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Hey Thomas,

I love your Op-Ed column -- you tell it straight. Today I found one little thing in "The Great Iceland Meltdown" to comment on, and thought it fit to send word. You say, "And therein lies the central truth of globalization today: We're all connected and nobody is in charge." In a sense, this truth cannot be denied.

But... in a more important sense, you are wrong: we are all in charge. That is the piece that is most important of all. One may then respond, "But someone in LA screws up, someone in Iceland screws up, and suddenly there are less cops on my city's streets. What did I do wrong?" But this view is the old-world view, and it is what is necessarily superseded by a new perspective found in your statement, "we are all connected." This is no truer now than it has always been, only now it is true on a much more explicit plane; now we have the opportunity to begin looking from a higher perspective, from which we recognize that we are all connected and that, most importantly, we are each in charge.

In the old world view, I am only in charge of myself and my own actions, and the rest of the world is pitted against me. In the new view, I am in charge of all of it, and nothing is pitted against me. I can hold myself responsible, without blaming myself; and I can hold you responsible, without judging you. We are beginning the transition to the age of subtlety -- "with us or against us" just doesn't cut it anymore.

Thanks for the thoughtful words each week.

-James

JAMES, QUESTION ON YOUR POST TO FRIEDMAN

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Sun, 10/19/2008 - 7:24pm.

James, first of all, I really appreciate you including us in your correspondences and posts on other blogs. Secondly, I loved this post because it brings together what interests me, namely, the integration of disciplines (e.g.,philosophical, psychological and – in this case—political). In this post, you brought up a key factor in understanding the current debacle in world financial systems, what I have been arguing is a byproduct of a paradigm shift in global consciousness: the factor is interconnectedness or, in the current travesty, the failure to consciously identify and create a global scaffolding for interconnectedness. What we seem to have – as Friedman pointed out in his article – is a dissociated worldview naming it globalization but operating on fractured systems and devoid of the fundamental ethicality that globalization requires if it will work. The antithesis of ethicality, in this case, is greed and ignorance.

With that said, it seems as if Friedman actually did answer his own question (with “We are all partners now?). Friedman continues after “And therein lies the central truth of globalization today: We're all connected and nobody is in charge" (italics mine):

“Globalization giveth — it was this democratization of finance that helped to power the global growth that lifted so many in India, China and Brazil out of poverty in recent decades. Globalization now taketh away — it was this democratization of finance that enabled the U.S. to infect the rest of the world with its toxic mortgages. And now, we have to hope, that globalization will saveth.

The real and sustained bailout from the crisis will happen when the strong companies buy the weak ones — on a global basis. It’s starting. Last week, Credit Suisse declined a Swiss government bailout and instead raised fresh capital from Qatar, the Olayan family of Saudi Arabia and Israel’s Koor Industries. Japan’s Mitsubishi bank bought a stake in Morgan Stanley, possibly rescuing it from bankruptcy and preventing an even steeper decline in the Dow. And Spain’s Banco Santander, which was spared from the worst of this credit crisis by Spain’s conservative banking regulations, is purchasing America’s Sovereign Bankcorp.

I suspect we will soon see the same happening in industry. And, once the smoke clears, I suspect we will find ourselves living in a world of globalization on steroids — a world in which key global economies are more intimately tied together than ever before.

It will be a world in which America will not be able to scratch its ear, let alone roll over in bed, without thinking about the impact on other countries and economies. And it will be a world in which multilateral diplomacy and regulation will no longer be a choice. It will be a reality and a necessity. We are all partners now.”

Back to you, James. Are you suggesting that Friedman isn’t acknowledging the need for this level of awareness (interconnectedness of all beings), or merely that he didn’t take it far enough?

friedman

Submitted by james on Sun, 10/19/2008 - 7:37pm.

"Are you suggesting that Friedman isn’t acknowledging the need for this level of awareness (interconnectedness of all beings), or merely that he didn’t take it far enough?"

i think neither characterization quite fits my critique. but it is more the case, i think, that he does not acknowledge it. now, if he had posited a question and answered it, as you suggest, perhaps i'd have a slightly different take (though not too different). as is, he makes a statement, "we're all connected and nobody is in charge," and then another one, "we are all partners now." i don't get the sense that he means these to be terribly different or in tension with one another. he's making slightly different claims, but i believe "we are all partners" and "we're all connected and nobody is in charge" means essentially the same thing in the context of "globalized economy."

he is acknowledging the need for this level of awareness sort of. when he continues to insist that this is a product of the globalization of the economy, and therefore something utterly new, he is missing the point. that is what i wished to focus on. the difference is that now we have a very concrete way to point to interconnectedness, and he acknowledges that, in that concrete sense, we need to recognize the interconnectedness of the world. but he only asserts that we need this level of awareness insofar as the effects of "globalization" are concerned. he does not acknowledge, say, that my well-being is inseparable from the well-being of others.

he recognizes the opportunity this catasrophe is, but unfortunately only from the superficial level from which we have been operating.

BACK TO YOU, JAMES, ON FRIEDMAN

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Sun, 10/19/2008 - 7:53pm.

"It will be a world in which America will not be able to scratch its ear, let alone roll over in bed, without thinking about the impact on other countries and economies. And it will be a world in which multilateral diplomacy and regulation will no longer be a choice. It will be a reality and a necessity. We are all partners now.”

"i don't get the sense that he means these to be terribly different or in tension with one another. he's making slightly different claims, but i believe "we are all partners" and "we're all connected and nobody is in charge" means essentially the same thing in the context of "globalized economy.""

It's interesting, I'm reading Friedman differently here and I'm wondering if it's because he is implying that America will have to (future tense) acknowledge as opposed to the desire and willingness to acknowledge and engage in a more interconnected global system, replete with a much vaunted ethicality (he says sarcastically). Your thoughts?

THIS MORNING'S COLIN POWELL ENDORSEMENT OF OBAMA

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Sun, 10/19/2008 - 8:15pm.

“Powell said a major part of his decision to turn his back on his own party was his conclusion that Obama was the better option to repair frayed U.S. relations with allies overseas.

“This is the time for outreach,” Powell said, saying the next president would have to “reach out and show the world there is a new administration that is willing to reach out.”

McCain would be a good president, Powell said, but Obama is “a transformational figure” who would be an “exceptional” leader.

“I truly believe that at this point in America’s history we need a president who will not just continue ... basically the policies we have followed in recent years,” he said. “We need a president with transformational qualities.”

Speaking of a new (worldcentric) worldview, this morning Former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Obama. If you read carefully, Powell and others who are endorsing Obama, point to Obama’s worldcentric wisdom; transformational because, as James intimated in his post, a shift is required in our foundational awareness as a global people, national barriers giving way to boundaries of pluralistic, diverse and fluid identities replete with an integrated ethicality. Lincoln, Kennedy and Martin Luther King were leaders of this type. Obama stands beside them.

THE PALIN DEFECT

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Sun, 10/19/2008 - 11:22pm.

"The Bradley Effect thus behind us, the legacy of the 2008 presidential election would be what I call the "Palin Defect." I believe that the majority of independent swing voters who are on the fence about whether to vote for John McCain or Barack Obama will ultimately choose Obama in the voting booth because of Sarah Palin. They will not be able to shake their nagging feeling that Palin is just completely unqualified to be the vice president; that her views and campaigning style are divisive, her knowledge base is laughable and she is downright dangerous for our country. While she may possess style and be able to deliver a performance, she has negligible substance -- something we just cannot afford to live without in these complex times."

-- Fred Goldring

some do not recognize, at

Submitted by james on Sun, 10/19/2008 - 11:57pm.

some do not recognize, at least not consciously, what you show Powell to describe in Obama. some only recognize it latently, drudging up some explanation for their attraction to him. some don't see it at all, and throw off the enthusiastic support he's inspired to eloquence (as McCain angrily described Obama in the 3rd debate) and mere performance. many just can't take a politician at his word, or see through his words to the worldview pointed to by them. it's understandable. but the difference between Obama and Palin, between Obama and McCain -- besides the obvious policy differences -- really is just this way of seeing the world. McCain and Palin share the tragically (really, tragically) limited worldview of our still-current president. Obama is a sign that a more integrative/ecological way of seeing/thinking is emerging on the big scale we really need. and the destruction that has opened the door for Obama has opened the door also for a big shift, if only a minor one at first, to occur. this sort of feeling is why i have felt calm and confident over the last few weeks, as opposed to terrified and panicked in the weeks after Palin's nomination. i've sensed the shifting tide. we'll see soon what comes of it in the short term.

I Love Colin Powell

Submitted by Caterina on Wed, 10/22/2008 - 1:08am.

"On the Obama side, I watched Mr. Obama and I watched him during this seven week period [re. financial crisis of country] and he displayed a steadiness, an intellectual curiosity, a depth of knowledge and an approach to looking at problems like this, picking a vice president that I think is ready to be president on day one and also, not just in jumping in and changing everyday but showing intellectual vigor. I think he has a definitive way of doing business that would serve us well.

I also believe that on the Republican side over the last seven weeks the approach of the Republican party and Mr McCain has become narrower and narrower. Mr. Obama at the same time has given us a more inclusive, broader reach into the needs and aspirations of our people. He's crossing lines. Ethinc lines, racial lines, generational lines. He's thinking about 'all villages have values, all towns have values,' not just 'small towns have values.'

...

I am also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say and it is permitted to be said, such things as 'Well you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.' Well, the correct answer is 'He is not a Muslim, he is a Christian, he has always been a Christian.' But the really right answer is 'What if he is?' Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is 'No, that's not America.' Is there something wrong with some 7 year old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop this suggestion, 'He's a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists.' This is not the way we should be doing it in America...."

I am struck again and again by the clarity of Powell's speech, by his remarkable language. It reminds me a bit of a college/grad school recommendation a professor might write for a student. Keeping in mind that a professor knows she/he is writing to an audience that cares about "intellectual curiosity", "depth of knowledge" and "intellectual vigor." Powell just spoke UP to our country! And raised the collective IQ a little. I swear he did.

It also felt like he just woke up a dying patient by bringing this much needed water to her parched lips... "intellectual curiosity".. !!! ... ahhh, life-saving witness.

I believe Powell is sincere and I believe he is accurate, but there is something else that we cannot mistake which is that to value these qualities in a man means to value them in all people. He just gave US a great gift, because I have not heard language like this spoken in our country in a very very long time.

just hello

Submitted by Emily on Wed, 10/22/2008 - 9:20pm.

Am reading, but quiet these days. Going to be traveling for the next week, but will check in just to send some hugs and maybe a response or two.

SAY IT LOUD, I’M BLACK AND I’M* VOTING FOR WHOM?

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Wed, 10/22/2008 - 10:46pm.

*For you youngins, "Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud" is a funk song written and recorded by James Brown in 1968 and is noted as one of the most popular "black power" anthems of the 1960s. So, what’s my point? I was having a conversation today with one of my friends -- who happens to be African American – about the meaning of this very unprecedented 2008 election for president of the United States. I spell it out in this way because it invokes for me this recent memory of Obama Barrack stepping onto the stage and saying, “With profound gratitude and great humility, I accept your nomination for presidency of the United States.” [see video]. I cried at that moment a very profound cry, not merely because the first black individual was nominated for president of the United States, but because this single moment, in my mind, redeemed and restored the very humanity that was taken away from me as a child and American citizen who grew up witnessing the political and social sanctioning of hatred of a group of people because of their race. The images are still before my eyes of human beings being knocked down by water hoses, attacked by German Shephards (!!!!), beaten and lynched because of the color of their skin. But, interestingly, the most powerful and disturbing image was of two water fountains, side by side, a sign above one reading “Colored”. So deep into the fundamental linguistic constructs that order reality, these signs represented a public sanctioning of hatred and ensured that the categorizing and demonizing of difference was to pervade the marrow of everyone’s psyche. But, even as a young boy using the word nigger before I even new what it was, I felt something deeply wrong, deeply disturbing, if not only for the emotional reaction it evoked in others. There is an energy around language that shapes consciousness and reifies images, ideas, and feelings into beliefs and ultimately action. The energy around the word nigger and other monikers, more than just objectifies, it vilifies and shapes hatred into an indisputable ontology of existence that ironically projects fear, not for the purpose of eradication like a disease (which Blacks were often associated with), but for the sustainability of security associated with superiority and domination. For if I completely destroy you, there will be no one left to contain my fear and preserve my sense of wholeness (psychological and existential integrity). This collective sociopathy and narcissism , predicated on a perpetuated dissociation, was the psychological foundation from which this nation’s material abundance was nourished.

So, back to my talk with my friend. I asked him to consider what this election means particularly for a black person who has inherited the most extreme forms of racism and persecution, not as a voting Democrat, but as a voting Republican. “Here I am, a republican Black in clear disagreement with Obama’s policies but I see in this election, for my fellow Black Americans, perhaps the greatest opportunity ever to symbolically (and literally) open what was once completely foreclosed: the mitigation of racism against Blacks”. Yes, for me, I see it as a mitigation of racism in general, but I am not a Black American who can identify with the Black experience (in the same way I cannot identify with being a woman or being gay, etc.). What to do? I was not seeking an answer from my friend, I was asking him to just hold the question, and I was excited by the fact that many particularly Republican Black Americans will have the opportunity to experience the dilemma this election will engender.

I then shared with my friend my own feelings and thoughts about the election having grown up with the shame and cancer of racism and the fear it engendered. Can one moment in time wipe out centuries of devastation and genocide? Of course not, but it is a sign, a signifying moment reflecting a change in the collective consciousness and healing of a nation heretofore deeply split, wounded and arrested in its development. This election represents a slowly emerging paradigmatic shift in the way we, as a collective consciousness, see and the way we know how to see the world of diversity and pluralism, as a world of integrally interconnected beings who are in reality, the same. Though there is distinction and uniquity, there is no real difference and it is this integral vision that I have worded over in that sign in my mind that read “Colored.” It now reads “Forgiveness.”

I just wanted to comment on your post Om about Barack

Submitted by Dependently bec... on Sat, 10/25/2008 - 10:40pm.

Obama's historic presidential candidacy. It's a beautiful thing when we can go from referring to someone as the "black" candidate to the candidate who "happens" to be black. Obama represents the ongoing collective cultural and psychological "metamorphosis" that our country has undergone within the past several decades.

We have gone from ostricizing blacks because of the way they walk, talk, dance, etc. to understanding and embracing their customs. Our society tends to mock that which is not understood. I think we use humor to diffuse the fear we have of ideas that challenge the status quo. It's a sort of mental self-preservation. We trust and defend what we know and do to a fault. How ironic it is that what we now know is based on challenges to the status quo, or what we once knew in the first place. Self-awareness is powerful and inclusive to all those who sympathize with our human condition. Ignorance is weak and exclusive to those who have no compassion for others and for themselves ultimately.

Obama's appeal is that he represents inclusiveness, being the child of white and black parents. He also represents our human condition striving to understand humanity.

my stream-of-consciousness thoughts

Submitted by james on Sun, 10/19/2008 - 11:49pm.

what i'm focusing on here is that he seems to be saying that we only need recognize the interconnectedness insofar as our economies now work that way -- and therefore if i'm stupid over here, it will badly effect someone in London because our economies work in sync with one another's. i get the sense from friedman that he doesn't suppose "interconnectedness" is a term that was applicable before globalization. now America, the nation, has to recognize its effect on the rest of the world. it's amazing to think that up until now America has gotten away with failing to recognize this, considering its profound and apparent impact on the rest of the world. the point i want to draw is that interconnectedness was already the nature of things, and that if we only take this as a reality in the sense of the state of the global economy, we may very easily continue to isolate ourselves in every way we can manage, and to ignore the basic nature of reality as interconnected. it is an opening to the nature of reality as interconnected that, as far as my still-limited experience tells me, opens up humanity to the fullest expressions of compassion. there is something so much more convincing to me about a compassion rooted in direct experience of the nature of reality than a compassion rooted in, say, an (imposed) external ethical law, or an intellectual positing, etc, etc. those compassions are great, but still mired by attachment, judgment, ignorance... self-centeredness. Friedman's interconnectedness is an interconnectedness understood not through spiritual understanding, but through self-centered, pragmatic intellectual plotting -- we thought we could only concern ourselves with ourselves, but now it's clear we are playing with others and have to recognize our relationship with them if we are to get the toys we wanted, and so we will "recognize" our relationship as one of interconnectedness. this really is a step forward, but i get the sense we as a country and as a world have taken many such steps forward without really taking any steps forward. but we've been preparing for a big step forward, which many of us as individual (yet intimately interconnected w/ all else) streams of consciousness, so to speak (since i have no better notion yet), have been in the process of making for many lives now. really the point of my letter to Friedman was to say, if anything: we both know you are talking about the economy; do you know that you are also talking about... ?

CHICKEN OR THE EGG: RESPONSE TO JAMES' STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Mon, 10/20/2008 - 10:24am.

“if we only take this as a reality in the sense of the state of the global economy, we may very easily continue to isolate ourselves in every way we can manage, and to ignore the basic nature of reality as interconnected.”

Does a more integral vision or ethos occur as a result of a failed system, or does a system change its paradigm as a result of a more integral worldview? This question may appear glib or simple but in fact it is a very complex glimpse into the nature of change from a developmental perspective. In the individual, maturation and development are deeply interactive processes with change (growth) dependent on a myriad of causes and conditions, from genetics to nutrition to learning to emotional nourishment. What is obvious is that the worldviews we speak of are comprised of individual ideas the translated actions of which construct the systems of society, government, economies, etc. In ways, these systems and the worldviews they reflect are analogous to the increased complexity of a child’s intellectual productions vis-à-vis her development which, as we said, is dependent upon her interaction with the social world. In simple language, we learn through mistakes but, as James is intimating, we only learn if we have the capacity to learn. The process itself is not linear but more like a spiral and would explain James’ observation that “this really is a step forward, but i get the sense we as a country and as a world have taken many such steps forward without really taking any steps forward. but we've been preparing for a big step forward, which many of us as individual (yet intimately interconnected w/ all else) streams of consciousness, so to speak (since i have no better notion yet), have been in the process of making for many lives now.”

Generalizing this to populations, what we are really talking about here is a calculus of change based on a minority of individuals (of real influence, e.g., political, corporate, academic) who have developed intellectually and ethically enough to understand (wisdom) and adopt (compassion) more integral ways (e.g., interconnectedness) of guiding civilization on its course through time. Whether Friedman is one of these individuals or not, I don’t know but I agree with his assessment in its contextual formulation. If his vision is “bigger,” that is, more inclusive, then James’ statement below will be answered with a ya.

“really the point of my letter to Friedman was to say, if anything: we both know you are talking about the economy; do you know that you are also talking about... ?”

FROM `CHRISTIANITY TODAY’ REVIEW OF `RELIGULOUS’

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Mon, 10/20/2008 - 8:39pm.

Let's face it: most documentaries these days don't bother to document anything in an objective, journalistic sense. We can thank Michael Moore for re-conceiving the documentary film as something akin to a sensationalistic, cinematic op-ed piece. If you have something you hate, or something you want to humiliate in as public a way as possible, make a documentary! And this is precisely what Bill Maher does in his new anti-religion film, Religulous.

Maher, who grew up Catholic (with a Jewish mother), loathes religion. This film doesn't make it clear why he hates it so, aside from some comments about how Catholicism "wasn't relevant" to his life as a child. But hate it he does. Religulous is Maher's attempt to sell the idea that religions are the most dangerous threat facing mankind, that "religion must die for mankind to live."

