perspective on that knife.
Kim Go ahead–
Philipos
So a lot of time we see punishment as justice but when we punish ourselves, it’s really self-hate. Let’s say, I have bad addiction, and I think of that as a sin, and I’m ashamed. So, I punish myself because I’m doing this thing. You remember that in the past, people used to torture themselves, what they call self-flagellation, for the things they did wrong. That is not justice. We are here to love ourselves and to love our individuality. If the law is love, and justice is about love, then we need to love the individual within ourselves. We don’t need to carry knives to use on ourselves. So often times, what we experience in our selves, we extend to others. So, I see self-hate represented by the knife. I don’t know if it’s your interpretation…
Kim
Yeah, it’s very similar. For me it represented the tendency to attack the self within, to have an aspect of the self that you actually want to destroy or kill, because you judge it to be unacceptable. Maybe it embarrasses you, or it hurts others, or some other reason, so you go after it. Also on this piece, are the locusts on the thigh and the shoulder. They are similar. They’re like the eating out of the self. They destroy what is nourishing. But there are also positive symbols in this too. It’s not all about the really scary stuff. In this piece is also the carrot, which is nourishing and rooted, a favorite vegetable for many. And our roots are so important. The raspberries –what a lush, amazing fruit. They are full and delicious, juicy and delectable.
Philipos
I see the bird is a dove, So, you know in general perception a dove is about peace, or tranquility. And we actually say justice is peace. And I see there is also fake peace at the expense of justice, where we are shutting up somebody, silencing them. Some people understand this as securing the peace. But fundamentally we lock somebody up in the name of fake peace and we call it justice. By locking them up we’ve removed the messiness of actual justice. Doing this makes what we call “Justice” unjust. What we need to do is understand and accept that the process of working out the causes of an injustice can be messy. It can be scary. It can be the way you portrayed in the picture. But we shouldn’t be intimidated by that. So, we each need to question what kind of peace do we have? Often, the peace we have is at the expense of justice, at the expense of opening up. Instead, our response often is to close the door.
Kim
Hmm, that’s interesting. I’m noticing something right now that wasn’t done consciously when I made the work. The remote control, in this piece is slightly over the dove’s head. And as I think about your point about the false sense of peace, I’m thinking, that comes from a certain kind of control, from repression. Repression says, “Be quiet,” right? The leaders don’t want to deal with dissent. They try to force people to be quiet and if they succeed, they call that “peaceful.” They’re really just in denial. The remote control, looming over the head, and even obscuring part of the head of the dove, seems to be representing that. What happens within us that is similar to this? We try to control things in our lives at the expense of dealing with our own messiness. And thus, we don’t have peace within ourselves. Our inner process with our self is not just.
Philipos
You know, when you say repression says ‘be quiet,’ it reminds me of the experience I have from back home in Eritrea, how they control dissent. We were told to be quiet all the time. I’d like to talk about that, but I think we’ve done enough for today. That can be a future conversation.
Kim
Yes, I’d like to hear more about your time growing up in Eritrea. Another conversation on that would be great. Today, we’ve covered a lot of in-depth material.
Philipos
Let’s talk about the rest of the artwork in the next conversation.
Kim
Looking forward to it. We’ll talk soon.