BO in the White House

It is Presidents’ Day, traditionally focused on the father of the nation, the royalty-allergic general of the American Revolution, George Washington, who refused to be king, and the tall, lanky Midwest frontiersman Abraham Lincoln who penned the immortal Gettysburg Address and whose name is attached to the Emancipation Declaration freeing slaves in the United States.

Author Kirkpatrick Sale of the Human Scale fame and a stalwart in the bioregional movement of the ecological revolution, recently wrote a scathing critique of Abe Lincoln. As is well known, Lincoln is a darling of both the political right and left for he seemed to have left behind enough pearls of wisdom that the whole ideological spectrum can hang their hats on, and they do. Sale points out that Lincoln “presided over the creation of what can only be called a nascent fascist government led by a party of industrial capitalism that ran roughshod over constitution and custom.” He then accuses Obama who has made Lincoln a model of his presidency, of faithfully following in Lincoln steps toward a failed capitalist system.

“We’ve got two choices. One is the Lincolnesque way that Obama seems to promise: government subsidies for the larger corporations and banks (as Lincoln pushed in his day, especially for the railroads), refurbishing of the infrastructure (ditto) nationalization of the financial system and reckless printing of currency, increased centralization of the government and its hold on the economy, continuation and expansion of warfare and the war machine (all ditto). That is a continuation of the past, and it is amazing that the nation largely does not recognize it as a recipe for continued collapse. It is in fact not sustainable, nor is the environment in which it is floundering.” The other choice is to totally repudiate and change the system.

Well, there goes my Lincoln. It is, however, to current White House basketball-bouncing resident President Barack Hussein Obama that I focus my musing this Monday morning.

Before the elections, I noticed that about 70 percent of my Filipino-American colleagues were voting Republican and I first heard the joke of “BO in the White House.” Filipinos are known for their green and toilet jokes so it did not come as a surprise that a stereotype on body odeur would make it to the comedy central of Pinoy discourse.

After the elections, it did not take long for a picture of what would not be uncommon in rural Africa of a truckload of luggage sat upon by what seems to be a whole tribe of people to make several go-round throughout the Internet. This was supposed to be BO’s tribe on its way to Washington, followed just before the inauguration by a re-painted picture of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. labeled “the Black House.”

As with every stereotype, the one on body odor is often based on factual data blown into disproportionate assertion of universal application. At a community-based human development training school around Lake Lagos in Nigeria in the early ’80s attended by community development practitioners, I asked a colleague in the sweltering tropical heat why it was that with the new wealth of West Africa, they have yet to discover the virtues of deodorants. He responded: “Well, if we could not smell each other, how would we know who belongs to the same tribe and who doesn’t?”

Indeed, as is known among cultural anthropologists, the difference in cultural habits around the world had been influenced by the environment, accentuating practices that often favor one sense perception over the other. In the dark canopies of the rainforests close to the Niger or the Congo Rivers, sight may not have been the favored sense perception; undoubtedly, smell, touch and sound are. It is thus conceivable that one recognized a friend or a foe by their smell. We all know about the beat and rhythm that would enrich the New Orleans’ sound from early humankind’s beginnings affirming sensibilities toward the physicality of human existence.

A stereotype that a French friend once narrated is the one about the French perfumers devising essences to dab behind the ears of the British ladies in the Royal Court as they were not given to taking baths in the winter and their presence in the royal boudoir would be more tolerable than just with body odeur au naturel.

Now, we are warned against the aluminum content of deodorants which effectively blocks perspiration but also bars the proper functioning of the underarm sewage system. Thus, the toxicity that normally gets excreted is turned back into the blood system causing bodily dysfunctions and diseases. Chinese herbs and Southeast Asian spices have been known to influence body odors, and learning about them might be a healthier approach to plugging the sewers. Having resided in Hawaii and Indonesia, BO at the White House might just be familiar with all these.

It was in the aftermath of World War II in the waning days of the colonial powers that the principle of not changing the geographical delineations of colonies be observed by the superpowers. Immediately, the emerging nations of Africa broke into Civil Wars as tribes staked their claim on sovereignty over that of others.

Blackness (Stokeley Carmichael’s “Black is Beautiful, Baby!”), tribal loyalties (in my time, Black power of the Black Panthers on Chicago’s Westside) and now, Body Odor, all attesting to the basic physicality of human existence again come to fore. And I join the choir in saying: “Amen! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!”

Rene Descartes the mathematician in the 17th century said: cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore, I am.” Human identity and vocation had been creatures of the mind ever since. A recent study of many PhD holders driving taxicabs and waiting on tables revealed the fact that our University education trains many in intellectual knowledge without grounding on practical wisdom, thus, the plethora of experts able to manipulate the language of words and numbers, but lost in the art and skill of human existence. When we think ourselves into existence without grounding in the woof and warp of reality, we become creatures of illusions. Happily, wily reality has a way of pricking our illusory balloons!

Recovering the wisdom of the body (which a group called Interplay in Oakland, CA has been doing for the last 20 years) may just be what a unreluctant physical presence BO in the White House is signaling as a paradigm shift needed by mainstream America. (One thing I always appreciated from Gov. Babauta was his regular evening jaunts on the lagoon pathway!) With an obesity figure ranging up to 60 percent of the population, and mental health diseases hitting all time highs, innovative and creative health care providers are pointing back to our ability to listen to our bodies. The pharmacological revolution, alas, has led to internecine violence among the drug cartels, legal and illegal, as addiction to the quick fix had taken a criminal character. Not to mention the toxic mercury in the thimerosal in vaccines that has since come to haunt the autism community, but that’s for another Monday of musing.

For now, BO in the White House has come to mean an affirmation of the grand physicality of human life—the discipline of depth awareness of reality’s impact on our senses is contemplation, the inward reflection of our sense responses to external reality is soulful meditation, and the willful acting in reality becomes authentic prayer. What the Christians refer to as the physicality of grace may just come upon us!