Maher spends the film traveling all over the world, along with Borat director Larry Charles and a small camera crew proficient in the art of "sabotage interview." The first half of the film is mostly focused on evangelical Christians, how they believe in things like a 5,000-year-old earth, etc. Maher takes a trip to the Creation Museum in Hebron, Kentucky, where he interviews creationism guru Ken Ham against the backdrop of animatronic dinosaurs with saddles (for humans to ride on). And he also interviews young-earth evangelical Mark Pryor, a democratic senator from Arkansas who creates some of the funniest moments of the film. To be fair, Maher also interviews Christian evolutionist Francis Collins, but he too comes out looking a bit buffoonish.

Ever the equal-opportunity atheist, Maher spends the second half of the film undermining religions and cults of every shape and size. He goes to Utah and skewers Mormonism, interviews Puerto Rican cult leader Jose Luis De Jesus Miranda (who claims to be the Antichrist), and even gets high with a leader of a religion based around marijuana. He goes to the Vatican and interviews some crazy Catholic priest, and Jerusalem to deconstruct Judaism and Islam. Maher is particularly hard on Islam, offering somewhat surprising pronouncements about the inherent violence and barbarism of that most touchy of all world religions. At moments like these, Maher might actually find allies in conservative Christian circles.

All along the journey, Maher and Charles jazz up the images with achingly sardonic voiceovers and music, and some very clever quick-cut editing (inserting 2 seconds of Charlton Heston-as-Moses at opportune moments, for example). It's stylishly presented, to be sure, but for all its panache, Religulous is ultimately a very predictable movie. It borrows from the usual suspects (Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock) in formatting the agitprop docu-comedy template for this particular crusade, and we can almost see the punchlines coming as a result.

What do you expect to happen when Maher stops at a truck-stop chapel in North Carolina to quiz long-haul truckers about biblical inconsistencies? What else but exploitative ridiculousness can result when Bill "religion is too easy" Maher spends a day in Florida's Holy Land Experience—where the Passion of the Christ is reenacted with cheap props while a Sandi Patty wannabe sings "Via Dolorosa"?

Honestly, it's not the hardest thing in the world to make a religion look silly when you only focus on the kitschiest, most grimace-inducing practitioners of it. Sure, we have to own up to these unfortunate (but fortunately fringe) elements within our ranks, but Maher shores up little credibility for his cause by refusing to talk with any opponent with an ounce of nuance of theological rigor.

He also loses credibility by sheer fact that he is Bill Maher—an ardently liberal, slightly greasy elitist with a penchant for condescension. Maher doesn't help break the "out of touch liberal" stereotype when he smokes pot on camera, for instance. And on Larry King Live in August, Maher exposed his amoral approach to life when he defended John Edwards' extramarital affair, saying, "people like new; you can't stop human nature." This "anything goes" view of adultery is doubtless not an opinion many people share with Maher.

Maher's biggest problem with this movie is not that it is reckless or condescending (which it is), but that it espouses a point of view that, quite simply, is not shared by many people in the world. Maher's ideology has no room for the miraculous or supernatural. Such things are all hocus pocus to him and cannot be believed by anyone with a brain. Faith of any kind (i.e., believing in something that can't be proved) "makes a virtue out of not thinking," according to Maher. Right there he loses about 98 percent of the world's population.

Still, Maher certainly isn't timid. He's about as aggressive as anyone can be in espousing an opinion. This becomes evident in the final five minutes of Religulous, when the tone of the film gets deadly serious and Maher presents his closing monologue. Here, he summarizes the argument: religions are dangerous because they make people think they know the answers, even when doubt is the only rational approach to life. Maher ends by calling on all anti-religionists (apparently he thinks there are huge numbers of them in hiding) to quit being timid and take up the cause of shutting down religion in the world. Otherwise, the religion-caused apocalypse will surely be imminent.

What nuance Maher had up till then is lost in this final segment of alarmist hysteria, which reminded me of LBJ's famous "Daisy Girl" ad during the 1964 presidential election. It's a cheap shot scare tactic—somewhere between An Inconvenient Truth and Future Shock—and it conveniently ignores certain facts about history, namely that religion has been the source of untold good in the world. Maher's thesis that all things evil and destructive are a result of religious delusion simply does not hold water historically. Countless atheistic regimes have bred violence and calamity in the world, totally outside of any religious motivation. Religion has far from a perfect record, but then again, nothing has a perfect record.

Religulous is best seen as a comedy (and there are many funny moments) and not as a serious or measured examination of anything. It's a movie meant to make religious people look stupid, to "prove" that religious belief and intelligence are mutually exclusive. If you are already prone to believe that, then this movie is for you. For everyone else, Religulous is a trifling and shoddy tirade that, ultimately, is not much of a threat.

response to review

Submitted by james on Mon, 10/20/2008 - 8:50pm.

see, here's a review by someone whose opinion i know is uninteresting to me. i am frustrated when someone says, in the same review, that Maher espouses doubt as the only way and also calls him an "atheist." he doesn't realize that those two things don't work together?

it's a funny review -- his arguments against Maher are very familiar to me, because i've seen people on Maher's show give the same arguments, such as the, "but religions have done so much good, too," argument. perhaps someday someone will find a way of bridging these two poles -- at the moment they're not actually discussing anything. those sorts of arguments are so obvious, doesn't anyone think to themselves -- before giving in to the defensiveness --, "perhaps there are different grounds upon which to debate this"? i suppose not. it's interesting to see the complaint about only putting buffoons on camera, and how easy that makes it to make fun of religion. usually i have a problem with something like that... but there are a few issues with that criticism this time around. the point is not to find a religion's elite thinkers, but to find those ordinary buffoons walking around preaching or what-have-you. who cares about those happy few who have more nuanced understandings of this stuff? if you're worried about them, i think you're missing Maher's point -- which one doesn't have to commit to as he does in order to appreciate, naturally.

anyway, that said: i'm looking forward to seeing it :P

HOUSE IS NOT A HOME: INSIDE THE DREAM

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Sun, 10/19/2008 - 6:50pm.

PART I

Nowhere, Beloved, will world be but within us. Our life

passes in transformation. And the external

shrinks into less and less. Where once an enduring house was,

now a cerebral structure crosses our path, completely

belonging to the realm of concepts, as though it

still stood in the brain.

-- Rilke Seventh Duino Elegy

I don’t know if I mentioned, but I love dreams. People must think I’m strange because I ask people about their dreams all day long. You would think I’m a shrink. But, I can’t help myself; I enter into this very unique world as if in a… well, dream. I often find myself calling dreams poems and vice versa. I don’t think it’s a coincidence, this withinwarding of mine opening up to incommensurate beauty and mystery and, ultimately, meaning. Meaning. That word again.

The dream speaks to (and of) inner language, the insideness of consciousness that, ultimately, has neither an in nor an out. No temporality, no spatiality and yet, the dream mimics in a kaleidoscopic way the world our consciousnesses together and separately constructs (with)in time and space. And it is how the dream unfolds that points to and guides us to(ward) what our conscious waking life refuses to fully reveal: our subjectivity and the freedom from suffering it holds.

Despite the content and reams of images the dream proffers, it is the emotional resonance we seek, the feeling(s) the dream evokes. Only through our emotional centers – and the dream will show us how – will the integrity of our personal evolution lift us out of the perils of estrangement and isolation.

Yesterday, one of my friends shared a most interesting dream. What made the dream particularly interesting was its dimensionality, the way it played with reflexivity to reveal mind’s innate relativity; that is, that it constructs reality as opposed to finding or discovering it (the dream’s “technique” was a dream-within-a-dream). It also reflects mind’s depth and the deep-rootedness of conflict. My friend, the dreamer, from what he shares, in general is attempting to move through early trauma the consequences of which, to a large degree, left him emotionally split off from his experiences (which simply means isolated). What this means now is, as he would describe it, becoming more integrated. And indeed, this dream depicts, imagistically, meaningfully, and I would even say, syntactically, a narrative theme of which is integration. Here’s an excerpt:

He is walking through a “creepy” town with a beautiful woman (who, in reality, is an actress). They are going to see a show in some building so they decide to get an early dinner. They are at a table. The actress eats first and when she finishes, her body ends up in her soup bowl. Her entire body. She morphs into a clay-like dried up piece of flesh, and my friend scoops her body into his own soup bowl, adds water, and eats. Importantly, it feels like a “ritualized” act and, as I am to find out later, this scene is actually a dream-within-a-dream which he shares again with this woman in the basement of his mother’s house.

In just this snippet, we can see the attempt at integration my friend conveyed earlier. There is at once a separation and interdependence, moving from objectification through incorporation towards integration. The object of idealization (actress) is “taken in” as nourishment in a ritualized way to emphasize the dreamer’s symbolic commitment to his purpose, which is healing and intimacy. Interestingly, this particular actress is not well-known to the dreamer which gives her role more flexibility and range; that is, as a kind of blank screen, the dreamer can infuse more of himself in her.

My friend pointed out how coherent the dream felt, how strongly it resonated and how he felt almost more empowered because of its (or his) clarity. And clarity and understanding is the point. I analyze my own dreams and consider them as a vital part of my practice, along with meditation. The mind is cunning and it easily slips into old patterns. The dream – what I call dreamwork – is an amazing vehicle for cultivating self-awareness.

Does anyone have any dreams they’d like to share? Or share dream experiences that have felt transformative?

MORE THOUGHTS ON THE DREAM

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Sun, 10/19/2008 - 6:58pm.

Entering the dream narrative is strikingly similar to the initial psychotic state of schizophrenia, at the crucial moment when the schizophrenic moves away from the social, consensual world. For the schizophrenic and dreamer, the world in its usual meanings dissolves and loses cohesion and coherence. There is a new and overwhelming sense of significance but it is an ineffable specificity. At once, everything is both familiar and somehow different. My friend’s dream had this feeling: the walking through a creepy town toward a definite destination with an actress, he walking a few feet behind her; and then sitting down in a restaurant, proceeding to eat, and when she morphs into a ball of some substance, clay-like, he scoops her into his bowl of soup (in a ritualized manner), adds water and eats her. The surrealism of this scene is heavily glossed with cultural elements and tropes that transpose the cannabilistic to pure symbol. For the schizophrenic, the disordered perceptual field horrifyingly fraught with delusions and hallucinations is mere grist for the dreamer’s creative mode of expression, which is replicated and can be found on a large scale in artistic productions and movements (I’m thinking of Surrealism and Formalism, for example).

This is the paradoxicality of dreamworld experience. Though meaning and coherence are suspended, it is only the standard definitions that images and narrative defy. This is where the schizophrenic and dreamer part. The dreamer will find behind her images and narrative a more coherent and uniquely personal meaning. We might say that the laws of natural occurrence or functionality are manipulated to serve the dreamer’s ineluctable unconscious project: to heal and grow (evolve!).

Because it cannot be found in conventional meaning (which is externally and object oriented), in the dream (much like art) language struggles to reach beyond its own horizons of description. I ask, Why do we need to manipulate language if not to create idiomatic forms that collective or consensual signification cannot? In all my writing, I consistently argue for a motivational and evolutionary perspective the conviction of which is this: all action, whether behavioral or speech, is governed by the desire to grow vis-à-vis creating relational (concrete and abstract) ties. And when language fails, the creative pulse continues to push forward, as art and science, for example, has shown. No, it is not a linear movement, and pathological degenerative forms of this evolutionary process can be seen everywhere (eg, destruction of communal bonds and the environment). But, this is part of the evolutionary struggle.

Om question about dream thread

Submitted by Megan on Tue, 10/21/2008 - 6:55pm.

Om when you said:

----

This is the paradoxicality of dreamworld experience. Though meaning and coherence are suspended, it is only the standard definitions that images and narrative defy. This is where the schizophrenic and dreamer part. The dreamer will find behind her images and narrative a more coherent and uniquely personal meaning. We might say that the laws of natural occurrence or functionality are manipulated to serve the dreamer’s ineluctable unconscious project: to heal and grow (evolve!).

Because it cannot be found in conventional meaning (which is externally and object oriented), in the dream (much like art) language struggles to reach beyond its own horizons of description. I ask, Why do we need to manipulate language if not to create idiomatic forms that collective or consensual signification cannot? In all my writing, I consistently argue for a motivational and evolutionary perspective the conviction of which is this: all action, whether behavioral or speech, is governed by the desire to grow vis-à-vis creating relational (concrete and abstract) ties. And when language fails, the creative pulse continues to push forward, as art and science, for example, has shown.

----

I am not sure I am getting what you are saying about dreams. Are you suggesting (bold) that dreams are an unconscious artistic outpouring to create meanings that the dreamer cannot otherwise create as a desire for healing and growth?

MEGAN, YOUR QUESTION ABOUT DREAMS

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Wed, 10/22/2008 - 12:14am.

"I am not sure I am getting what you are saying about dreams. Are you suggesting (bold) that dreams are an unconscious artistic outpouring to create meanings that the dreamer cannot otherwise create as a desire for healing and growth?"

This is exactly what I meant, I couldn't have said it better :) The only thing I would modify is: "to create meanings that the dreamer has greater difficulty creating as a desire for healing and growth in conscious waking life."

Om Another question about dreams

Submitted by Megan on Thu, 10/23/2008 - 6:08am.

I am wondering about intention- where the line between conscious and unconscious lies in regards to dreams. From a functional stand point we dream every night, correct? I’m not saying this means we recall every dream every night, I myself have to remind myself if I cease from remembering my dreams sometimes before going to bed that I will remember my dreams. Is there opportunity for healing and growth in every dream even when the dreamer does not have a desire towards healing and growth in conscious waking life?

MEGAN, YOUR QUESTION ON DREAMS

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Thu, 10/23/2008 - 10:04am.

“Is there opportunity for healing and growth in every dream even when the dreamer does not have a desire towards healing and growth in conscious waking life?”

Megan, another excellent question. Thank you. My conviction is that “desire,” as intention, is the ground of evolution and manifests in recapitulated forms, such as, psychological development. Does that mean that, at any given point, the individual is growing psychologically or in a state of well-being? Of course not, I’m referring to a fundamental existing underlying motivation in all beings to heal the ruptures that occur (as a result of interactions with the world surround) and grow (vis-à-vis mastering developmental tasks). If indeed this mechanism to grow exists within all of us, it would exist, not only in waking consciousness – through guided intention – but also in prereflective consciousness, or what we might call the unconscious. If we observe dream structures and narratives from this perspective, we find a consistent desire to heal, even if in waking life we are paralyzed or self-destructive. It’s kind of like a fish swimming upstream when all odds seem against its final arrival. We are all seeking unity, psychologically speaking, in the form of creating emotional ties. The dream will always reflect that.

Om one more dream question

Submitted by Megan on Thu, 10/23/2008 - 9:31pm.

Is there any other function, that you know of, for dreams. Why else do we dream?

Okay so maybe two...

It's been a while since I've been in class - is there a difference between prereflective consciousness and unconscious?

MEGAN, THANKS AGAIN FOR YOUR QUESTIONS

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Thu, 10/23/2008 - 11:26pm.

and also pointing out a mistake I made. I meant to write prereflective unconscious, not prereflective consciousness. The prereflective unconscious might be defined as structures of experience made up of recurring but evolving patterns of intersubjective relationships which lead to organizing principles, if you will, that shape personality development. These structures are unconscious but are not what is referred to the unconscious as defensive strategies to keep threatening affects and memories undercover. The prereflective unconscious is more of a philosophical notion of how mind organizes experience.

Regarding dreams, there are a few theories about why we dream other than what I have proposed. One neurobiological activation synthesis theory suggests that the sensory experiences are fabricated by the cortex as a means of interpreting chaotic signals from the pons. The then activated forebrain synthesizes the dream out of internally generated information. Another theory asserts that dreams function like a computer that, when off-line, removes junk from the system.

Because these are physicalist theories, they completely negate mental attribution to dreams, rather than considering that the body (brain) and mind are merely two aspects of consciousness neither of which negates the other; instead physicalist and interpretive theories are like particles and waves, each being observed depending on what level of consciousness or lens you are looking through.

article on blogging

Submitted by Megan on Mon, 10/20/2008 - 8:29pm.

Lot’s of really good conversations being had this Sunday I see. So nice to find all these great discussions taking place really gives me some good stuff to think about throughout my day. Not sure yet where to jump in, I wanted to share an interesting article about blogging from a journalistic perspective. Although pretty long, I enjoyed the authors evolution of writing, reactions and experiences through 8 years of blogging. I was reminded of our blog by this quote:

“Alone in front of a computer, at any moment, are two people: a blogger and a reader. The proximity is palpable, the moment human—whatever authority a blogger has is derived not from the institution he works for but from the humanness he conveys. This is writing with emotion not just under but always breaking through the surface. It renders a writer and a reader not just connected but linked in a visceral, personal way. The only term that really describes this is friendship. And it is a relatively new thing to write for thousands and thousands of friends.”

MEGAN, NICE ARTICLE

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Mon, 10/20/2008 - 11:56pm.

Thanks for the glimpse into another blogger's world and his exploration into the world of blogging. I very much like the extended definition of friendship as it applies to the blog community. We can certainly attest to that here. In a way, there is a transitoriness of expression, as Sullivan describes, if not solely for the fact that we keep moving, rarely looking back. And yet, as I mentioned, the shape of consciousness as a returning, as one scholar put it, and as James' new poem conveys it, always keeps us, as a seed to a tree, close to that history of our thoughts, both as a textual recording and as a more ethereal replaying of our own individual consciousnesses playing anew recasted ideas in new forms with novel meaning and a more deeply felt understanding of why we are here at all.

Dishin' it out

Submitted by james on Tue, 10/21/2008 - 1:47am.

i've been an avid Daily Dish reader -- that's Andrew Sullivan's blog -- for, oh, probably over three years now. he is a conservative, someone who has lived in America (from England) for something like 20 years, but cannot yet become a citizen because of our bizarre HIV travel and immigration ban (which seems to finally be on its way out). (also, it should be noted that though he doesn't mention himself in the list of important early bloggers, he is rightly credited as one of those who popularized the medium.) when i started reading the Dish he was still being actively denigrated for supposedly abandoning his ideals after backing Kerry in 2004. of course, he backed Kerry -- hesitantly -- because of his conservative ideals: can anyone really attach the word conservative to the Bush presidency? over the last four years he's come to find the presidency he voted for back in 2000 even more absurd and devastating than he thought back in '04. for a while he was excited for the debate we'd be getting between Obama and McCain, both of whom he respected and admired. he has since become an (even more) avid Obama supporter, thanks to McCain's ambitious turn to Rove's ilk. anyway -- i say all of this to give you a quick acquaintance with my experience of Sullivan's politics over the last few years. more importantly, i'll say i think my perspective on, interest in, and understanding of the political realm of things have all been deepened and enhanced greatly by the Dish, among other blogs. (also, i've learned a lot of fun and silly things when he and other bloggers i read have posted videos, essays, photos... not limited to the political realm of things.) what has gotten me wrapped up much more in the Dish than any other blog (and what accounts for me reading nearly every post of Andrew's, even when i can't keep up with anything else) is this friendship he describes. it's fun to see you guys relate his essay to this blog, especially because he says that the conversation is the point. when i read that i, too, thought of our blog. sure, we have posts on the front page. but whenever i try and describe the blog to someone who hasn't seen it themselves, i always end up saying, "the conversation is the blog; it's the conversation that is really the point of it."

but, of course, our blog is quite different. we are a fairly small community, but i believe we're onto something here. 'blog' isn't really the right word for us, even though we do share something with Andrew and all of those. i get the sense that no one has really come up with a proper medium for what we've got going on here. the closest is a forum, but that doesn't quite get it. the trouble is that we're a chat room that isn't in real-time. we're a roundtable discussion over the internet and over the span of the week. actually, we're several chat rooms going on at once; we're a roundtable of people in chatrooms while sitting at the table. we have a lot of room for different kinds of posts and endless different topics, but when it was really cookin' here on the blog, it just got overwhelming for most of us. how to keep up!?! the reason it was tough to keep up was because we're limited to the form used by everyone else, even though we are doing something seemingly new. this really is a pretty cool website, and if i knew something about web design i'd do my best to construct an altogether new kind of online space for us -- but, in the meantime, i think we're doing just fine :)

More thoughts on Andrew Sullivan

Submitted by Megan on Tue, 10/21/2008 - 7:44pm.

