My Sorrow And Grief For The Muslim Community...
Sorrow And Grief: How My Own Father Saved Society's Heart In The Midst Of The Post 9/11 World
I'd like to express my utter sorrow and grief upon hearing about the attacks upon a Muslim family in London, Ontario.
When violence of any nature targets members of a community, it really is an attack upon us all and our society, where we should be living in peace despite our differences.
More so now than ever there seems to be an increasing coordinated effort to bombard us with hatred and to radicalize us towards the action of violence. Tragedies such as these should move us all towards a society where the rule of law bind us and acceptance unites us to stand against those efforts that would seek to exploit our divisions.
As in life and with any tragedy, hate is never love and love is never hate. To the Muslim community of London, Ontario, please accept my heart-felt condolences. Perhaps this could lead to the incentive to forge a lasting peace in the Middle East and an end to violence.
Its unfortunate but we live in the midst of a cult that uses colour symbolism to milk us like cows, and emotional abuse and stress to cycle us between extremes in order to make that possible. As if by provoking us to react in any extreme manner, either very loving or very angry, we somehow cease to be ourselves. Some of the people involved in this activity pride themselves at being able to destroy people's lives. Some of them even practice doing it as a method to radicalize people to harm themselves or others. Weaponizing people to commit violence against others or themselves.
Much of this activity uses the timing of events in the world to manipulate people between different extremes and different sides of allegiance on the many dualistic fronts there are in society. The crises that happened in London Ontario, where an entire family of Muslims was senselessly murdered would be used for such purposes, while another equally devastating event on the opposite spectrum would be used much the same in order to draw the lines of conflict between the Muslim community and the Jewish community, using the symbolism of the colours brown and blue to represent this conflict.
Being pushed or gravitating to either side based upon your own sense of compassion or anger is part of that exploitation, because as I stated, while you're mourning on one side, those manipulating you are taking something from you on the other side. In any conflict of that nature, it is almost always never those thrust into the midst of that conflict. So please don't use what I'm revealing as a means to justify any hatred towards either the Jewish community or the Muslim community, because just like the rest of us, they're being played too.
The best thing that we can do is be aware of that. Once we're aware, we recognize that there's another aspect at play that almost always seeks to divide and exploit that division in some profitable way. Whether its to fill the ranks of a group opposing those thrust into that dual conflict or to profit from their battles, being aware of that fact and the language used to pervey and communicate it is the first step to undoing it.
In fact, just about any paradigm where people can be divided into two extremes, one side versus the other are the grounds for this sort of manipulation. While people are pressed to one side based upon their own common sense of compassion and goodness, the people responsible for these manipulations are taking it from their pockets on the opposite side of that duality.
The people doing this most often use colour symbolism secretly in order to communicate and coordinate the manipulation of any system of duality where two are pit one against the other. So for example, brown and blue would be used to symbolize the conflict between Muslims (brown) and the Jewish people (blue). While people are mourning the "brown" side as these conflict creators would refer to that side, they are taking something "blue" from you, simply based upon the idea of extremes. Those who are very angry cannot be feeling love, and those who are very loving can not be feeling angry. Those pushed to any extreme are losing the benefit of the other extreme.
Where this is the conflict between Muslims and the Jewish people, especially recently, when society is pushed to any one side in this conflict, it creates the impetus for tomorrow's battle. As long as that pendulum swings and is kept going, it will continue without progress and progress in this case means civilization moving forward to the next challenge that might involve another pendulum of two different extremes. As long as we're stuck in one and without solution, we'll never progress beyond it and those manipulating anything of that nature will keep the world trapped within it.
Being aware of this is the first step in liberating ourselves from it. Unfortunately the closer you get to knowing this, the more difficult it becomes to liberate yourself from it because those who manipulate it almost always ensure the pendulum is kept swinging, meaning that in order to break the cycle of conflict, we have to liberate ourselves from their influence and when that happens, we'll progress to an entirely different pendulum, one that we won't initially recognize but over time, we'll come to know it again and eventually liberate ourselves from it ad infinitum. When we are kept in a constant state of conflict and are unable to liberate ourselves from it, we don't progress.
The people pulling those strings are profiting from it in some way shape or form. This is the way it is on all levels from our most individual and personal being to the scale of global conflict.
Even the groups doing the manipulating hit me by my show of compassion for the Muslim community given the attack and the deaths of that family over which I grieve. By my posting and expressing my grief and compassion for their tragedy, the very group exploiting the duality arising from a show of compassion towards the Muslim community, and the sidedness of my father's family as a part of the Jewish history was part of the latest ploy to take that aspect of my family away.
As many of you know, I consider my father to be David Schindler, of the Schindler family, whose name was made fanous for its connection to Oscar Schindler, who liberated as many as a thousand Jewish families from certain death at the hands of the Nazi Party and Nazi supporters during World War II.