I agree with you Om, I like his new definition of friendship. I also like that he recognizes that the blog has made both journalists more human and the reader more of writers/journalists. The gap between the two decreasing and thus becoming more of a meaningful conversation.

James thanks for sharing a little bit of background that you know about Andrew Sullivan and his blog. The only experience I have of him is on Bill Maher’s show when he is a guest that my friend watches very often, and I always enjoy what he has to bring to the conversation. I mentioned Sullivan’s blog article to my friend and we ended up getting into a long conversation about Sullivan’s conservative belief systems. My friend thinks Sullivan is brilliant and yet is frustrated by what he sees as conflicting interests for Sullivan. He cannot see the logic in a gay man participating in the Christian religion and Republican beliefs. He went on to tell me that doing this is the same as an African American that wants to join the Ku Klux Klan just because they have strong religious and family values. He said he doesn't understand why Sullivan would you want to belong to two very vocal groups that not only do not want him, do not recognize his life choice, but uses his lifestyle as a wedge and platform for their agenda and cause? I don’t really have a counter argument for my friend because I think it is Sullivan’s right to believe in what ever it is he wants to believe in. After reading your experience on the Dish I will certainly share the link with him, maybe he will feel inclined to write to Sullivan and ask him himself.

What a good way to describe our blog, a roundtable, a flowing chat room, I couldn’t agree more. It is very unique for sure and I certainly struggled with keeping up when it was going full speed, at the same time I love what the diversity of experience and perspectives created. I have limited experience on other blogs outside of ours. I do track industry blogs at work most of which are one-way conversation by analysts and reporters. I’ve thought about how our blog can be structured better as well. Like being able to start a page for each conversation, but that would get hard to follow as well and a lot of our conversations have an organic flow from one topic to the other and some of the topics become interconnected.

a defense for andrew sullivan

Submitted by james on Tue, 10/21/2008 - 9:33pm.

hey Megan. that last word of yours seems to be the coolest thing about our community, and also the biggest obstacle to a new structure that fits us best of all -- that our streams are interconnected.

anyway, regarding your discussion with your friend: it's a very interesting one. i would certainly want to first and foremost make a distinction between "conservative" and "Republican" because those two are only considred remotely synonymous because Reps have tended toward the conservative side of the aisle, Dems the progressive. but i think Andrew before anyone else would be quick to say that the Republican party as a whole these days fails to live up to its supposedly conservative ideal. but, anyway, to say being a gay man who belongs to the Republican party is like being a black man who belongs to the ku klux klan does feel a bit off to me. i see the analogy being drawn; but, the ku klux klan was all about resisting social change (a nice way of saying, "they were racists, and their whole ideology was built upon this.") -- that was the whole point. the Republican party, on the other hand -- if we say (pretend) for a moment that it is sticking to the conservative ideals it supposedly follows -- is involved in every other aspect of politics and society; the fact of the Republican party's anti-gay inclination is a miniscule concern when faced with the difference between, say, fiscal conservatives and big government proponents. there's an honest difference there, and it is a much more important ideological difference to focus on, and if one party (and only one party) shares your perspective on that issue: well, that may just be the party for you. again, it's important to note that GWB has clearly not been a conservative in any sense of the word i can think of. but to narrow down "conservative" -- or even "Republican" -- to anti-gay is, i think, missing a whole lot. much of the same can be said of Christianity.

i'll add, now, that i find your friend's frustrations compelling -- i'm not saying there's no discussion to be had. Andrew Sullivan, a while back, had a long online exchange with Sam Harris about faith -- Harris arguing that Sullivan's faith is absurd, Sullivan defending it despite said absurdity. it was a little earth-shaking for Andrew. still, i would say i'm unsatisfied by his account of his own Christianity -- not because i think he ought not be a Christian; rather, i want to understand really deep down where his Christianity comes from (and not only his). it is fascinating to me, because i do not know what it feels like, and have no inkling or desire for the experience: just to get what and why it is. i am, however, satisfied about his political leanings. he really just is a conservative -- and any conservative who faces the way things are couldn't earnestly support GWB, or the GOP, or, in all likelihood, (the new incarnation of) McCain (with his Bush-Cheney-Rovian VP nominee, especially). and... Andrew doesn't. but he does still believe that conservatism is the best approach to government. if one needed to agree with everything one's candidate or party espoused in order to vote, we would need very many parties and candidates, indeed.

ANDREW SULLIVAN’S CHOICES

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Tue, 10/21/2008 - 11:49pm.

James and Megan, great discussion. I have many thoughts rolling around in my head in response to both of your posts, so let me start with a general irritation I have regarding the art of argument. In any dialogue, it is critical to define one’s terms. So, in reference to Sullivan, I would like to first know what “conservative” means. James suggested it refers to Sullivan’s political ideology, but I’m still not clear what that means for Sullivan. And I’m certainly not clear what it means for Megan’s friend. For example, RJ White comments on conservatism reveal much confusion around the term. There are so many conservatisms, it seems silly to make such grand judgments about anyone’s conservatism:

"To put conservatism in a bottle with a label is like trying to liquify the atmosphere … The difficulty arises from the nature of the thing. For conservatism is less a political doctrine than a habit of mind, a mode of feeling, a way of living." (italics mine)

When I think of conservatism, this is what I tend to focus on: a worldview. And though that worldview (the way one sees the reality of world) is coextensive with political affiliation, it is not synonymous with a political party. In general, conservatism refers to the preservation of traditional values and so has a motivational component suggesting a certain resistance to change and need for security over ambiguity. Though for me personally, conservatism is too limiting in most contexts, it has nothing to do with my sexual orientation. Thus, homosexuals can politically be either conservative or progressive/liberal. Agreeing with James on this one, “to narrow down "conservative" -- or even "Republican" -- to anti-gay is, i think, missing a whole lot.” However, I disagree with James when he says, “much of the same can be said of Christianity.” (By the way, Sullivan is Catholic, a denomination of Christianity).

As far as I’m concerned, Catholicism and homosexuality are at deep psychological odds (where conservatism and homosexuality might not be). And though I know a number of gay Catholics (some of who are priests) who struggle with this outlandish schism and attempt to redefine Catholicism, primarily focusing not on the Church but on Catholicism’s “Christ” roots, the poisonous psychological arrows shot at gays cannot be dodged. With that said, James, I find your defense (?) of Sullivan’s choice for Catholicism the right way to go. Regarding Catholicism, you say: “still, i would say i'm unsatisfied by his account of his own Christianity -- not because i think he ought not be a Christian; rather, i want to understand really deep down where his Christianity comes from (and not only his).” Rather than be quick to judge, you instead want to understand how Sullivan (and others) could rationally choose a faith that, at best, is fraught with contradiction and, at worst, is rife with beliefs and a power structure of the worst kind because it completely oppresses critique and threatens psychological (in the form of otherworldly) persecution for dissent. I would also like to know how Sullivan has chosen this faith.

sam and sullivan

Submitted by james on Wed, 10/22/2008 - 12:10am.

what "conservative" means is a good question. Sullivan's got a book called "The Conservative Soul," which probably answers the question of what it means to him. i haven't read it yet, though one of these days i'm sure i will. with regard to Catholicism (and it is best to specify Catholicism -- thanks), the trouble is probably in part not understanding how X, Y and Z have chosen their faith, but that it is chosen -- i believe this is why you put "choice" and "chosen" in italics, to emphasize that you are defining it as a choice. i can't be certain, but i have a hunch that some folks would find the term choice inappropriate -- but, my next hunch tells me, they may be unable to otherwise account for their faith. i don't want to go any further down the chain of hypotheticals here, so i will refrain from an imagined dialogue, and just say that one of Sullivan's remarks in his dialogue with Sam Harris was about death... he ended one of his letters to Harris as follows: "But even after you have been saved by reason, you will die, Sam. And what will save you then?"

so perhaps it is fear, after all; if only in part.

SAM AND SULLIVAN

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Wed, 10/22/2008 - 12:19am.

"i don't want to go any further down the chain of hypotheticals here, so i will refrain from an imagined dialogue, and just say that one of Sullivan's remarks in his dialogue with Sam Harris was about death... he ended one of his letters to Harris as follows: "But even after you have been saved by reason, you will die, Sam. And what will save you then?"

so perhaps it is fear, after all; if only in part."

This is great James. I would like to ask Sullivan if he would ever consider not dying. If so, he could be "saved" now, just by sitting :)

and sublating wouldn't hurt, either :0

JESUS WAS NOT CONSERVATIVE

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Wed, 10/22/2008 - 12:49am.

It is my conviction that human beings necessarily need to move through a deep psychological process in order to have an enduring and heightened spiritual awareness. A heightened awareness cannot happen organically, particularly in a culture which itself is stuck on a developmental level that precludes spiritual awareness. If a culture’s worldview is on a lower developmental level, its human activities, including its religions and psychological programs, will reflect that worldview. According to Ken Wilber’s Integral perspective, for example, the magicanimistic worldview, for example, is marked by a partial overlap of subject and object, so that “inanimate objects” like rocks and rivers are directly felt to be alive or even to possess souls or subjective spirits. This is the world that Rilke, to a large degree, inhabited and spoke about. The mythic worldview is marked by a plethora of gods and goddesses, not as abstract entities but as deeply felt powers, each having a rather direct hand in the affairs of earthly men and women. This is the civilization of ancient Greece. The mental worldview -- of which the “rational worldview” is the best known subset -- is marked by a belief that the subjective realm is fundamentally set apart from the objective realm of nature, and how to relate these two realms becomes one of the most pressing problems in this worldview. The causal worldview is marked by the direct realization of a vast unmanifest realm -- variously known as emptiness, cessation, the Abyss, Being -- a vast Formlessness from which all manifestation springs. And the nondual represents a radical union of the Formless with the entire world of Form.

Without a sufficient number of individuals who are at higher levels of awareness, the rest of the population will never rise above the reality of their culture. Jesus and Buddha, for example, represented such figures. Unfortunately, however, most of their followers were (and are) not on their same spiritual (developmental) level and consequently the followers created religious forms and institutions that reflected a schism, between religion as the single greatest source of human-caused wars, suffering, and misery, and a religion about Ultimate Reality. Jesus and Buddha, because of their exceedingly high level of humanity, reconciled this schism by understanding that these two contradictory aspects of religion (one that divides and one that unites) must be placed in a larger context of understanding.

If Jesus were alive today, he would certainly speak against Christianity in the same way he spoke against any dualistic religion. The Trinity, for instance, though having a strong aesthetic value, has nothing to do with Jesus’ teachings. It was in fact created by the Catholic Church at Nicene in reaction to heterodox theologies. That is, it was created in an attempt to “standardize” belief to give the Church more political power. It took hundreds of years of cultural evolution to deconstruct this invention, but even today most people have no idea that religious artifacts serve human material and psychological desires, not spiritual needs. A more evolved way of exploring religious experience that fosters unification, not division amongst humanity, is what Ken Wilber refers to as a “content-free” integral approach to religion.

“Content-free” refers to the fact that virtually all previous approaches at unification have attempted to find some sort of unity on the level of actual content (whereas the integral approach does not). For example, most of the world’s great religions have some version of the Golden Rule, and most universalists use those types of common elements to find their unity in the world’s religions.

The integral approach does none of that. Or rather, all such similarities in content are looked upon as quite secondary, even trivial. This is why we call the core of the integral approach “content-free.” It finds its similarities in certain patterns of content, not in the content itself.

Here’s a simple example. Notice that all the world’s mature languages contain first-, second-, and third-person pronouns. First person means the person who is speaking (I, me, we); second person means the person spoken to (you, thou); and third person means the person or thing being spoken about (him, her, it). So if you are talking to me about your new car, you are the first person, I am the second person, and the car is the third person.

These pronouns actually represent three perspectives that human beings can take when they talk about the world or attempt to know the world. For example, I have my first-person impressions of my new car (“I like it!”). I can ask you, a second person, what you think about it (“I like it, too!”). You and I are now a “we” (a first-person plural) and we both agree, the car (“it”) is great!

Although there are obviously countless combinations here, it’s sometimes useful to summarize these three major perspectives as I/me, you/we, and he/her/it—or simply “I,” “we,” and “it.” So what? Well, the fact that every major language contains these three types of pronouns means that we have a set of “meta-universals” here, or something that we find in all major cultures.

Notice that these universals—I, we, and it—do not themselves have any content. To say that all languages have a first-person pronoun (“I” or “me”) is not to say anything about that person at all. It is not to say that this person is named Martha, or this person is spiritual, or this person is made of carbon and water molecules, or this person contains Jungian archetypes, or anything like that at all.

It’s much, much deeper than that. To say that all human beings recognize a first-, second-, and third-person perspective is to say that those perspectives—but not necessarily any of their contents—are universally available to all normal humans. It’s sort of like saying that all human beings contain two kidneys, two lungs, and one liver. But it says nothing about what you actually do with your kidneys or lungs or liver. In other words, to say that you have a first-person perspective on what you are reading right now—you are a first-person “I” who is reading this column—is to say nothing about what you actually think about what you are reading. Maybe you like it, maybe you don’t. All I am saying is that you definitely have available to you a first-person perspective, and you know that you do.

Now this begins to get interesting, because we have started to find a series of things that are universal, but that themselves have no particular content. They are “meta-universals.” Or, as we were saying, “content-free cross-cultural” patterns. Notice that we never find a perspective running around all by itself, dangling in midair, completely divorced from some sort of content, only that the perspectives themselves are not merely culture-bound or merely relative, appearing in some cultures but not in others. So I am not saying that “content-free” means culture-free; rather, perspectives—such as I, we, and it—are wedded to particular cultures but not reducible to them.

The fascinating part is that these three perspectives might actually give rise to art, morals, and science. Or the Beautiful, the Good, and the True: the Beauty that is in the eye (or the “I”) of the beholder; the Good or moral actions that can exist between you and me as a “we”; and the objective Truth about third-person objects (or “its”) that you and I might discover: hence, art (“I”), morals (“we”), and science (“it”).

The integral approach does claim to be able to “unite,” in some sense, the world’s great spiritual traditions, which is what has caused much of the interest in this approach. If humanity is ever to cease its swarming hostilities and be united in one family, without squashing the significant and important differences among us, then something like an integral approach seems the only way. Until that time, religions will continue to brutally divide humanity, as they have throughout history, and not unite, as they must if they are to be a help, not a hindrance, to tomorrow’s existence."

ONE MORE POINT REGARDING ANDREW SULLIVAN

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Thu, 10/23/2008 - 11:59pm.

I didn’t want to gloss over Megan’s friend’s comments on Sullivan’s political and religious choices, particularly how, at least ostensibly, they wax contradictory. Megan said (about her friend), “He said he doesn't understand why Sullivan would you want to belong to two very vocal groups that not only do not want him, do not recognize his life choice, but uses his lifestyle as a wedge and platform for their agenda and cause?”

I think James’ response clarified but also conflated two realities (the real and the ideal): He said, “the Republican party, on the other hand -- if we say (pretend) for a moment that it is sticking to the conservative ideals it supposedly follows -- is involved in every other aspect of politics and society; the fact of the Republican party's anti-gay inclination is a miniscule concern when faced with the difference between, say, fiscal conservatives and big government proponents. there's an honest difference there, and it is a much more important ideological difference to focus on, and if one party (and only one party) shares your perspective on that issue.” (italics mine)

My first question is to James: Why pretend if it has no real bearing on the reality of today's Republican Party? My next question: Is the Republican’s anti-gay (I wouldn’t say “inclination” but) crusade really a “miniscule” concern given the cultural context of the right’s political landscape? How can we separate out anti-gay political sentiment from its underlying hatred? And how different really is this than racism, particularly given the sheer number of gay citizens? Andrew Sullivan might be able to discern between cultural and political contexts from a theoretical perspective, but the reality is that anti-gay policy is tantamount to the cultivation of hatred towards individuals and groups. With that said, I’m not sure that comparing a gay man supporting the “reality” of the American Republican Party to an “African American that wants to join the Ku Klux Klan just because he has strong religious and family values” is so far-fetched. James said, “but, the ku klux klan was all about resisting social change.” I think this is absolutely true of the Republican Party’s current status.

If the Republican Party shares Andrew Sullivan’s views on economic policy, for example, but also promotes social policies that are clearly discriminatory (“how can he support do not recognize his life choice, but uses his lifestyle as a wedge and platform for their agenda and cause”) and (many might say) unconstitutional, particularly for homosexuals, how can he in good conscience be a Republican.

clarification

Submitted by james on Fri, 10/24/2008 - 12:21am.

okay, let me clarify: i wanted to distinguish between "conservative" and "Republican." Sullivan is a conservative, not a Republican. he's campaigning for Obama, and did the same for Kerry. i was troubled by the quick convergence of "conservative" and "Republican" precisely because we have to pretend, these days, if we want two use those two words as generically synonymous.

i meant to make this distinction in my post, but perhaps i got carried away and didn't do it clearly enough. actually -- it's worse, i wrote a few words that i see now i just plain disagree with. i was a bit careless -- thanks for pointing it out. so now: is it still relevant to ask, if it's changed to, "how can he in good conscience be a conservative"? i don't think so.

i used the word pretend. you even italicized it , Om!! :) i chose that word because i was suggesting that if Republican = conservative were a legitimate formula (or at least one among several possible formulas following the principle of identity with "conservative" on one side of the equation) then the Republican party's anti-gay inclination (or it's anti-abortion inclination) would be miniscule.

let me put it this way now -- if the Republican party's platform included concern over abortions and the wish to abolish them, but fueled by compassion and expressed with the sort of language of understanding and unity that Barack Obama uses to speak about abortion, it wouldn't be such a massive conflict of interests. but i did specify "Republican" with regard to the ku klux klan analogy; and i do not stand by my quick disregarding of the sentiment. so let me be clearer now that you've asked me to be.

the way i did (and could continue to) fantastically describe the GOP i wish were around was not meant as a defense of the GOP that really exists for us, which is as you describe it -- it's absurd. as it now stands, anyone who has a fairly calm perspective on abortion (perhaps, "i find it terrible and wish there were none, but i recognize that some women are going to get it done anyway for legitimate reasons, so we better make it a safe procedure as long as it is still being done at all, until we can figure out ways of reducing abortions in number hopefully to(ward) zero") has good reason to be opposed to, for example, John McCain, whose website proudly reads, "John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned," knowing that this would mean -- immediately for several states -- many outright bans on abortion. Sarah Palin, of course, is much more staunch about it. the anti-gay crusade is at least as mesmerizingly thoughtless and non-compassionate -- and it's a screwball take on the word "conservative."

i don't disagree with what you say, Om, and now that you've forced me to look at my own words and think a bit more about this, i can make clear that, firstly, there is (or at least can and seems these days to be) a difference between being "conservative" and "Republican" -- though Megan's friend seemed to possibly be conflating the two; and that, secondly, Sullivan's conservatism doesn't seem contradictory to me. his Catholicism, though... i'm not so sure.

sullivan this

Submitted by nico lime (not verified) on Fri, 10/24/2008 - 1:45am.

james and om, if i may interject here.

i have been following sullivan's blog since 2003 and i would say that he is a conservative in the goldwater tradition of small federal government with limited power and strong civil liberties. in this frame, different types are allowed to live in peace without having to worry about government legislating lifestyles and life choices. it is more of the "don't tell me what to do, what to think, and stay out of my business," approach to government.

all this, though, has to be put into current historical context because ideoligical labels change, are misunderstood, or never really defined. for example, a lot of people are saying we are becoming a socialist country like france because of the government intervention in the banks of late. maybe, but the labels of socialist and free markets keep changing. if a person from the late 1800s travelled into our current times, he or she would be astonished by all the government regulation dealing with housing conditions, working conditions, banking regulation, environmental rules, and so on. this time traveller would surely think we are socialists! however, the point is to do what is necessary and what we think is right at the moment, and not get attached to the ideas too much.

i see and hear so many people (especially this election cycle) attached to this or that label, conversely, they constantly work to label others in the hope of understanding them, but, it seems to me, they are not really having empathy for the other, but are actually looking to categorize that person so they can put them into some kind of context that they already understand and recognize. but are they understanding the other or are they just labeling them and fitting them into the image of what they want them to be?

also, the internet has revolutionized the way political campaigns are now run. obama has raised $602 million (i am heard this number and it is hard to believe and it may be wrong, but i think it is right, especially after he raised $150 million in september alone) for his campaign to be president. and this is from thousands of people, ordinary people who are now empowered to give money through the internet. this means that there is now a conterbalance to the power and influence of interests groups in washington that have so much say in what law passes or not. and blogs go a long way to shaping the discourse and the flow of ideas on different issues. in a way, it is much more exciting because it is a constant exchange of ideas, the good and the bad. so it makes much harder now for mccain to slander obama, because bloggers and the internet community can frisk out the lies. conversely, the internet also makes it possible to hate groups to organize and target their audiences across the world.

anyway, i am all over the place on this, so i will just say goodnight.

REPUBLICAN PARTY= CONSERVATISM? CONSERVATISM = REPUBLICAN PARTY?

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Fri, 10/24/2008 - 9:41pm.

James, you say, “there is…a difference between being "conservative" and "Republican" -- though Megan's friend seemed to possibly be conflating.” I’m running into the same definitional issues I mentioned the other night. For example, in today’s (actual not theoretical) world, I (perceptually) actually do equate “Republican” with “conservative” if conservative means ultra, that is, the more extreme forms of conservatism (“it's a screwball take on the word "conservative"). Indeed, your friend, Wikipedia, says that “today, the party supports a neoconservative platform (from an American political perspective), with further foundations in supply-side fiscal policies, partial government ownership of the financial industry, and social conservatism.”

With that said, conservatism is not exclusively Republican. Sullivan, for example, “is a conservative, not a Republican. he's campaigning for Obama, and did the same for Kerry.” Thus, when you refer to Sullivan’s conservatism, I believe you are speaking in a narrower (strictly ideological) way, similar to what Nico intimated. This should make things clearer in our discussion.

Nico, you’ve made a number of excellent points extending outside of politics proper and I’d like to address each individually:

“all this, though, has to be put into current historical context because ideological labels change, are misunderstood, or never really defined.”

Unfortunately, I find this to be generally true. The point is – and James and I have discussed this at length – contextualizing and perspectivizing are two modes of critique that are desperately lacking in reference to “labeling,” not only in the dialogues of the more formal, but in most relational discourse. This is the case that perception overrides conception (or reasoning).

“however, the point has to do with what is necessary and what we think is right at the moment, and not get attached to the ideas too much.”

This is great and I would elaborate: understand ideas as true or useful in relative terms. This means that ideas may be true today but not true tomorrow. Ideas are constructs and do not refer to pre-existing absolutes. This is the danger of labels, they give beliefs the sense of permanent and independent existence (see my post).

“i see and hear so many people (especially this election cycle) attached to this or that label, conversely, they constantly label others in the hope of understanding them….but, it seems to me, they are not really having empathy for the other, but are actually looking to categorize that person so they can put them into some kind of context that they already understand and recognize. but are they understanding the other or are they just labeling them and fitting them into the image of what they want them to be?”

I think people often get attached to labels because labeling gives the illusion of a safe barrier between them. People tend to use labels to separate, not to understand. Naming, on the other hand, can clearly serve to understand and therefore unite people. This is because we all have separate minds and thus need a common language from which to recognize each other’s needs and develop shared meanings.

Your comments on the internet are most important and I think worthy of more discussion, particularly how people become more empowered, learn more, feel more part of community, (thankfully!! think more) and, as you say, “blogs go a long way to shaping the discourse and the flow of ideas on different issues. in a way, it is much more exciting because it is a constant exchange of ideas, the good and the bad.”

article by a libertarian

Submitted by james on Sat, 10/25/2008 - 10:08am.

though i don't agree with all of these points, this is still a good article that i found relevant to our discussion: Why the Republicans Must Lose

speaking about my disagreements, i'll just say this (even though this doesn't apply as strongly to this writer as to others i've seen). i often find that people engaged in the political realm are unable to really look ahead. (think McCain's Palin pick as an extreme example.) there is very little patience when it comes to these sorts of discussions, and thus frustration frequently overcomes the drive to find out how to make a real impact. for example, i am against war -- i find it to be a misguided enterprise; is it too obvious to call it destructive? but i would not want to vote for a candidate who agrees with me about this -- not just yet. first of all because i know that candidate would not be elected; second of all because -- much as i dislike it -- war is still a reality in human affairs. so i will vote for a candidate who takes a realistic, nuanced, thoughtful and even compassionate approach to the subject, with the intention of continuing to help shift the global consciousness towards a more nonviolent approach to international affairs, both with my presidential pick and outside of our war-like political realm.

otherwise it's as though to say: every four years we get a shot at it, and then ::shrug:: -- it's how Bush managed so much power. it's why i'm voting for Obama.

FED UP, GIVEN UP, NOW SHUT THE F— UP!

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Sat, 10/25/2008 - 11:46am.

James, regarding your posted article, `Why The republicans Should Lose,’ I can’t stop laughing. As the author, Radley Balko shares, “First, they had their shot at holding power, and they failed. They've failed in staying true to their principles of limited government and free markets. They've failed in preventing elected leaders of their party from becoming corrupted by the trappings of power, and they've failed to hold those leaders accountable after the fact. Congressional Republicans failed to rein in the Bush administration's naked bid to vastly expand the power of the presidency (a failure they're going to come to regret should Obama take office in January). They failed to apply due scrutiny and skepticism to the administration's claims before undertaking Congress' most solemn task—sending the nation to war. I could go on.” It’s so nice to balance out the perceptions of Republicans as one of a kind. But, related to your point about people “unable to look ahead” (what???? How about ignoring what is in front of them? -- a collective dissociative affliction -- I would say) is exactly what this article reflects for me.

“Big-government conservatism has bloated the federal government, bogged us down in what will ultimately be a trillion-dollar war, and set us down the road to European-style socialism.”

Good, I’ll vote for a smattering of European-style socialism. Let’s start with socialized medicine and free education. My shoulder’s still fucked up from having to schlep my way through college (and miss all those extra-curricula poetry readings J

And so, Republicans, enlighten up!

labels and propaganda

Submitted by nico lime (not verified) on Mon, 10/27/2008 - 3:39pm.

thinking of how low and out of touch the republican party has become, i can't help but think of the loudest voices that have dragged the party, in the name of conservatism, into the abyss. listen to talk radio, cable shows, even business commentary, and the trend i see is this crazy reality bend by so-called conservative commentators. if you listen to them, like i do from time to time (i am a big radio guy), you will hear lies, hate, and more lies. they blame illegal immigrants spiralling health care costs and crime; they blame the mortgage crisis of poor people who wanted to own a home; they constantly demonize democrats and liberals as the enemy who want to destroy america; and they want to cut taxes no matter what, no matter the size of the budget deficits or the fact that they can't pay for the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. it is an alternative reality they talk about. their talk does not match the facts or the obvious circumstances facing the nation. when confronted by those facts, they question facts and they refuse to validate the news source (it has to be the liberal leaning in the news media). so it becomes impossible to argue with them.

which makes me think they can't be that detached from reality. instead, i think, they are only in it to make money. Oreilly sells books and so does Hannity. They all have radio talk shows, and even cable shows, where they have to be controversial to get ratings. connect the dots even more, and they all work for large, national media companies that spread their shows from coast to coast. this, in part, has been the result of media deregulation of the past 10 years. large media companies like fox and citadel have been buying up the small, independent radio stations across the nation, establishing one culture and one voice. So as when you used to have more different views on the issues, now you on hear the syndicated opinions of a few, mostly crazy conservative types. in this case, they have taken over talk radio. if you want to hear anything other than that, it is pretty hard to find. actually, mostly, you can't.

so it follows that these people only talk about low taxes and deregulation (until it rubs them the wrong way, then they want to shut up the competition by calling them traitors!). it serves the best interest of their employers, the big media companies. most importantly, they get huge ratings from this type of talk. granted, some of them are great radio personalities with great voices (rush limbaugh is the best voice in radio because he can weave his stories really well, he has timing, and has a natural tone). so this medium is lost to alternative opinions. how then to counteract this?

enter the internet. blogs cannot be monopolized (yet) so there is a greater discussion of ideas, some fact checking, and a greater involvement in the process. now we are not being talked, but we can also write back. we can organize and put our money to work for the candidates and causes we believe in. here is where the crazy so called conservatives have been left behind. they are in shock that obama is this popular, that people are not believing the smear tactics like they did Kerry, and that Obama is just beating the hell out of the Republican party by buying commercials in record amounts in all the key states. it feels like they feel their power waning and they don't know what to do. i fear they will become more unhinged and their attacks more vile. they will what's left of the Republican party further into the fringe, christian right, and our government will be crippled for the coming years.

because, like it or not, we have a two party system that depends on one party balancing and checking the other. by becoming so weak, like the democrats from 2001 to 2006, we will have one party handling all the levers of power. but all this, it's just a thought! hopefully we can all become more involved and we can participate and involve ourselves in legislation even more.

NICO AND PROPAGANDA

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Tue, 10/28/2008 - 11:42am.

Nico, what do you think the remedy is for this lacuna in the media and other systems of communication that weaken the spirit of democracy and freedom?

om, i think we have to keep

Submitted by nico lime (not verified) on Tue, 10/28/2008 - 9:22pm.

om, i think we have to keep talking about the issues, putting the truth out there, and calling them for what they are. for this, the internet and blogs fuel word of mouth, which can be used to spread truth and lies. but the debate weakens the propaganda.

also, we have to stop labelling the people in the red states. many of them can be persuaded on the issues we can agree on. here the democrats have realized they can't give up on the red states. but running moderate democrats like jim web of virginia, and by campaigning heavily in states like colorado, obama is chipping away at the republican base.

what do you think can be done?

WHEN THE BEVY BREAKS: RESPONSE TO NICO

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Thu, 10/30/2008 - 10:16am.

Nico, In response to your question, what I think could be done about “the lacuna in the media and other systems of communication that weaken the spirit of democracy and freedom,” I would like further elaborate on James’ response to Megan regarding another context. He talks about the need to respond “critically to something… it's this asking that i find to be of the highest import. specific issues… are of less importance to me, because they, too, are isolated, transient, sometimes even arbitrary.... but the matters of mindfulness, awareness, critical thinking, questioning... these things really matter!” (italics mine)

This statement speaks to the philosophical implications of politics, and that is what I am most interested in, in the same way I am most interested in the process of connecting philosophically and spiritually what happens within the therapeutic relationship to the profounder questions of life. From this deeper (more total, more integrated, more complex) perspective, the outward signs and practices of politics are contextualized within a process that actively promotes a reconsideration of politics in terms of contemporary transitions in thinking. Thus, what this “asking” refers to is a mode of thinking that addresses not only the specific political and social issues at hand (some of which you addressed in your post), but the larger issues of life itself. This imperative of connecting what happens in government to these, let’s call them, existential issues, serves as the fundamental problematic of what it means to be human: to know and be, irrespective of specific context. From this, I would like to call, integral perspective, the political process itself (including the public critiques) is thus approached as modes of presentation and comprehension that argue against their own modes of presentation and comprehension in the same way that philosophical and psychoanalytic processes of knowing argue against their own modes of presentation and comprehension. This would be like the impossible task of Lumbaugh and O'Reilly critiquing their own thought process :) The ultimate struggle and goal, it seems to me, as one postmodern scholar suggests, is for “an antidominatory political system that is life-affirmative, communitarian, feminist, biolphilic, spiritually imbued, emancipatory and thoroughly scientific in a postmodern sense.” And so, as James was pointing to in his response to Megan, it is the critical questioning that pushes the traditional boundaries of intelligibility, that is, what we know and comprehend.

;)

Submitted by james on Sun, 10/26/2008 - 9:53pm.

it looks like Andrew Sullivan has been reading our blog.

and another article:

Submitted by james on Sat, 10/25/2008 - 10:23am.

and another article: The Call Of The Tribe

THE PRISON OF TRIBE

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Sat, 10/25/2008 - 11:28am.

James, thank you, this article by Glenn Loury is an important one, especially in the context of the presidential race. Loury's personal narrative very much (though implicitly) invokes Kwame Anthony Appiah's book, `The Ethics of Identity. which I highly recommend. Along with Loury, Appiah, in a social constructivist strain (interpreting the reification of abstract categories; Loury's "socially imputed definition"), speaks to how identity can actually constrain freedom (what I have called "fatedness" in past posts). We must be careful to not mistake the what we are (cultural identities) with who we are.

Though Loury and Appiah do not address the spiritual side of the equation (i.e., the connection between deepening self-awareness and self-realization), they correctly, in my mind, penetrate the once foundationalist and essentialist perceptions of reality. As i love to remind people, social constructvist views (what Loury and Appiah promote), are considered "postmodern" yet can be found in Buddhist philosophy 2500 years earlier.

Very quick comment on

Submitted by nico lime (not verified) on Sat, 10/25/2008 - 3:13pm.

Very quick comment on Loury's article. It's a great piece that left me feeling conflicted on so many levels because I read many ideas that could be interpreted as generalizations or insight. The article is bursting with labels, appropriately so it deals them. However, towards the end, I had a nagging feeling that something was missing. It finally hit me; the missing ingredient was psychological. And this why the generalizations rubbed me the wrong way, because without a deeper understanding of Woody's psychology, or even Loury's, the generalizations serve to create a very sophiscated story embedded in labels, identifications, and behaviors. Seen from afar, it is a brilliant insight into the highly combustible era of racial struggle and change in Loury's neighborhood, in the country as a whole.

However, Loury's high intellect lacks feeling. And this lack of feeling makes his intellect feel disassociative. He describes his relationship with Woody as love, however, when they move away this love just disappears? The relationship dies just like that? I wanted to hear more about the after effects of the Woody relationship and why they didn't try to grow it or fix it? Was it love or just the illusion of love? Maybe Loury's definition of love is very different than mine.

QUESTION FOR NICO AND THE GROUP

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Sat, 10/25/2008 - 3:26pm.

What does the phrase "very quick comment on" mean? I'm not familiar with it. Thank you.

it means i had to go to the

Submitted by nico lime (not verified) on Sat, 10/25/2008 - 4:32pm.

it means i had to go to the gym to go pump some iron before it got too late, and having just read the article, wanted to convey my first impressions.

"It happens to white boys too"

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Sat, 10/25/2008 - 3:39pm.

While copying Loury's article -- to re-read in order to respond to Nico's post -- I came across a comment from a blogger responding to Loury. Another perspective on labels and identity. This is a great post to expiscate! highlights mine -- notice how many!!!

It happens to white boys too

I grew up in the South, in a left-wing family, and was educated in left-leaning educational circles in the North, in which I moved for 20 years. Nonetheless I have always felt an immediate and indeed instinctive pull towards what we all agree are conservative cultural values -- I was drawn to Edmund Burke the minute I read him, for instance, as I was to Adam Smith -- and this led to a lot of problems when I returned home, as indeed it did among all my left-leaning friends in the North. (I should mention that I have always remained a liberal redistributionist on economic issues, btw, which makes me an economic liberal but a cultural conservative.) Nowadays I often shock and offend my wife, poker buddies, and fellow Democrats (I have few close Republican friends) when I express my politically incorrect views on such issues as immigration, affirmative action, Bible in the schools, gay marriage, etc.. It is of course a challenge to remain true to one's own personal convictions, but well worth the price I might add, at least in my experience. Authenticity to self is a lot more spiritually fulfilling than conformity to the the opinions of ones peers, even when it leads to bigoted stereotypes of racism to which "white boys from the South" are frequently subject, especially by liberals in the North.

This is nowhere near as difficult a dilemma as the one Glen Loury faces however, as I will freely admit, because it only arises when one opens ones mouth, not when one enters the room. Unfortunately, I can't keep my mouth shut. (Or maybe I just take a perverse pleasure in rubbing other people the wrong way?) In any case, great article, Glen! It is always to pleasure to read you, and even better to listen on Bloggingheads.tv

— posted 10/20/2008 at 09:25 by Luke Lea

NICO, A VERY QUICK COMMENT ON YOUR RESPONSE TO LOURY

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Sat, 10/25/2008 - 4:52pm.

Nico, I re-read the article and, though it was compelling the first go around, I found myself appreciating it more the second time. I’m a bit confused by your following statement:

“However, Loury's high intellect lacks feeling. And this lack of feeling makes his intellect feel dissociative. He describes his relationship with Woody as love, however, when they move away this love just disappears? The relationship dies just like that? I wanted to hear more about the after effects of the Woody relationship and why they didn't try to grow it or fix it? Was it love or just the illusion of love? Maybe Loury's definition of love is very different than mine.”

I’m sorry, I just didn’t experience this at all. He seems to have been open and even regretful for betraying his friend, Woody, but even more regretful for betraying himself. That he wrote this story some 40 years later speaks to how painful that event was in his life and, in fact, helped shape his personal and intellectual development. I think their relationship died as many relationships in youth die. I’m not sure the “after-effects” of that rupture was necessary relevant to Loury’s essay.

This essay works well mostly because it has that textually successful aspect of integrating theory and personal narrative. Loury labors to bring into sharp relief that many of us fall through the cracks of identity (I call us outliers) because we just don’t fit in to any particular group (I personally suffered greatly from this growing up. How many times have I heard You don’t look like a psychologist??? or one of my professors in school handing my “brilliant” paper to a friend who had a beard and glasses, and the professor looking stunned that I wrote it :) What was Woody, black or white? “Actually, it now seems clear to me that he was neither. Woody, like me and like all of us, was a human being trying to make his way in the world, struggling to find himself and seeking recognition on his own terms.”

For me, Loury passionately conveys the need to celebrate what he calls “self-authorship” and all the varying and unencumbered expression of one’s individuality. To deepen Loury’s argument (which I am in agreement with), when self experience is expressed in a multiplicity of ways, we might describe it as prismatic. This is the introspective, observing self containing its multiplicity of expression. To conceptualize self monolithically strips self experience of its richness and, most importantly, of the dimensionality required for mastery, growth, and transcendence. The singularity of self (as the univocal identity) is further exclusionary, isolative, and antithetical to a true individuality. If I define myself through one dimension, I am intractably locked into that dimension; I limit my perception, my movement, and my potential as a being becoming. As Loury says,

“After many years I have come to understand that, until I became willing to risk the derision of the crowd, I had no chance to discover the most important truths about myself or about life—to know my calling, to perceive my deepest value commitments, and to recognize the goals most worth striving toward….I have had to face the problem of balancing my desire not to disappoint the expectations of others with a conviction that one must strive to live authentically.

Since then, as an American intellectual of African descent, making my living as a teacher and writer during a period of great transformation in our society, I have often experienced this dissonance between my self-concept and the socially imputed definition of who I am supposed to be. Many of us, I dare say most, in one way or another have to confront a similar dilemma. I have had to face the problem of balancing my desire not to disappoint the expectations of others with a conviction that one must strive to live authentically.”