My father David, is not my biological father. My biological father whose name is Bryant Johns was alleged to have been involved with prostitution and narcotics, the most prominent of which would be heroin. I myself don't use narcotics at all and in fact I don't even smoke, though I do enjoy the occasional alcoholic drink as much so as does my father David and his new family.
David raised me and was a crucial part of my life for 26 years, whereas my biological father was part of my life for about three months. My mother also dated other men before she met David, and the forces of conflict which I'm exposing tried in each case to promote that person to being my father, in place of David.
Wayne Buttery was one of the first, whom dated my mother before she met David in 1975. Wayne Buttery was a guitar player for the band Bananas, a tribute band to the 50s rockers Sha Na Na. Wayne was involved in my life for about three weeks altogether. In total, that's the amount of time him and I actually saw and got to know each other. When I was about five years old, I saw him for about two weeks over the course of three months and then when I was 47, I saw him for about a week. So 3 weeks in total. Wayne was a nice guy and certainly very calm, but had many aspects about him that are nowhere near what I'm about and certainly far from my religious beliefs, which are Atheism leaning towards Buddhism and Taoism despite what anyone thinks about that. My father David might not understand my propensity for Buddhism and Taoism, but he accepts it and he accepts the fact that my love interest is Mandarin Chinese and that I have a strong affinity for Asian culture and history.
Michael was another boyfriend of my mother whom she was involved with between 1997 and 2012. He is a German fellow and a polite and principled man whom as fate would have it ended up with a burden far beyond the imaginings of most people, for he had family involved in World War II on the Nazi side of the fence and that is an aspect that has haunted him and likely been used against him for most if not all of his life despite the fact that he is one of the most friendly and hardworking people I've known. I truly have a lot of respect for Michael both as a human being and his tremendous courage to continue his life despite the incredible burden of being stigmatized by association simply for being related to someone who was a Nazi.
Despite the fact that Michael is not my father, if there was a person who I'd choose had my father David not come into my life, it would have been Michael because despite those challenges, that were no fault of his own, he's an incredible human being and any faults that arrived as a result of that enormous pressure upon him are faults that I'll never hold against him, because for anyone to struggle in life the way he has while carrying that kind of weight, is absolutely nothing short of remarkable and commendable. He's a person who needed a chance to prove himself and to be rid of that burden once and for all, because despite his direct family relation in blood in that regard, he is NOT a Nazi but a fine German gentleman, who struggled againt the weight of a stigma not of his own fault. Despite how my mother and he may have parted ways, I believe that most of his struggle in life had nothing to do with his own choices but rather that with which he was burdened unjustly. Despite the fact that I am NOT a Jehovah's Witness or Mormon and never will be, I have a lot of regard and respect for Michael because I've seen a man who treats women fairly and as a true gentleman with the details of which I'm aware. I'd never join Jehovah's Witnesses or any Abrahamic religion, though I respect the rights of others to believe as they choose where they don't force the rules of their religion upon others. Michael has never done anything of that nature to myself.
Perhaps given the fact that I'm related to someone whose reputation was unjustly applied to my life as a weight and burden, and given the nature of the fact that my father David on the other end of the scale had so much to live up to, I can relate with Michael because despite my having many of the best qualities of David, my own father, the manipulators I'm trying to expose at my level of life choose to force my association with my biological father. In this sense, I can see so much of what Michael went through from that perspective and what my own father David likely went through in having to live up to a legend that is almost unbelievably far beyond that of any one person.
So given the recent tragedy of the Muslim family in London, Ontario, the exploiters to whom I refer attempted to remove my father David's family and being from me, simply because I showed compassion for the Muslim community.
The same exploiters also tried then to imply that I was more like Wayne Buttery. Wayne was a programmer at one point, writing business applications on mini-frame and mainframe computers in COBOL, a language I don't know and have never worked with. Wayne instead gave up programming eventually to dedicate his life to playing guitar as a world reknowned blues musician. I respect his choice certainly, but giving up programming is something that I could never, ever, do. No matter what instrument I play, I always find a way to integrate my love of programming into my life. Even as a writer and a piano player.
My father David is a piano player, and the inspiration for Professor Bryce Maxwell. My father is just about the smartest guy I know. When I was a kid I was measured as having an extremely high IQ that would have opened many doors for me had people known. My father David's IQ dwarfed mine, but he was always a gentleman and it is his heart that really shone. His family gave me my love of programming. After all, both his brothers were IBM men. Frontline Engineers and very much a part of the growth and genius of IBM during the 1970s and onward. My Uncle Bob and my Uncle Gordon both nurtured an interest in computers and especially programming when I was a very young, not to mention my best friend Scott Maple used to get a computer for the weekend, and the two of us would try learning BASIC together.