There is also the greater challenge of the very limits our autonomy given that we live through and by social constructs, including (or especially) the construct of self. As long as we use language, we can never reflect ourselves out of own subjectivities. But, what we can do is cultivate an awareness of that personal dimension of language and socially constructed reality.

“I acknowledge that the opposition I am presenting between individual and society is ambiguous: the self is inevitably shaped by the objective world and by other selves. I know that what one is being faithful to when resisting the temptation to conform to others’ expectations by “living authentically” is necessarily a socially determined, even if subjectively experienced, version of the self.”

But, there is a key (remedy) to this aporia, and that is moving beyond language itself. This is the transpersonal, the transrational, the spiritual. For aside from what Loury calls the tyranny of social mandates, there is the cultural and psychological “tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.” This is the psychological bondage of ignorance, defined as the inability to understand the ultimate nature of reality, which is empty of inherent existence.

Though not touching upon this spiritual dimension (and therefore not fully solving the aporia), Loury does convey an important aspect of spiritual wisdom:

And the closest he comes to an assertion about spiritual truth is this:

“The most important challenges and opportunities that confront any of us derive not from our cultural or sexual identities, not from our ethnic or racial conditions, but from our common human condition. I am a husband, a father, a son, a teacher, an intellectual, a citizen. In none of these roles is my race irrelevant, but neither can identity alone provide much guidance for my quest to adequately discharge these responsibilities. The particular features of one’s social condition, the external givens, merely set the stage of one’s life. They do not provide a script. That script must be internally generated; it must be a product of a reflective deliberation about the meaning of this existence for which no political program or ethnic category could ever substitute.”

“Or, to shift the metaphor slightly, the socially contingent features of one’s situation—one’s racial heritage, family background, or sexual orientation, for instance—and the prevailing views and attitudes about such identity tropes held by other people in society—these things are the building blocks, the raw materials, out of which one must yet construct the edifice of a life. “

These “building blocks” or “blueprints” of self-authorship are what I have been calling “fatedness.” “the encounter with external reality, the clashing with the world (of culture), or clashing with an unconscious mind or body that prevents the fulfillment of desires necessary for the authorship of self-creation.” (Carlos Strenger). “Fatedness” refers to the fact that our existence (hence, ontology) is, to a great degree, determined by fate, the problem of which, Loury suggests, “confronts all people, whatever their race, class, ethnicity, or other identifying category. “ External reality is phenomenal reality, that which is comprised of “Our physical existence, unconscious minds, genetic inheritance, mental abilities, tempermental traits, emotional disposition; our language, culture, social class, and personal relationships.”

I think Obama goes as far as Loury goes here and, though it is not radical enough for me (because it fails to completely challenge dualism), the path is clear: “By facing and solving this problem we grow as human beings and give meaning and substance to our lives. A personal program overly dependent on the contingencies of identity falls tragically short of its potential because it embraces too parochial a conception of what is humanly possible, and of what is humanly desirable.” And, as Obama made clear in his Philadelphia speech, “This is an especially important consideration for those of us who belong to historically oppressed and stigmatized groups.” This means (and Appiah addresses this in depth in his book) that, for blacks or any other historically oppressed group (though it ultimately applies to us all), we must transcend the veil of identity.

“Ironically, to the extent that we blacks see ourselves primarily through a racial lens, we may end up sacrificing possibilities for the kind of personal development that would ultimately further our collective racial interests. We cannot be truly free men and women while laboring under a definition of self derived from the perceptual view of our oppressor, confined to the contingent facts of our oppression.”

om, this is quick? maybe

Submitted by nico lime (not verified) on Tue, 10/28/2008 - 9:27pm.

om, this is quick? maybe in absolute time?

thank you for the response. it's interesting how we experienced the article so differently. maybe i was in a different emotional space than you when i read it. i will read it again to see if i feel it differently.

I'm trying to keep up

Submitted by camila on Sat, 10/25/2008 - 2:13pm.

I'm trying to keep up with this very interesting conversation but can't seem to read fast enough for you guys! Some amazing points have been made. I’ll just respond to a couple of things in a stream of conscious way. The article and personal narrative by Loury reminds me a little of what one of my clients said the other night after a meeting. She's Dominican born and a new American citizen, voting for the first time in this country: "I know he's black, but I'm voting for Obama anyway", she said unabashedly in a normal speaking voice to my co-worker. According to my politically active Dominican co-worker, this is not atypical of what Dominicans are saying and it's not unlike many other racists comments I have heard from other clients of mine who, to me, appear black. Identity politics are complicated and rife with historical contexts and relationships to power. I don't propose to speak for the Dominican experience, but certainly slavery, colonialism, dictatorships and entrenched racist ideology have a little bit to do with current opinions that seem to be absurd to me. Just as Sullivan's conservatism/republicanism seem to me as well, even allowing for the distinctions between the two groups. But being gay and a white man is also different from being gay and a black latina, for example, in terms of your access to power and money, if I may overgeneralize. If Loury's friend Woody had grown up in a different neighbhorhood, his black identity may have been less important to him. It seems like we become more attached to these labels and identities the more we feel like our sense of security is slipping, much like “small-town America” or the “heartland” might be experiencing. I find the talk about socialism in this country very interesting, since clearly we don’t know what that means , which is constantly being exploited by people on the right. In contrast to James and Nico’s dedication to Sullivan’s blog over the past few years, I’ve been an avid listener to “Democracy Now” a left-leaning radio and TV program. Here’s a link to the discussion they just had about Obama and socialism. You can watch, listen or read it.

CAMILA, I'M TRYING TO KEEP IT UP ;)

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Sat, 10/25/2008 - 3:04pm.

It's getting harder these days... or was that softer. Oh well, the distinctions and dichotmies of life leave me so piqued to expiscate. I long for the simpler times of pisghetti and my mother's psychological acumen: just be nice, son.

"It seems like we become more attached to these labels and identities the more we feel like our sense of security is slipping, much like “small-town America” or the “heartland” might be experiencing."

This is absolutely true, beautiful Camila and reminds how psychologically difficult it is to transcend worldviews from, let’s say, the duality labels and identity attachment to nonduality (where Obama deitic rhetoric points). From my earlier post (my series on Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj – I strongly encourage everyone to read them), I wrote,

“Because we fail to see things as they are – emotions in this instance – we attempt to impose order on them by giving names (labels/categories) and associations. We lose the fluidity of experience and replace it with a rigid stiffness and dense solidity. We become stagnant, serious, closed, judgmental, angry, paranoid, etc. And all of these things out of fear, a lack of understanding and distorted perception.” And the remedy for this I argue can be found in nondualism. And in another post from the series on Nisargadatta Maharaj:

“Nondual is simply this: “All division is in the mind; there is none in reality.” Maharaj says,

“Non-distinction speaks in silence. Words carry distinctions. The unmanifested…has no name, all names refer to the manifested…. It is useless to struggle with words to express what is beyond words. Consciousness… is spirit…, consciousness is matter…. Imperfect spirit is matter, perfect matter is spirit. In the beginning as in the end, all is one. All division is in the mind…; there is none in reality…. Movement and rest are states of mind and cannot be without their opposites. By itself nothing moves, nothing rests. It is a grievous mistake to attribute to mental constructs absolute existence. Nothing exists by itself.”

Please don’t read these words as esoteric, abstract or unrelated to the lived political of our current lives. For these words point to exactly your point on labels and identity (and what Appiah and Loury as social constructivists refer to). The language of nondualism feels somewhat mystical and abstract but it is nothing more than a way of seeing that transcends but includes dualistic thinking. Other names for nondual include transrational and transpersonal. As Ken Wilber states it,

“The distinction is important, because the transrational, transpersonal worldviews are what might be called “spiritual,” yet they bear little relation to the traditional religious worldviews of the magic and mythic spheres. The transrational realms have nothing to do with external gods and goddesses, and everything to do with an interior awareness that plumbs the depths of the psyche. Nothing to do with petitionary prayer and ritual, and everything to do with expanding and clarifying awareness. Nothing to do with dogma and belief, everything to do with cleansing perception. Not everlasting life for the ego, but transcending the ego altogether.”

As Wilber intimates,Transpersonal simply means those realities that include, but go beyond, the personal and the individual – “wider currents that sweep across the skin encapsulated ego and touch other beings, touch the cosmos, touch spirit, touch patterns and places kept secret to those who hug the surfaces and surround themselves with themselves.” If we could apply these philosophical principles to politics (there is in fact a movement that is doing just that!), the paradigm shift that Obama seems to reflect would actually become assimilated into the very language structures (and ergo the reality) of our world.

I FOUND MY OLD POST ON LABELS AND IDENTITY!

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Sat, 10/25/2008 - 3:23pm.

IDENTITY VERSUS LABEL

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Thu, 03/13/2008 - 1:03am.

Nico’s question regarding a model or “framework” reminded me of a talk I had with my friend today, a poet. Like myself, my friend is skeptical of labels and for good reason. Labels foster objectification. But, when I suggested that the act of naming in the service of identity has the paradoxical effect of structuring expressions of one’s identity with the sole purpose of expanding one’s personal horizons, he became skeptical of me. And that was good, too. I love skepticism. Briefly, here’s my point. I have a very intense drive for freedom and celebration of individuality. The narrative of my life is composed of “breaking out of confines." To do this, however, required an ongoing deep reflection on the dialectic between “freedom and fatedness.” I have called it faith against fate. It holds up the personal dimension of subjective possibility against one’s history (and I would say karma itself). Identity, or more accurately, identities that we construct to interact with the world represent structures of activity from which to experiment with the “basic parameters of one’s life.” And like I just said to Nico in my last post, and to paraphrase Spezzano, identities emerge out of life conversations and confrontations, remain identities for an indeterminate amount of time, because we can best express ourselves most authentically through these peculiar ways, until and if these identities no longer serve who we are in the most useful and compelling ways.

yet more!

Submitted by james on Sat, 10/25/2008 - 4:10pm.

okay, camila, so you've invited me to share another article i recently read which i was otherwise going to keep to myself :)

i won't comment on it, because i'll save it for when i've listened to the Democracy Now program. it's about Obama and Teddy Roosevelt, and the silliness of the "socialist" smear (McCain's "hero")

DEPENDENTLY, RACISM AND UNDERSTANDING

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Sun, 10/26/2008 - 12:18am.

Dependently, thanks for this beautiful post. I sat with it for a while feeling again that sense of hope and forgiveness knowing Obama, whether he wins or not (well, of course he will!!!), has changed people's lives in a way they haven't been changed perhaps since the 60's. And then I meditated on your statement, "I think we use humor to diffuse the fear we have of ideas that challenge the status quo." Yes, fear, that's the word. It's like a sniper pointing at our hearts.

The Sniper

To fear this world is to destroy it.... --Anonymous

My patient, Joe, the writer says, I have often

referred to myself as hiding in a cave. Joe

brought in a dream today. In the dream

he watches a sniper across the courtyard

in another apartment. Just by looking at him

you can tell the sniper’s going to kill someone,

and Joe becomes panicked, alarmed

and frightened with a surging rage

like teeth underneath. He calls the cops

but they don’t come. Joe has to take it

into his own hands, he has to stop the sniper.

The dream at this point becomes a blur

and the next thing Joe remembers, he’s outside

with a rifle and people think he’s the killer. In

the next scene, the gunman walks up

to a senator on a field with a gun disguised

as an instrument for writing and shoots the senator

in the heart, instantly killing him. The gunman

then shoots himself in the heart, then shoots

a child, a boy, killing him. As Joe ends, I think

of my father in the South Pacific, 1942, wiith schrapnel

sticking out of his heart like ice picks, broken bottles

of Rheingold, or some abstract principle symbolizing

hatred. My father was a sniper sniping Japs then wives,

children, alphabets, and God. He came to me one day

just before he died when I was 12, one of those rare

moments, during a dry spell, and said, sadly, You know,

we called them Japs so we could kill ‘em.

Om I was thinking about the last line of your post,"You know

Submitted by Dependently bec... on Sun, 10/26/2008 - 11:03am.

we called them Japs so we could kill 'em." What strikes me immediately is the presence of compassion and empathy in that statement.

It seems your father was seeking compassion and forgiveness from you for the "Japs" that he killed.

I also sense that your father had compassion for the Japanese. He had to "dehumanize" them in order to kill them, but I think that he must have empathized with them as human beings to begin with. What a terrible psychological struggle this must have been for your father and all the other soldiers.

DEPENDENTLY, YOU HAVE JUST OPENED FOR ME

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Sun, 10/26/2008 - 11:18am.

at this very moment a tremendous watershed of love and compassion for my father. Thank you. You see why relationship is so vital? This is the gift we give to one another. My father not only loved the Japanese, he loved all of humanity and, in fact, it was because he had such great love that the war destroyed him (at 20 years old!!!). If any of you are familiar with boot camp, boot camp trains you to hate and kill. It's that simple. To do that, the very psychic oxygen that makes us human, that is, feelings, are destroyed (what Nico would call dissociated).

When my father returned from war, he spent the rest of his 20 years left helping others, mainly in VA hospitals and AA, where he felt most at peace. Outside, he was paralyzed with fear, guilt and shame. Ironically, my father was considered a "hero" for serving in both the marines and navy. He tried to feel proud but died knowing he was forced to have enemies.

You're right, Dependently, my father desperately sought compassion and forgiveness and I had only wished he survived long enough for me to give it to him the beautiful way I know how.

memorial at pinelawn cemetery

you have remained hidden to the world

passing through a shadow

you are now but a stone among many.

voiceless, you climb the stairs

late at night, stumble

only the creaks reveal your name.

you were the one who came home from war

carrying his own box.

the armies did you in.

how we forget

your young blue medic eyes

pierced by the strewn and mutilated bodies.

who could have prepared you?

you couldn't stop the rush of fire

bullets swarming inside your head

an occasional blast--

a young wife and kids the enemy

infiltrating your lines.

i have tried to understand

your battles

the feverish rise of wind

the blaze spreading

the frailty of your mind

hope burned out of your blue eyes.

tonight the moon pierces the sky

high above the field

where your bones lie

your ghost but snow.

ONE MORE COMMENT ON DEPENDENTLY’S POST ON RACISM

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Tue, 10/28/2008 - 12:05am.

In Dependently’s post he writes, “It's a beautiful thing when we can go from referring to someone as the "black" candidate to the candidate who "happens" to be black.” I didn’t want to gloss over this sentence because it’s a critical critique on black identity (and a reference to an individual group identity applies to all identities). What Loury and Appiah speak so eloquently to is how the choice of social identity is necessarily constrained by existing practices and beliefs, though within that constraint we still have self-authorship. As Loury expressed, “The particular features of one’s social condition, the external givens, merely set the stage of one’s life. They do not provide a script. That script must be internally generated; it must be a product of a reflective deliberation about the meaning of this existence for which no political program or ethnic category could ever substitute.”

However -- and this is the point I wanted to convey tonight – given this self-authorship in generating a life script, it is not enough to have the right to live equally as a black American, for example, nor merely to be treated with dignity as a black American. For within these statements there still lies a subtle racism: to be treated with equal dignity suggests that being black counts to some degree against one’s dignity. It’s a bit of equal dignity despite being black (or gay/woman/disabled, etc.). And despite holds with its meaning a requested tolerance and thus bigotry, a plea to be respected as a black. Hence, Dependently’s sentence: “It's a beautiful thing when we can go from referring to someone as the "black" candidate to the candidate who "happens" to be black.”

By demanding respect, we unwittingly get caught in the rigid strictures of how one is to be black and the deepening, in a way, rather than an attenuating the reifications of identity. In this more subtle form, a performative contradiction is created in which one “tyranny” (hierarchy) is replaced with another. Thus, the social and political act of recognition potentially too tightly circumscribes one’s personal dimension whereby recognition morphs into imposition. As I have said elsewhere, these personal dimensions, which are part and parcel of a personally prescribed fate -- physical existence, unconscious minds, genetic inheritance, mental abilities, temperamental traits, emotional disposition; our language, culture, social class, and personal relationships -- represent parameters and limits of individuality. But, the paradox of human individuality allows us to disidentify with those prescriptions that define our own fatedness, through a process of dissolution, or an unlayering of our identities to reveal a deeper, core Self, the I-AM of spiritual awakening. This is the spiritual dimension or direction of social identity.

response to this days-old post

Submitted by james on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 1:01am.

i am usually thinking of these things in terms of gender rather than race, but they both work in the same way (hence your parenthetical: "or gay/woman/disabled, etc." so, for example, many people take it that the work is done. when they hear about the big feminist movement of the 70s they say, "well, okay, good work. now can we just get on with life?" i try to point out that the big steps have not actually been taken, even though much progress has been made. the difference is the level on which the steps are being taken. so i try and point out that something more fundamental is needed; for example, people argue that, "women should be paid the same as men for the same work." they fail to see that if they are suggesting that women should be the same as men, "man" is still the normative basis, just as "white" is in your example. this often results in ostensibly better conditions, but ultimately an insidious propagation of the inequities being fought. this is why Om always points to the spiritual dimension!

BEAUTIFUL ARTICLE ON OBAMA RELATED TO LOURY'S

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Thu, 10/30/2008 - 10:42pm.

Op-Ed Columnist

American Stories

By ROGER COHEN

Published: October 29, 2008

Of the countless words Barack Obama has uttered since he opened his campaign for president on an icy Illinois morning in February 2007, a handful have kept reverberating in my mind:

“For as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on earth is my story even possible.”

Perhaps the words echo because I’m a naturalized American, and I came here, like many others, seeking relief from Britain’s subtle barriers of religion and class, and possibility broader than in Europe’s confines.

Perhaps they resonate because, having South African parents, I spent part of my childhood in the land of apartheid, and so absorbed as an infant the humiliation of racial segregation, the fear and anger that are the harvest of hurt — just as they are, in Obama’s words, “the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.”

Perhaps they speak to me because I live in New York and watch every day a miracle of civility emerge from the struggles and fatigue of people drawn from every corner of the globe to the glimmer of possibility at the tapering edge of the city’s ruler-straight canyons.

Perhaps they move me because the possibility of stories has animated my life; and no nation offers a blanker page on which to write than America.

Or perhaps it’s simply because those 22 words cleave the air with the sharp blade of truth.

Nowhere else could a 47-year-old man, born, as he has written, of a father “black as pitch” and a mother “white as milk,” a generation distant from the mud shacks of western Kenya, raised for a time as Barry Soetoro (his stepfather’s family name) in Muslim Indonesia, then entrusted to his grandparents in Hawaii — nowhere else could this Barack Hussein Obama rise so far and so fast.

It’s for this sense of possibility, and not for grim-faced dread, that people look to America, which is why the Obama campaign has stirred such global passions.

Americans are decent people. They’re not interested in where you came from. They’re interested in who you are. That has not changed.

But much has in the last eight years. This is a moment of anguish. The Bush presidency has engineered the unlikely double whammy of undermining free-market capitalism and essential freedoms, the nation’s twin badges.

American luster is gone. The American idea has, in Joyce Carol Oates’s words, become a “cruel joke.” Americans are worrying and hurting.

So it is important to step back, from the last machinations of this endless campaign, and think again about what America is.

It is renewal, the place where impossible stories get written.

It is the overcoming of history, the leaving behind of war and barriers, in the name of a future freed from the cruel gyre of memory.

It is reinvention, the absorption of one identity in something larger — the notion that “out of many, we are truly one.”

It is a place better than Bush’s land of shadows where a leader entrusted with the hopes of the earth cannot find within himself a solitary phrase to uplift the soul.

Multiple polls now show Obama with a clear lead. But nobody can know the outcome and nobody should underestimate the immense psychological leap that sending a black couple to the White House would represent.