My Uncle Gordon and I had the most contact in that aspect as well, and he really loved operating systems and introduced me to many different classes of operating system from C/PM to OS/2 and even punch card BASIC. He taught me about logic gates, using boolean logic which is the fundamental foundation for any programming language and how every CPU works at its core.
Even my father David was a programmer, though he focused on Microsoft Excel and wrote complete applications in Excel, Visual Basic and Javascript. Those are the people who influenced my decision to persue computers and to tell you the honest truth, Wayne Buttery, rest his soul had nothing to do with my love of computer programming and coding.
He's one last story to tie this all together and to let you know how wrong what this abusive cult did in trying to take my father away from me and to use us in this manipulation, which I also know is something he struggled against as well throughout his life.
Years ago, in 2003 I'd gone to visit my father David in his house on Anson Avenue. Most of our visits were very profound experiences of father/son bonding because we both share the piano in common, and my heart for the piano came from him. So in the midst of all this sideness between the Oscar Schindler association of his family and the conflict with the Muslim community, and our own falling out from years earlier where I expressed an attitude that was more against my own person than it was against my father David, he'd invited me for a heart to heart and we sat at the piano as we had many times when I was a kid, though I was 34 at that time.
This was in the wake of 9/11 and all the anti-Muslim sentiment and tension throughout the world. My father being the remarkable person that he is sat down and proceeded to teach me how to play the James Taylor song: "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)" and the Yusuf Islam song "You've Got A Friend".
It was a very profound moment for me because I realized just how much my father cared for me but there is more to this story than most people would know or understand. That's just a testament about how smart my father is and the fact that he used those smarts to protect society's heart even in the midst of all that anti-Muslim tension in the world.
You see, Cat Stevens is a famed folk and pop song writer.
A lot of people don't know as I did at that time, that Cat Stevens had converted to Islam and taken the name Yusuf (like my middle name of Joseph). And that in the midst of all that ignorance separating communities and creating tension throughout the world, my father, the man whose namesake comes from Oscar Schindler, who rescued thousands of Jewish people from certain death, once again demonstrated a heart for the Muslim community in the middle of the very tension that was leading to their persecution. For the two of us, he wrapped it all up in a Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) song. When everyone was so ready to hate, my father was bringing about peace and balance and at that moment, fixed a troubling time between us.
So you see, when an abusive cult that lacks understanding and a heart tries to divide us, my father and I by means using dualistic conflicts such as the Islam community versus the Jewish community, as these dividers often do, we always have that song between us. That's how Oscar Schindler would have handled it and that's how my father protected society's heart when so many were ready to hate.
Years later, and with tragedies like the London, Ontario attack, and others that have come from either side of the Islam and Jewish conflicts, there is no dividing us because my father protected society's heart through that Yusuf Islam/Cat Stevens' song.
So my show of support and compassion for the Muslim community isn't an imbalance but a show of bias I chose given the circumstances, but it is also a show of support for the kind of compassion that led to the liberation and rescue of many Jewish families from Nazi Germany by Oscar Schindler. Those are grounds for a call to peace on both sides and to consider that the enemy isn't the other side, but those that keep fanning the flames of and profit from the continuing conflict where it keeps us from progressing to the next challenge. The next dualistic challenge that might not be recognizable until we're ready to open our eyes.
That's a gift my father David gave to me and want give that to the world in the hopes that it might honour him and Yusuf Islam and Oscar Schindler and lead to the prospect of a future peace and end to these conflicts so that we may level up.
As you can see, you can't really divide everything and everyone and even when people use hate and colour symbolism to take things from a life that aren't theirs to take. There's a way through it that reveals their malice and redeems those that stand strong against it. Identity thieves never really ever exist.
Also, if I could give something else back, I'd wish that Michael, the man who's family was associated with Nazism despite the fact that he has nothing to do with anything of that nature, might be given a chance in life to earn his way and to alleviate himself of any debts that clearly resulted simply because his was stigmatized with something that wasn't his in the first place. He's worked in construction and sometimes as a truck driver as need be (something he shares in common with my own father David, who also in his many talents was an AZ driver for years between piano and excel gigs). If someone could open a few doors for him, I have a feeling that it would undo a great injustice thrust upon him by life and by stigma.
Also, thanks to my love of Asian and Chinese philosophy, it was exposure to the Tao that really helped me to understand this whole conflict and truly appreciate the love and genius of my father, though at the center of every philosophy and belief there is a place where conflict and peace cease to be. It is a place beyond explanation and can only be known, but can never be told. That is the place we always need to find to level up to the next challenge, but it is always the place that we forget after having done so.
May the Muslim and Jewish communities find it and help the world to level up to the next challenge without the need for the loss of life and may the expression of compassion never be the fuel for the battles of tomorrow.
Thank you to Yusuf Islam for his place in my father's and my life.
Brian Joseph Johns