What I am sure of is this: an ever more interconnected world, where financial chain reactions spread with the virulence of plagues, thirsts for American renewal and a form of American leadership sensitive to humanity’s tied fate.

I also know that this biracial politician, the Harvard graduate who gets whites because he was raised by them, the Kenyan’s son who gets blacks because it was among them that mixed race placed him, is an emblematic figure of the border-hopping 21st century. He is the providential mestizo whose name — O-Ba-Ma — has the three-syllable universality of some child’s lullaby.

And what has he done? What does his experience amount to? Does his record not demonstrate he’s a radical? The interrogation continues. It’s true that his experience is limited.

But Americans seem to be trusting what their eyes tell them: temperament trumps experience and every instinct of this man, whose very identity represents an act of reconciliation, hones toward building change from the center.

Earlier this year, at the end of a road of reddish earth in western Kenya, I found Obama’s half-sister Auma. “He can be trusted,” she said, “to be in dialogue with the world.”

Dialogue, between Americans and beyond America, has been a constant theme. Last year, I spoke to Obama, who told me: “Part of our capacity to lead is linked to our capacity to show restraint.”

Watching the way he has allowed his opponents’ weaknesses to reveal themselves, the way he has enticed them into self-defeating exhaustion pounding against the wall of his equanimity, I have come to understand better what he meant.

Stories require restraint, too. Restraint engages the imagination, which has always been stirred by the American idea, and can be once again.

gorgeous article but I worry

Submitted by camila on Fri, 10/31/2008 - 12:10am.

I wish I could be so hopeful. I worry when we speak so confidently about the outcome of this election. I am inspired by Cohen's beautifully crafted words that really seem to come straight from his heart. so many Americans have been lifted spiritually by Obama's candidacy, what he represents, his style. and I do find Obama's story compelling and encouraging. I worry though about looking for an easy answer in one man. Perhaps if we elect this man, who at the very least is a huge step up from Bush, it says something about us and indicates a desire for change and more compassion from our leadership. But we have to do more. I worry that we will be lulled into complacency and lose track of what is really happening, rights that are being taken away, people in far away lands who are being oppressed or killed in our name, as we were doing during the past couple of decades of bloated, false abundance. I worry about who is advising Obama, for many of them are the same ones who have steered things in the wrong direction under past administrations. I worry about voter suppression, voter fraud, and whatever hanging chad shenanigans are orchestrated this time around. But for now, I'll be cautiously optimistic that something good this way comes. Honest, I'll try to smooth my edges just for the next few days and then I'll really let loose a holler of joy come Tuesday night/Wednesday morning and sing this song.

MY RESPONSE TO COHEN'S ESSAY

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Fri, 10/31/2008 - 9:52am.

“For as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on earth is my story even possible.” -- Barrack Obama

I really loved this essay by Roger Cohen. For one, it speaks to me personally as the concrete narrative related to some of my more abstract philosophical thoughts this morning. For example, Obama, “whose very identity represents an act of reconciliation, [and who] hones toward building change from the center,” seems to be the quintessential representative of an integral world- and value-centric vision. It is Obama, whose presentation as an emerging, more enlightened world leader and figure, who embodies a new worldview that argues for “an antidominatory political system that is life-affirmative, communitarian, feminist, biolphilic, spiritually imbued, emancipatory and thoroughly scientific in a postmodern sense.” With this more evolved and humane leadership, the America we now reside in might look like a new America with its “possibility of stories” and a nation that “offers a blanker page on which to write.” A new worldview, by the way, antithetical to “The Bush presidency [that] has engineered the unlikely double whammy of undermining free-market capitalism and essential freedoms, the nation’s twin badges.”

“From this deeper (more total, more integrated, more complex) perspective, the outward signs and practices of politics are contextualized within a process that actively promotes a reconsideration of politics in terms of contemporary transitions in thinking.” And who better to lead us into the perspectivism and pluralism than this “47-year-old man, born, as he has written, of a father “black as pitch” and a mother “white as milk,” a generation distant from the mud shacks of western Kenya, raised for a time as Barry Soetoro (his stepfather’s family name) in Muslim Indonesia, then entrusted to his grandparents in Hawaii.”

“Thus, what this “asking” refers to is a mode of thinking that addresses not only the specific political and social issues at hand…but the larger issues of life itself. This imperative of connecting what happens in government to these, let’s call them, existential issues, serves as the fundamental problematic of what it means to be human: to know and be, irrespective of specific context.” And through this “asking,” we may find an America represented as “renewal”:

“… the place where impossible stories get written….the overcoming of history, the leaving behind of war and barriers, in the name of a future freed from the cruel gyre of memory….[the] reinvention, the absorption of one identity in something larger — the notion that “out of many, we are truly one.”

Read this article that was

Submitted by Arnold on Fri, 10/31/2008 - 5:23pm.

Read this article that was published on the front page of the Washington Post today. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/30/AR2008103004749.html

I am so angry that I do not know what to do with myself. The Bush goverment has been dedicated to screwing citizens for the benefit of the rich and powerful. It is criminal. It is a predator government.

The current economic problems are caused, in large part, by the deregulation of an industry that is driven by greed and lust. It makes no sense for a profit driven industry to regulate itself. This arrangement is good for everyone except most of the citizens. Now the government will sanction mountain-top removal for coal that we should not be burning! and it will weaken or eliminate the clean water act. This stuff does not compute. Why is there such a muted response from citizens who will needlessly suffer the consequences of these actions? That is a question of great interest.

WELCOME BACK, ARNOLD

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Fri, 10/31/2008 - 10:06pm.

“The current economic problems are caused, in large part, by the deregulation of an industry that is driven by greed and lust.”

Arnold, this statement of yours is not hyperbolic, it is fact; and worse yet is how egregiously underhanded, dishonest and nefarious the Bush administration is. And, yes, criminal.

“The White House is working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January…. Clinton's appointees wound up paying a heavy price for procrastination. Bush's team was able to withdraw 254 regulations that covered such matters as drug and airline safety, immigration and indoor air pollutants. After further review, many of the proposals were modified to reflect Republican policy ideals or scrapped altogether….These rules "will force Americans to choke on dirtier air for years to come, unless Congress or the new administration reverses these eleventh-hour abuses…".

The result of which is nothing less than genocide and ecocide in the interest of big business. The definition of genocide and ecocide is reflected here: “The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo. Some would ease or lift constraints on private industry, including power plants, mines and farms.

Those and other regulations would help clear obstacles to some commercial ocean-fishing activities, ease controls on emissions of pollutants that contribute to global warming, relax drinking-water standards and lift a key restriction on mountaintop coal mining.”

And though “[o]nce such rules take effect, they typically can be undone only through a laborious new regulatory proceeding, including lengthy periods of public comment, drafting and mandated reanalysis…”, here’s evidence of the good news, Arnold: “The burst of activity has made this a busy period for lobbyists who fear that industry views will hold less sway after the elections.”

Why? Because an Obama presidency would in fact begin controlling, containing and ultimately reversing the hemorrhaging of this current toxic waste government. We have 40 million new voters coming out and a newly energized (and organized) sense of empowerment based on value-centric ideals. With the tirelessly alarm-tolling groups and individuals, like Al Gore, for example, a wakefulness to the dangers of corruption, and a deeper ethicality and commitment to the whole of humanity, is emerging.

CAMILA AROUND THE EDGES

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Fri, 10/31/2008 - 10:41am.

"so many Americans have been lifted spiritually by Obama's candidacy, what he represents, his style. and I do find Obama's story compelling and encouraging. I worry though about looking for an easy answer in one man. Perhaps if we elect this man, who at the very least is a huge step up from Bush, it says something about us and indicates a desire for change and more compassion from our leadership."

Camila, this is an excellent point and I would like to think that for most people who understand the significance of this election, Obama is a symbol for the direction we could possibly be going. As Obama himself said, there is no easy answer and he isn't going to do it alone. We are all responsible for effectuating change. And, most important, as you say, Obama's popularity and the unprecedented 40 million increase in voter registration, says something about us and our need to feel empowered again as individuals.

not to mention the fact that

Submitted by james on Fri, 10/31/2008 - 2:36pm.

Obama's campaign would not be where it is without us -- his supporters. thinking back on the last two years, one must of course commend his (and his campaign advisers') strategic brilliance, rhetorical mastery, and all-around thoughfulness/mindfulness; but one also must recognize that he can say, "This is not about me, this is about you," because it's empirically true. the "you" of his candidacy, the unprecedented grassroots network his supporters have created throughout this country, is responsible for bringing a near-unknown young black junior senator to the point of being the clear favorite to win the presidency. that is astonishing. if the protestors during the Vietnam war were as professional and coherent and serious-minded as these big groups of people from every corner of the country -- every race, creed, age, economic group -- who knows what could have happened! for many of us, there is not merely "our need to feel empowered again as individuals"; we already do. just think what might happen if we keep it up and use the power that we have for something beyond getting someone elected... this is my greatest wish for the next four years. often i have been conflicted in the years leading up to this my first presidential election, wondering if my voice is really limited to my fairly unimportant vote; if the best that a big movement of young people can create is a sweet rock concert; if we have it in us to be the change we are looking for. we do! how cool!

"if the protestors during

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Fri, 10/31/2008 - 10:18pm.

"if the protestors during the Vietnam war were as professional and coherent and serious-minded as these big groups of people from every corner of the country -- every race, creed, age, economic group -- who knows what could have happened!"

James, I've given this very issue much thought this election and one factor i believe worth mentioning regarding Obama's "grass-roots" campaign is the power and efficiency of the web. Obviously, the web was non-existent in the late 60's early 70's. I am convinced that the isolation and insignificance the individual citizen experiences is, in very real ways, mitigated through this virtual vehicle of realizing interconnectedness, In fact, the web revolution is part and parcel of a much greater paradigmatic shift in consciousness towards integral thinking and awareness, the political process we are now engaged in of which is an exquisite example.

THE IDEA OF OBAMA

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Sat, 11/01/2008 - 12:54am.

No doubt I am pushing the idea of Barrack Obama beyond the man running for president called Barrack Obama; but this imago I refer to as Obama has a function and purpose for me in trying to convince you, my blog audience, to enter into a discourse that critiques the very idea of politics, and the foundations of philosophical thought which represent it and to which we have been conditioned. I think it safe to say that George Bush and his administration represent perhaps one of the most dangerous political regimes in modern times, primarily because of the malignant narcissism that governed their conduct in office for eight years. From the grandiosity, proliferation of abusive and destructive power strategies (including deregulatory practices), unwavering and extreme sense of entitlement, self-centeredness and the taking advantage of individuals and other nations, and manipulation (of the constitution itself), to the utter lack of empathy, greed and paranoia, one administration almost literally destroyed our country.

But, as important as this fact might be, we have to acknowledge that the American people, ourselves included, are unwittingly complicit in sustaining the abuse and recklessness of the current administration, mainly by virtue of his candidacy and being elected (twice) to the office of president. And this is the starting point of my thoughts this evening on the idea of Obama. All practices begin with an idea, in the form of beliefs or an ideology from which a plan or system is set in motion. If we are to truly throw a blow to, not so much Bush, but to the ideology and pathological collective narcissism that Bush represents, we will have to first understand, vis-à-vis serious ongoing critique, just how we as a nation of individuals created Bush and his ideology. This critique and the discourse that presents and comprehends it must demonstrate the fundamental interminable fallacy of George Bush’s ideology within the context of civilization’s need for sustainability. What this discourse would have to reveal is the inherent falsity of an ideology that bases its practices on a dominatory, divisive worldview. Psychologically, to sustain itself, this ideology relies on mechanisms of deceit, dissociation and severe objectification and, in practice, relies on corruption, oppression, destruction and imbalanced power.

In a way, the idea of Obama is a call to usher in a revolution; that is, revolutionary ideas about the nature of knowing and being as they apply to the political process and the girding of socioeconomic arrangements to which our lives are tied. Revolution involves upsetting the basic ground of one’s (or a nation’s) universe with regard to thinking, speaking and the principles that guide them. So far as I can see, Obama the man seems to be pointing in a direction that Obama the idea might actually lead: political (and ergo sociocultural) practices reflecting a new kind of thinking and speaking that overturn centuries old presumptions about unity, identity, duality, totality, being and presence (the general remedy for these presumptions is the nondualism found in the Buddhist notion of emptiness). Though ostensibly abstract notions that appear completely unrelated to Obama and November 4, it is exactly these ideas that we have been witnessing in debates since the race for president began. For example, regarding unity, patriarchal domination (read Bush Administration and the corporate and banking cartels that support it) is endemic to these modernist presumptions. This is so necessarily because dominatory practices operate on assumptions in which the unified authority of “reason” is comprised of the arbiters or agents of knowledge and power. These are the privileged subjects who act authoritatively on the world. When applied to the Bush administration, these practices are characterized by domination (Iraq), possession (Iraq) and conquest (Iraq). Now, the psychology behind the philosophical ideas and the political practices is, in my opinion, what either forecloses or actuates change. For example, the insuperable rigidity of the narcissistic mindset is exactly what precludes change, even when the world around it is crumbling. This is why so many of us are often stunned by what we read and see.

I would just add that the

Submitted by Arnold on Sat, 11/01/2008 - 4:20pm.

I would just add that the anti-Obama has strong support in this country. I do not understand why (and maybe that makes me part of the problem). The country seems more deeply polarized than I can ever remember. The McCain supporters that I see are rabid. Obama, should he somehow win, will have a tough time governing. Its like the national disagreement about abortion...a very passionate disagreement, and the other side does not seem worried about calling for (and acting on) hatred and violence. This drift towards extremes is frigtening because it signals the demise of civil society. In this emerging world, is there a place for us?

HEY ARNOLD, EXTREME IS THE POINT

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Sat, 11/01/2008 - 6:36pm.

When thinking (and feeling) fails, extremity is the game of the name. Any kind of extreme behavior tells you that something is being locked up, unexamined; it's a basic law physics and psychology. I don't believe that McCain supporters are actually supporters of McCain. In fact, I was telling James that I sincerely believe that McCain is NOT even a supporter of McCain. McCain supporters for the most part are supporters of a neo-conservative ideology that is narrow, limited, dissociated, atomistic and fear-based. And you're correct, they are rabid! and are willing to use hatred and violence as a means of control.

And so, in this emerging world, is there a place for us? I have to believe that in this world, what is emerging is a new world-centric and value-centric consciousness. We have lots of new voters this year (40 million!) many who have volunteered and are protesting the religulousness of stale bread.

JAMES SENT THIS TO ME TODAY: GREAT READ

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Sun, 11/02/2008 - 8:56pm.

My wife made me canvas for Obama; here's what I learned

This election is not about major policies. It's about hope.

By Jonathan Curley

from the November 3, 2008 edition

Charlotte, N.C. - There has been a lot of speculation that Barack Obama might win the election due to his better "ground game" and superior campaign organization.

I had the chance to view that organization up close this month when I canvassed for him. I'm not sure I learned much about his chances, but I learned a lot about myself and about this election.

Let me make it clear: I'm pretty conservative. I grew up in the suburbs. I voted for George H.W. Bush twice, and his son once. I was disappointed when Bill Clinton won, and disappointed he couldn't run again.

I encouraged my son to join the military. I was proud of him in Afghanistan, and happy when he came home, and angry when he was recalled because of the invasion of Iraq. I'm white, 55, I live in the South and I'm definitely going to get a bigger tax bill if Obama wins.

I am the dreaded swing voter.

So you can imagine my surprise when my wife suggested we spend a Saturday morning canvassing for Obama. I have never canvassed for any candidate. But I did, of course, what most middle-aged married men do: what I was told.

At the Obama headquarters, we stood in a group to receive our instructions. I wasn't the oldest, but close, and the youngest was maybe in high school. I watched a campaign organizer match up a young black man who looked to be college age with a white guy about my age to canvas together. It should not have been a big thing, but the beauty of the image did not escape me.

Instead of walking the tree-lined streets near our home, my wife and I were instructed to canvass a housing project. A middle-aged white couple with clipboards could not look more out of place in this predominantly black neighborhood.

We knocked on doors and voices from behind carefully locked doors shouted, "Who is it?"

"We're from the Obama campaign," we'd answer. And just like that doors opened and folks with wide smiles came out on the porch to talk.

Grandmothers kept one hand on their grandchildren and made sure they had all the information they needed for their son or daughter to vote for the first time.

Young people came to the door rubbing sleep from their eyes to find out where they could vote early, to make sure their vote got counted.

We knocked on every door we could find and checked off every name on our list. We did our job, but Obama may not have been the one who got the most out of the day's work.

I learned in just those three hours that this election is not about what we think of as the "big things."

It's not about taxes. I'm pretty sure mine are going to go up no matter who is elected.

It's not about foreign policy. I think we'll figure out a way to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan no matter which party controls the White House, mostly because the people who live there don't want us there anymore.

I don't see either of the candidates as having all the answers.

I've learned that this election is about the heart of America. It's about the young people who are losing hope and the old people who have been forgotten. It's about those who have worked all their lives and never fully realized the promise of America, but see that promise for their grandchildren in Barack Obama. The poor see a chance, when they often have few. I saw hope in the eyes and faces in those doorways.

My wife and I went out last weekend to knock on more doors. But this time, not because it was her idea. I don't know what it's going to do for the Obama campaign, but it's doing a lot for me.

doorknock for your health

Submitted by camila on Mon, 11/03/2008 - 1:36pm.

it's amazing how much you can learn about yourself and others when you step out of your comfort zone.

how sweet it is

Submitted by Megan on Mon, 11/03/2008 - 10:41am.

Thank you for sharing this Om and James, This morning I feel very much at peace. I felt this way when I stepped onto a very crowded subway car and found a small sliver or space that I could comfortably slip into. At the next stop a gentlemen also found my sliver and my space became smaller; as the train rocked and passed under the river our knuckles knocked into each other enough to remind us that we were on a crowded train and in any other circumstance would not be comfortable being so close to each other. He read his book and I read this post on my treo tucked just far enough under his book that I could see the words. I’m not sure I can fully explain this moment but the sentiment of the article and the realization that we are in fact going to have the option to vote for the first black candidate for the president of the united states tomorrow swept over me, through me and around me. I stopped to just hold this thought closely, I closed my eyes and I began to smile, I began to cry, I was standing there among so many and yet alone. I was holding my breath at the thought of the greatness of this moment and the possibilities of our future and I was a little bit afraid of the fear that obama won’t win. But most of all I was excited that I not only get to experience this great shift in our country but that one day I could share that memory with my children and grandchildren.

“I've learned that this election is about the heart of America. It's about the young people who are losing hope and the old people who have been forgotten. It's about those who have worked all their lives and never fully realized the promise of America, but see that promise for their grandchildren in Barack Obama. The poor see a chance, when they often have few. I saw hope in the eyes and faces in those doorways. “

Another story - trying it again

Submitted by Emily on Mon, 11/03/2008 - 11:30am.

Just another story This all relates, I know it. Obama. Hope. Reaching Out.

I have been sad. I have living through a winding path of tears, then no tears, coupled with confusion. This has been going on for weeks, perhaps months. I sit and walk, my ways of coping. I am sad but I am not depressed. In the past, this turning off and on of emotions, the sudden burst into tears, would have been a huge red flag: DEPRESSION COMING.” But I am not depressed. I wrote to our mutual friend ;)) – “does this make sense?” He reassured me. I am not depressed. I am grieving. My children have grown and left home. My parents are very old. I am aging. We are all aging, but at certain junctures in life, this has an undeniable and heightened clarity.. It is the moment when you look in the mirror and see the end and not the beginning. It does not have to be either good or bad. It just is. Another AH HA moment.

I recently returned from a business trip in Florida. For a variety of reasons (one being that I was an invited guest with all expenses paid to a resort on the beach) I had a very interesting and engaging time, despite my hesitation about stepping out of my little world and doing some work on a national level along with my unpredictable bouts of sadness. One afternoon, when my workgroup was finished, I skipped out of the other meetings, changed my clothes and walked out to the beach (passing the gleaming artificiality of the golf course).

The resort was located on an undeveloped stretch of beachfront, stretching for what seemed like miles in either direction. The sand right at the water’s edge was a carpet of shells and the waves seemed to come in a series of three small swells with a gentle break before beginning again. Overhead the sky was flawless and the wind brought a slight chill. The beach was mostly deserted. As I was walking, I saw a man in the distance. I could not see his face, only his build and how he stood, next to his fishing pole, both strong against the wind and inward against his emotions. He was watching his line, which seemed to disappear in the light across the water, before it fell into the waves. I altered my path and walked toward him, stopping to say hello and ask how the fishing was that day. He looked at me. He was a man, probably in his late seventies with blue eyes glazed with sadness. I asked him how he felt about living in Florida. I was standing very close to him. He started to say something, hesitated, then began again. “I don’t know what is wrong with me.” he said, and burst into tears.

I stood with him for at least 45 minutes. He is Italian, from Long Island, and sold his house three years ago to move to Florida with his wife. . Since then, he has grown sadder and sadder, missing his children and grandchildren, and unable to “shake his feeling of grief. He was struggling with, what I have been struggling with: how to understand and makes peace with grief as you say goodbye to parts of your life that you hold so dear. “After listening, after gently touching his shoulder, after carefully considering my words to this man, who carried himself with so much pride, I encouraged him to find someone to talk to. “You are so sad, I said, and I understand. While you are searching for a way to move back to New York, it would be equally sad to miss all this beauty. I pointed to the ocean and the sky.

He hugged me and thanked me for my compassion. No, I needed to thank him. He did not realize that by his willingness to share himself so deeply, he lifted my spirits, helped me cross that bridge back to what I know is important. My time with him brought me back to myself, back to reason I get up each morning, despite whatever pain feels like it is ripping my heart. .

all my love, em. your

Submitted by nico lime (not verified) on Mon, 11/03/2008 - 1:50pm.

all my love, em. your trying is beautiful.

A VOTE FOR EM IN ‘08

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Tue, 11/04/2008 - 12:22am.

I was walking home from my office tonight after speaking to two friends, a man of 60 and his 25 year old son. If I could be direct, I was kicking this man’s ass for being such a prideful and stubborn son of a bitch who keeps dismissing and rejecting his son. He threatened to not talk to me anymore and I told him he was a coward and he was about to blow a most amazing relationship. His son was crying and he was shaken up, as he asked, what time next week?

I love that man, I really do. His son tells me he’s all walls but I tell him he’s wrong. He just brought me in here so he could blame me. I told him his father is more clever than that, that is, his unconscious (God, I love the unconscious! It’s so precise). I said, I know your father for a long time. Do you think that he would think I would allow him to blame you? If his walls are so great we wouldn’t be sitting here.

They left and I followed behind, walking into another balmy night across Park Avenue, where a homeless young man sits during the afternoons reading a bible. I walk down 31^st street and I start feeling this welling up of gratitude. In about 24 hours Barrack Obama very well might be the next president and my lifetime of racism and the scars of shame etched into my heart will somehow feel healed. It’s all healing: Obama, my friend and his son, and my life empty of two dead fathers and two older brothers and four either lost or irreparably ruptured and estranged relationships. My friend is a difficult man but my brothers could never step up to the plate and swing the bat like he does. This man shows up despite the shame and pride and that’s what it’s all about, showing up.

And that’s what I love about Emily. She always shows up, even to her own death. Even as she’s chewing the remains of her heart. And she has this amazing capacity to touch others, in the most simple of ways, like a hand on a shoulder. There is this strength that grows within us just by showing up, by taking the more difficult path, by tolerating what’s intolerable. I have felt it grow within me for a long time now, since I used to pee in my bed at 11 and hide in the dark of the closet seeking safety. If I died tomorrow I would be very happy knowing I no longer hide.

THE BURDEN OF BEING A FATHER

Being a father is a burden and I feel its weight

constantly in the back of my heart. I have to watch

every thought and action as if they could, of a sudden,

burn down my house. The walls would collapse

and the heat would steal every last dying breath. I am

the house and I am the flame flaring at the walls

that contain it. But, I must stay awake and watch

over my children, that is why I am here. It is a burden

that I will have until my last dying breath, but I will keep

those walls strong until every last one of my children leave.

You'll hear me shouting tonight

Submitted by Emily on Tue, 11/04/2008 - 7:27pm.

That will be my voice shouting out the window in the chorus of millions of voices. Obama is going to win. I know it. I feel it. At this moment no one can make me believe it will be any other way.

I stood in line for an hour and a half this morning. I stood with young and old, black and white, Hispanic folks, neighbors, friends, and people who I do not know, but who live within my orbit. I was in no hurry and neither was anyone around me. I stood in a long line of hope. This is a city of forgotten people, not those who sweep in to work for a few years and leave, but those who have lived their lives here, raised their children here, mostly African Americans, and so many in poverty. Today was their day.

As I walked home, an older black woman who lives at the other end of my street came up to me from behind. She has known me since I moved here 33 years ago, watched me pass by in my youth, watched me push the stroller, and watched Arnold carrying Noah, and then Anya, on his shoulders. Her children once attended the same elementary school where we voted today. I did not know them, but I knew their faces, their smiles, and later their some of their joys and sorrows.. To tell you the truth, my neighbor and I don’t know each other’s names, but we know each other. I sat on her couch in her living room a few years ago when I heard her eldest son died. She held my hand and shared with her faith which was so deep and so profound, like so many of the African Americans who I have met on my journey in this city. Today, she gave me a huge hug. “This is a great day for us,” she said. “For us.”

I live a few blocks from where the city burned during the riots after Martin Luther King was assassinated. It has been a long time in coming, but this part of the city, is vibrant again. Today, the people of this city are. They are alive with hope. As I finished walking home, I could not help but remember being a young girl, sitting in the backseat of a car with my grandfather as he rolled down his window and spit at the sight of a black man. I remember a sign posted on the gate of swimming pool not far from the neighborhood where I grew up that said, “No Blacks, No Jews. No Dogs.” My grandfather never understood the connection.

Like Om, this moment is healing. It is healing wounds that I did not realize I carried so deeply. Until this moment, I did not know, as I know now, that the wounds of racism are my wounds. They belong to me too because I belong to this world.

I am so proud today.

Wow!

Submitted by Megan on Wed, 11/05/2008 - 1:25am.

"Our stories may be singular but our destinies are shared"

The streets of my hometown

Submitted by Emily on Wed, 11/05/2008 - 1:32am.

are flowing with tears of joy. I have never seen anything like it.

The streets on new york city

Submitted by Megan on Wed, 11/05/2008 - 1:52am.

as well. Time Square and Rockerfeller Center, I can't imagine what Union Square and Harlem look like right now. My neighborhood is strangely quiet tonight. What an amazing time to be alive. Emily, the hope that your hometown is feeling is ringing through the nation.

Emily

Submitted by Megan on Wed, 11/05/2008 - 8:51pm.

Emily, Thank you for sharing your experience yesterday, I could almost hear the excitement in your voice and the passion on your streets. It was truly an amazing experience for everyone I’ve talk to. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face today.

I was thinking about your experience with the Florida fisherman and with the woman on your block yesterday and earlier in the year the elderly woman that was disorientated on your block. These connections feel to me less of a coincidence and more of an unconscious attraction to your compassion and loving heart. Some people wear their hearts on their sleeves I feel that yours simply radiates straight out directly into the soul of strangers. They feel this and open up to you in a way that they do not to others. And because you are open to the experience and respond is such a compassionate way, they each impart these amazing gifts onto you and indirectly onto us through your sharing here.

em

Submitted by Megan on Mon, 11/03/2008 - 5:23pm.

emily your story is beautiful thank you for sharing this and your difficult struggle. Sending you love and light from new york

President Barack Hussein Obama

Submitted by camila on Wed, 11/05/2008 - 2:21am.

This is the email I just got from my dad, entitled "CHANGE":

In 1968, Bobby Kennedy gave a speech in South Africa where he predicted a United States that would elect a black person as president in 40 years.

I remember reading that speech and being inspired by the hope and confidence he expressed.

But in my deepest feelings, I never really thought that what he was predicting would happen.

At the time, a New England college student, I didn't know any black people - and carried whatever beliefs I'd picked up in my small village in CT. I believe my experience is similar to that of many others - at least from my class of lower/middle white people of my age.

The experiences of the past decades- wrenching and awful in so many ways - are bearing delicious fruit. What an enormous forward step is occurring for all of us!

To know that my grandchildren will face opportunity unincumbered by my lack of experience and unthinking prejudices is a joy!

WOW!!!!

your dad writes amazing

Submitted by nico lime (not verified) on Wed, 11/05/2008 - 1:19pm.

your dad writes amazing letters, camila. thank you for sharing.

YOU LOVE ME AND I LOVE YOU, RIGHT?

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Wed, 11/05/2008 - 10:42pm.

I had the blessing of seeing one of my friends tonight whose grandmother is dying. For the most part, her grandmother raised her and my friend is now inconsolable with grief and fear thinking her grandmother will soon die. She can’t bear the thought of not having her around. She shared her grandmother’s words as she tried to comfort her granddaughter.

“I love you and you love me, right.”

“Yes, grandma.”

“Well, then we’re alright.”

I told my friend about my mother’s death three years ago; how, at the moment she left her body I felt more connected to her then when she was alive, even before Parkinson’s and dementia had destroyed her brain and ability to recognize me. I very palpably felt my mother’s body and the limitations that prevented her from knowing me no longer obstructing the intimacy I had always desired.

I remember thinking how beautiful death was, as beautiful as life itself. I told her how I imagined Obama’s grandmother passing-on a gift to transmit a greater pre-election light for all of us to see the radiance of this young new leader and feel the sacredness of this planet and our humanity and our desperate need to care for it and each other so that we can meet a beautiful death when it is our time. Death feeds and nourishes us. All gardeners know this. And Barack Obama is a gardener who cultivates the we-ness of existence, poised and humble and patient. He wisely tells us one term is not enough and that we’ll all have to sacrifice and conduct ourselves maturely and honestly. He does not need to lie because he has nothing to hide because there’s no self to hide behind. There is only “welves,” we-selves that, together, are now accountable and responsible to this country, the world and all beings without exception.

As I held my friend’s tears, I thought of the moment the camera focused in on Jesse Jackson, one of the first Civil Rights soldiers who marched with Martin Luther King Jr., the true spiritual father of Obama; and Jackson was crying, not merely for the jubilation and the pride he felt as a black father greatly responsible for carving the path Obama now walks on, but because he was releasing the embodiment of all the suffering and pain of the centuries of American genocide he and his forbears witnessed at the hands of white hatred.

There was something about my friend and her grandmother, Jesse Jackson, Barack Obama and myself intertwining in a moment of grace and glory, free from suffering; of everything, everywhere, and everyone illuminated in pure light. And I thought of the sheer brilliance of my friend’s grandmother’s words, so brilliant all spiritual wisdom was built on them. And the essence of Obama’s speech last night. I told my friend I will walk with her through grandma’s passing and together we’ll get through it. She rebuked, No, we can’t. And in my own most unoriginal way, I responded, Yes we can.

THE POWER OF RHETORIC

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Thu, 11/06/2008 - 12:18am.

After eight years of (my) utter embarrassment listening to Bush, in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr., Obama has brought eloquence and intelligence back into political rhetoric. Ah, I can listen again!!!! Unfortunately, rhetoric has gotten a bad rap due to its degradation on the part of unintelligent and unskillful politicians. But, Obama’s speeches are the best of rhetoric. Obama also, following tradition, fuses the religious and political in such a way as to aestheticize style. Yet, there is a loftiness and ambition that is balanced with humility. Though Obama speaks to the future of a progressive worldview, rhetorically he stays with the traditional -- with allusions invoking history and phrases evoking a deep pathos (but not in a propagandist way). A favorite is the anaphora (“Yes we can”), which is the repetition of a phrase. Like King, Obama is brilliantly poised and uses timing and pitch, again, to evoke an emotional response from the audience (as well as rapt attention). As such, his speeches feel more like singing or chanting than speaking (Obama is also compared to John F. Kennedy, also a brilliant speaker, but Kennedy’s pitch was less like singing).

THE OBAMA PHENOMENON: REAL(ity) OR IDEAL(ity)

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Mon, 11/10/2008 - 1:01am.

I’ve been observing a number of questions (and confusions) regarding a new Obama administration and would like to address at least three points. The first has to do with the significance of Obama being African American; the second has to do with how people are idealizing Obama and how that might affect both their expectation and his performance in their perceptions; and lastly, Obama’s ostensible lack of a politically progressive stance. I see all three of these as related and will present my views with this in mind.

Race. People are saying that we’re overstating or at least overemphasizing the significance of Obama’s race, that is, being black and they wonder why I am arguing that the significance of a black man elected as president cannot be overstated. Why? Well, though Obama’s specific race in the context of our country’s evolution has a unique psychological, political and sociocultural meaning, race itself is what I have been emphasizing given the deep dissociative rift in the very collective psyche of our nation. Further, this massive psychological split has resulted in both genocidal and ecocidal behavior, not only in how one race perpetrates violence against another, but how even the racists in power have perpetrated violence against all citizens irrespective of race in more insidious ways; for example, policies and practices the consequences of which include poisoning citizens with nutritional chemicals and pollutants, the slow corrosion of the environment and the fostering of child neglect and child abuse. You may ask, how these practices are related to racism? The answer can be found in the pathological psychological structures and mindset that register and practice hatred in any form. I argue that hatred cannot be selective because minds and their mental constructs are only separate in appearance; in reality, a mind that is afflicted by hatred toward another and in one context, merely projects into others (or things) what it has internalized to begin with. For example, a child raised with racist parents necessarily internalizes the hatred the parents transmit and in fact learns to hate parts of himself that necessarily identifies with all beings, particularly human. In reality, there are no truly separate human beings, only the psychological attempt to separate human from being by a mind feeling trapped in its own polarities and oppositions. Simply put, I have to learn to hate parts of myself before I can hate you. Race is one of many binary categorical oppositions all of which are integrally connected. It’s not a coincidence, for example, that civil rights and feminism paralleled in their evolution, followed by gay rights and “special” groups. Thus, Obama’s race, at least in the public space, has galvanized an awareness the energy of which serves as a real reparation of a schism and split in the collective psyche of our nation. This reparative action on the part of Americans is restoring an integrity the affects of which include the diminishment of shame and guilt and the bolstering of a healthy pride, compassion and love. Oh, and there is joy there too knowing we want to heal and be true to who we are as spiritual beings.

Idealization and Expectation. There are two types of idealization: one type is immature and the other mature. The immature version is similar to the projected omnipotence imputed to a parent; it lacks self-awareness and thus critical interrogation of the figure we are idealizing. Unfortunately, it’s the most common type and has led to the runaway recklessness and abuse of politicians who are rarely held accountable; and if they are, it’s usually too late because we placed all our power and blind trust on them. The mature type of idealization is about the trust and hope we place in a leader’s potential, yet it is never divorced from critical inquiry and self-interrogation. Yes, self-interrogation. You see, that and how we idealize says more about us than who we idealize and thus we must interrogate our own thought process, intentions and motivations. Again, as I intimated in the first section, our own thought process is only apparently separate from the other; in reality, our thought process is part of a relational reality co-created and therefore codetermined. This means that we are both in fact responsible to the relationship and what is created through it. I am in fact partially responsible for George Bush’s administration necessarily because, as a citizen, I have a performatively prescribed relationship with him. Though not formulated and articulated more strongly, this is, in fact, what Obama is conveying in his speeches.

Obama’s Ostensible Contradictory Stance. How can a man who argues for the death penalty and against same-sex marriage not only be politically progressive but be as spiritually and psychologically evolved as Obama seems? This is a great question and again is related to my first two points. Politics is an extremely complex process if not only for the fact that politicians represent such a vast and diversified group of people. Politicians are elected, if not selected, by the majority rule. Leaders who have more sophisticated and progressive ideas about government, society and culture must especially understand the nature of the political process and how popularity and convention wins over intelligence and radicality. In my opinion, Obama is a brilliant strategist combined with an ethicality which is guided by a very high moral compass. As a strategist, he must be popular and gain acceptance by the majority of voters. As a black man, he must work harder to gain acceptance because he lives in a racist country where many (at least) white voters are wary of blacks. To gain acceptance, Obama must appeal to white voters and this is done by exemplifying sameness, not difference, not only culturally and religiously but also politically. So, the question is: is Obama a moderate (appealing to the majority) or a progressive? I say he’s both depending on what lens you’re looking through. I think he is (only at this moment) partially moderate but intellectually and morally most progressive. And further, I predict we will see this more evident as time progresses.

So, let’s talk about what I mean by progressive. I define progressive as promoting progress and favoring reform in all sociocultural, political and economic contexts. My definition emphasizes the more philosophical and psychological undergirding the political context. At the far side of progressive thought are radical ideas that unearth the limitations and horizons of current thinking and practices and undermine the stagnancy of systems that support them. Thus, a revolution is the dramatic and far-reaching changes emerging from progressive and radical thinking; we might say it is the paradigm shift of evolution.

With that said, is Obama himself revolutionary or does his rhetoric merely point to a radicalized perspective from which a political and therefore sociocultural shift might occur?

In many ways it is obvious that Obama is entrenched in the dominant paradigms and worldviews of what might be called the “modern era.” In the sociopolitical context, the modern era advances a number of ideas and practices, such as, “monopolized capitalism, the hegemony [dominance] of patriarchal thinking, the imperialism of the technological mentality and the managerial ethos, the elitist self-righteousness of [patriarchal] privilege.” He will begin leading a country where money is the ultimate value and power is comprehended in terms of “possession and exploitation of ecological and human resources; knowledge is equated with technical domination, where “understanding” means the capacity to predict and control [scientism]; and a premium is placed on the correct dress, the correct table manners, the correct sexual position, the correct aspiration to accumulate capital.” In this view, the pathological (ironically!) is considered one who cannot adjust to these arbitrarily conventional criteria. Shame is the psychological consequence of refusing to adopt these standards.

But, most importantly are the conditions of our psychic realities that are recursively reflected in the politically (and thus sociocultural) conventional ways of thinking, the coordinates of which pervade all presumptions about the nature of the human being and the realities in which she thinks, speaks and lives. Language is never pre-fixed nor is it metaphysically and politically innocent. In fact, because of language’s embeddedness in a socioculture totality of possible meanings, the subject who thinks she is exercising free will is in truth merely performing in a system that sets the ground for her experiencing and understanding (I will be observing if Obama is aware of this fact). Thus, what we call a free democratic political process is severely limited by inscriptions of the existing privileged (typically white, male, elitist) language and its forms.

Despite Obama’s keen awareness of these paradigms and the worldview buttressing them, his speeches suggest to me something different, more progressive in his thought (and this is where you can most observe my idealization of Obama). What I hear if not explicitly then implicitly is Obama’s awareness of the arbitrariness and illusoriness of the current dominating system and his method for challenging it (as a black intellectual, this might come with less resistance). And it is this method that we must take up, not merely as a discussion of the contents of Obama’s programs and even his views, for example, of the death penalty and same-sex marriages, but as an investigation of the (ontological) level of his worldview, how he knows what he knows (epistemology) and their relationship to our own self-interrogative practices. You see, we can no longer separate ourselves in complacency (and ignorance) from our leaders!!!

For example, is Obama’s rhetoric a mere aesthetic or gloss, or a manipulation of signs? Or will it (slowly as process!) continue to challenge the way we structure our lives by conceptual or categorical systems (e.g., race, gender, religion, political party, the us/them of national identity). Obama’s vision of unification, is this unification transmutative or does it merely shift the hierarchies within the same categories (which are by nature, the binary oppositions of duality)? This is important if real change is to occur because ultimately change is not a repositioning oneself in the system, but rather fundamentally changing the system vis-à-vis 1) the understanding that life is governed by motives not in awareness and 2) that the point of change is not adaptation to “justified” beliefs, but rather critically scrutinizing all beliefs. I believe Obama’s project moves in this direction because his language thus far has often been psychological

NY TIMES OP-ED ON OBAMA: INTELLIGENCE IS BACK IN

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Mon, 11/10/2008 - 12:30pm.

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: November 9, 2008

Barack Obama’s election is a milestone in more than his pigmentation. The second most remarkable thing about his election is that American voters have just picked a president who is an open, out-of-the-closet, practicing intellectual.

Maybe, just maybe, the result will be a step away from the anti-intellectualism that has long been a strain in American life. Smart and educated leadership is no panacea, but we’ve seen recently that the converse — a White House that scorns expertise and shrugs at nuance — doesn’t get very far either.

We can’t solve our educational challenges when, according to polls, Americans are approximately as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution, and when one-fifth of Americans believe that the sun orbits the Earth.

Almost half of young Americans said in a 2006 poll that it was not necessary to know the locations of countries where important news was made. That must be a relief to Sarah Palin, who, according to Fox News, didn’t realize that Africa was a continent rather than a country.

Perhaps John Kennedy was the last president who was unapologetic about his intellect and about luring the best minds to his cabinet. More recently, we’ve had some smart and well-educated presidents who scrambled to hide it. Richard Nixon was a self-loathing intellectual, and Bill Clinton camouflaged a fulgent brain behind folksy Arkansas aphorisms about hogs.

As for President Bush, he adopted anti-intellectualism as administration policy, repeatedly rejecting expertise (from Middle East experts, climate scientists and reproductive health specialists). Mr. Bush is smart in the sense of remembering facts and faces, yet I can’t think of anybody I’ve ever interviewed who appeared so uninterested in ideas.

At least since Adlai Stevenson’s campaigns for the presidency in the 1950s, it’s been a disadvantage in American politics to seem too learned. Thoughtfulness is portrayed as wimpishness, and careful deliberation is for sissies. The social critic William Burroughs once bluntly declared that “intellectuals are deviants in the U.S.”

(It doesn’t help that intellectuals are often as full of themselves as of ideas. After one of Stevenson’s high-brow speeches, an admirer yelled out something like, You’ll have the vote of every thinking American! Stevenson is said to have shouted back: That’s not enough. I need a majority!)

Yet times may be changing. How else do we explain the election in 2008 of an Ivy League-educated law professor who has favorite philosophers and poets?

Granted, Mr. Obama may have been protected from accusations of excessive intelligence by his race. That distracted everyone, and as a black man he didn’t fit the stereotype of a pointy-head ivory tower elitist. But it may also be that President Bush has discredited superficiality.

An intellectual is a person interested in ideas and comfortable with complexity. Intellectuals read the classics, even when no one is looking, because they appreciate the lessons of Sophocles and Shakespeare that the world abounds in uncertainties and contradictions, and — President Bush, lend me your ears — that leaders self-destruct when they become too rigid and too intoxicated with the fumes of moral clarity.

(Intellectuals are for real. In contrast, a pedant is a supercilious show-off who drops references to Sophocles and masks his shallowness by using words like “fulgent” and “supercilious.”)

Mr. Obama, unlike most politicians near a microphone, exults in complexity. He doesn’t condescend or oversimplify nearly as much as politicians often do, and he speaks in paragraphs rather than sound bites. Global Language Monitor, which follows linguistic issues, reports that in the final debate, Mr. Obama spoke at a ninth-grade reading level, while John McCain spoke at a seventh-grade level.

As Mr. Obama prepares to take office, I wish I could say that smart people have a great record in power. They don’t. Just think of Emperor Nero, who was one of the most intellectual of ancient rulers — and who also killed his brother, his mother and his pregnant wife; then castrated and married a slave boy who resembled his wife; probably set fire to Rome; and turned Christians into human torches to light his gardens.

James Garfield could simultaneously write Greek with one hand and Latin with the other, Thomas Jefferson was a dazzling scholar and inventor, and John Adams typically carried a book of poetry. Yet all were outclassed by George Washington, who was among the least intellectual of our early presidents.

Yet as Mr. Obama goes to Washington, I’m hopeful that his fertile mind will set a new tone for our country. Maybe someday soon our leaders no longer will have to shuffle in shame when they’re caught with brains in their heads.

LETTER BY ALICE WALKER TO BARACK OBAMA

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Tue, 11/11/2008 - 11:16pm.

Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, poet and activist.

AMY GOODMAN: President-elect Barack Obama and his wife Michelle visited the White House yesterday in a symbolic moment in the transition of power. Bush and Obama sat in the Oval Office with no aides or note-takers and discussed the economic crisis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other challenges facing the incoming administration. It was Obama’s first time inside the storied office that has come to symbolize American power around the world. Meanwhile, First Lady Laura Bush led Michelle Obama inside the White House residence for a tour of what will soon be her family’s new home.

The visit marked yet another first for the nation, as an African American came to tour the White House as president-elect. Last week, we spoke with the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, one of the most celebrated writers from Latin America. This is what he had to say of Obama entering the White House.

EDUARDO GALEANO: I would like that Obama, who has now tremendous, historic opportunity, that he never forgets that he’s now going inside the White House. The White House will be his house in the time coming, but this White House was built by black slaves. And I’d like, I hope, that he never, never forgets this.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Eduardo Galeano. We turn now to Alice Walker, the celebrated author, poet and activist. She is perhaps best known for her book The Color Purple, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1983, the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer for fiction. The novel was adapted into an Oscar-nominated feature-length film and has been made into a Broadway musical. She’s written many other bestselling books, including In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens and Possessing the Secret of Joy. Her most recent is We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness. She recently wrote an open letter to Barack Obama posted TheRoot.com. Alice Walker joins us now from the University of California in Berkeley.

We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Alice Walker.

ALICE WALKER: Thank you so much. I’m happy to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to have you with us. Alice, what is your message to Barack Obama? Tell us about your open letter.

ALICE WALKER: Well, I wanted to express that even though—well, first of all, that it’s incredibly wonderful that he is going to live there, and partly because it was built by our ancestors, it will be his home. And one way of thinking about that is that even when they were building it, you know, in chains or in desperation and in sadness, they were building it for him, that ancestors take a very long view of life, and they see what is coming. And so, he should know that they were actually building it for him. They knew he was coming. And now he is there. He will soon be living there. And this is a great victory of the spirit and for people who have had to live basically by faith.

So I was reminding him that the personal life is so important as the support for the public life, and to model success for all of the people on the planet means that he will have to cultivate happiness in his life, no matter how dire our situation is, because it is from our own equanimity and happiness that we can influence the lives of people in a very positive way. And what has often happened is that people in the White House become very tired and grey, because they are trying to do everything at once, and you cannot do that. You can’t fix it all by yourself. And so, you might as well relax and let other people help you.

AMY GOODMAN: You begin your letter by saying you have no idea, really, how profound this moment is for us.

ALICE WALKER: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Why don’t you take it from there?

ALICE WALKER: Do you want me to read it?

AMY GOODMAN: Sure.

ALICE WALKER: Oh, OK. I’ll just read that part.

It starts with: "Dear Brother President-elect,

“You have no idea, really, how profound this moment is for us. Us being the black people of the Southern United States. You think you know, because you are thoughtful, and you have studied our history. But seeing you delivering the torch so many others carried, only to be brought down before igniting the flame of justice and of law, is almost more than the heart can bear. And yet, this observation is not intended to burden you, for you are of a different time, and, indeed, because of all the relay runners before you, this is a different America. It is really only to say: Well done. We knew, through all the generations, that you were with us, in us, the best of the spirit of Africa and the Americas. Knowing this, that you would actually appear, someday, was part of our strength. Seeing you take your rightful place, based solely on your wisdom, stamina and character, is a balm for the weary warriors of hope, that was previously only sung about.

“I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster that the world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for bringing the world back to balance. A primary responsibility that you do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. Not to mention your brave and precious grandmother, who, of course, as we know, went on. We are used to seeing men in the White House soon become juiceless and as white-haired as the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate. One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is only what so many people in the world want. They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not clear to them yet that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the reach of everyone.

“I would further advise you not to take on other people’s enemies. Most damage that others do us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion. We must, all of us, learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise. It is understood by all that you are the commander in chief of the United States and are sworn to protect our beloved country; this we understand, completely.” That is, he will soon be the commander in chief. “However, as my mother used to say, quoting a Bible with which I often fought, ‘hate the sin, but love the sinner.’ There must be no more crushing of whole communities, no more torture, no more dehumanizing as a means of ruling a people’s spirit. This has already happened to people of color, poor people, women, children. We see where this leads, where it has led.

“A good model of how to ‘work with the enemy’ internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet. Because, finally, it is the soul that must be preserved, if one is to remain a credible leader. All else might be lost; but when the soul dies, the connection to earth, to peoples, to animals, to rivers, to mountain ranges, purple and majestic, also dies. And your smile, with which we watch you do gracious battle with unjust characterizations, distortions and lies, is that expression of healthy self-worth, spirit and soul, that, kept happy and free and relaxed, can find an answering smile in all of us, lighting our way, and brightening the world.

“We are the ones—we are the ones we have been waiting for.”

AMY GOODMAN: Alice Walker, reading her open letter to the President-elect, to the first African American president in US history. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. We’ll go to break and then come back to Alice. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Miriam Makeba singing “The Click Song.” She died two nights ago in Italy after a concert. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. Our guest is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, poet, activist, Alice Walker, joining us from Berkeley, California, from her home.

Alice, you knew, you have met Miriam Makeba?

ALICE WALKER: I did. I met her after a concert in New York many years ago.

AMY GOODMAN: I was sad to be the one to tell you the news yesterday of this great South African singer’s death. You said you sat at her feet. In fact, you rubbed her feet.

ALICE WALKER: Well, I gave her a foot massage, because she was wearing these incredibly tight shoes, and her feet had started to swell, and I could see that from my seat in the audience. And so, later, I went backstage, and she was resting, and I gave her a massage on her feet and explained to her, because she said, “Oh, but my audience expects me to wear what I wear,” and I said, “Well, they don’t expect you to have aching feet.” And I was—I’m so happy that I was able to do that. That’s one of my favorite things to do with people who stand on their feet a lot and actually do it for all of us, as she did.

And I actually feel very joyful that she—not so much that she has left us, but that she fulfilled—she was a relay runner, and she fulfilled her part of the race so brilliantly and sang so much of, you know, what we needed to hear in order to get us to this point of electing Barack Obama.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, she did live to see that day; she did live to see the election of Barack Obama. Alice Walker, I wanted to go back in time in your life to talk about the significance of this moment and where we’re headed. You went to Spelman College in Atlanta, and you spent time in Mississippi. You lived in Mississippi and engaged in an illegal act: you married a white man in a time when miscegenation laws around this country were in effect. Talk about why you went South, then North, then back South again.

ALICE WALKER: Well, I was planning to actually just make a beeline for the North, as many black people did who wanted opportunity, and then I got involved with the movement when I was at Spelman and actually met Martin Luther King, Jr. And I was at the 1963 march on Washington, me and this very sweet man I was seeing. We were both very young. And one of the things—I was sitting in a tree, actually, because it was so packed, and one of the things that Martin Luther King, Jr. said that day was, rather than running away to the North, we should all go back home to the South. And it seemed the most revolutionary thing I had ever heard, that you should just go home and struggle from there and fight the battles from there.

And so, I’m from Georgia, but I knew that my parents would be very afraid for me if I tried to—I started some things there. I registered voters in a place called Liberty County, Georgia. But then I decided to go straight to Mississippi and to work in the movement there, because they were putting people off the plantations who voted, who tried to vote, and they were beating people, like Mrs. Hamer, Fannie Lou Hamer. And these people were my people. They were just clearly my people. They were—you know, my parents were also living on a plantation, what was left of a plantation. They were sharecroppers, which was, you know, the new name for slaves. So it was wonderful to be able to go there and to put my education to use, because it had been a hard struggle for my parents to educate eight children. So that’s how I got to Mississippi. And we were there for seven years.

We were the only legally married—well, in the Northern states, we were legally married interracially, but then, in Mississippi, of course, we were illegal. And we waited to see what would happen, because we challenged the law.

AMY GOODMAN: And what happened?

ALICE WALKER: Well, we managed to encourage many other people to, in fact, break the law and marry each other if they were in love and wanted to. And also, because there was a case in 1967 a few months after we married called Loving v. The State of Virginia. The law was changed, and so—

AMY GOODMAN: Ironically.

ALICE WALKER: I always loved that it was Loving v. The State of Virginia. And so, this is how change happens, though. It is a relay race, and we’re very conscious of that, that our job really is to do our part of the race, and then we pass it on, and then someone picks it up, and it keeps going. And that is how it is. And we can do this, as a planet, with the consciousness that we may not get it, you know, today, but there’s always a tomorrow. And Barack Obama’s election is one of those tomorrows that was so longed for and so sweated for and so believed in and so hoped for. And it’s an incredibly moving affirmation of where we have been and who we have been and how we have kept so much of what we believe.

AMY GOODMAN: Alice Walker, on election night, one of the people we spoke to was Dr. Vincent Harding. He was a close friend and colleague of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. In fact, he wrote Dr. King’s major antiwar speech, “Beyond Vietnam,” the speech that Dr. King gave a year to the day before he was assassinated. The speech was given at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967. Dr. Harding talked with us—I was with Juan Gonzalez and Jeremy Scahill—about what he saw as his role after Obama won the election.

DR. VINCENT HARDING: I am much more deeply involved in the hopes for what we can do to help push him into the place that he needs to go. He is taking a good start at this point by winning this magnificent election, but he is not going to be out there as a messiah by himself. We who believe in freedom are going to have to stand around him, stand beneath him, stand in back of him, and do everything that we can to keep reminding him that what we need is to move towards the very thing that he’s been talking about: creating a more perfect union, creating a more just and peaceable society, creating a more democratic society. So my hopes are very much focused on him, but not on him alone. I see the energy that’s been built up over these two years of campaigns, and I see the possibility that we could gather ourselves together and begin to ask, in a very powerful way, not what should Barack Obama be doing next, but where do we go from here? What is our role as committed, progressive citizens to move to the next stages?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Vincent Harding, I wanted to ask your reaction—you’re speaking to us from Denver—Barack Obama giving his major address at Invesco Stadium in front of 80,000 people, invoking the name and legacy of Martin Luther King in a speech where he also called for an escalation of the war in Afghanistan. Given your history, I was curious of your response to some of the rhetoric about King and war right now at that event and in the broader campaign.

DR. VINCENT HARDING: For me, that question about the contradictions that would stand between seeing Barack as a second coming of Martin and seeing Martin as someone who clearly understood that militarism was not the way towards a solution of humanity’s problems. That’s why I said that those of us who believe in creating a more perfect union can only do it by standing around him, under him, behind him, pushing him to ask questions about what is the role of the military in a democratic society, by encouraging him to see the possibility that maybe he would be a better community-organizer-in-chief than commander-in-chief. Maybe a democracy needs community organizers more than it needs commanders.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Vincent Harding, who worked with Dr. King, wrote the draft of his speech he gave April 4th, 1967, taking on the war in Vietnam.

We are joined live by Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, author, activist, in Berkeley, California. Alice, your thoughts, as you listen to Vincent Harding? Community-organizer-in-chief as opposed to commander-in-chief?

ALICE WALKER: Vincent is a very old and dear friend, and I completely see his point, and I think it’s very valid. I think there is a time, of course, when you need a commander-in-chief in defense of yourself and your country, but I think that it is more important for all of us now to take this incredible energy that we see around the planet and turn it on—just turn a really critical and focused eye on the fact of war itself and to understand that with this energy that has been unleashed—and we see it everywhere—we can actually begin to eradicate war. We can make a decision that we just won’t have it. And so, then, if we, all of the people on earth, make this decision, people who try to command us to fight each other will just find that we have stayed home.

AMY GOODMAN: Alice, I wanted to get a comment from you on another person who has responded to the election of Barack Obama. We’re going behind bars right now to Pennsylvania. SCI Green is where the death row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal shared these thoughts.

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: The meanings of victory. The count has been called, and Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. has become the forty-fourth president of United States of America. But in truth, history will record him as number one, the first African American president. It is undeniable that this is a singular political achievement, a work of impressive political skill, and, we must admit, a gift of the political gods.

Among friends, in the privacy of a prison visiting room, I’ve often made the following half-joke: Obama wins handsomely, and in his acceptance speech, flush with victory, loaded with political capital, he would open by saying, “My fellow Americans, first and foremost, I want to thank the one person who made my election possible, if not inevitable: George W. Bush.” I always get a laugh, for, like all good jokes, the truth makes it happen. And the truth is, without the blunders of Bush, Obama would have been an also-ran. His fundamental issue, what set him apart from the rest of the Democratic pack, was his early opposition to the Iraq war. That gave him a wind that carried him far and long beyond his competitors, who were, for the most part, half-hearted war supporters, or worse, people who supported the war only because to not do so would have harmed their political careers. Or so they thought. That wind has carried him to the Oval Office, the grandest prize in US politics.

But what does it mean? We cannot deny its symbolic value. In millions of black homes, his picture will be placed on walls beside Martin, John F. Kennedy and a pale painting of Jesus. I bet that quite a few African homes, especially in Kenya, will also boast his smiling visage. But beyond symbol is substance. And substantively, some scholars have defined Obama as little different from his predecessors. Yet symbols are powerful things. Sometimes they have a life all their own. They may come to mean something more than first intended. History has been made. We shall see what kind of history it will be.

From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.

AMY GOODMAN: That commentary and others at prisonradio.org. Alice Walker, your thoughts on Mumia Abu-Jamal’s comments and Mumia Abu-Jamal, on death row, talking about a president who is not fully opposed to the death penalty?

ALICE WALKER: As usual, Mumia has such a clear understanding of what is happening, no matter where it is, which is remarkable because he is on death row. And I think he’s largely right. I think it’s up to us to do as Vincent was saying, to do the surrounding of our leader in such a way that he understands our will, what it is that we want.

In fact, when I think of Obama leading us, I think that we elected someone who can actually have the humility to follow us, which is to say that the world is turning away from militarism. We’re sick of it. We are absolutely sick of starving children, raped women, abused populations. We are totally disgusted. And we have the power, really, to say, “No more.” What we need is someone at the helm who can understand that if he’s going in the wrong direction, we will turn the boat around. I mean, this is what will happen. The world, as I feel it intuitively, wants desperately to go in a completely different direction. And we hope that he will be able to, you know, take us there, be there with us.

But we should determine, ask the people of the planet to get there, you know, whether—no matter who is with us, because we actually have that power. And we are so connected now that it is really, I think, clear to most of the people on earth how we feel and that we are all human. There were years and years and years, of course, when people thought, well, those people over there on that continent are not quite human, so, you know, it doesn’t matter what happens. Now we know that we’re all the same and that we’re actually all one and that the planet is in such terrible shape that we have to work together to save it. So all of these things mean, I think, that we’re going on. We are against war. We have had it. And we hope that all of our leaders will follow us into peace.

AMY GOODMAN: It wasn’t long after Barack Obama made his speech, his statement against war in 2002, that you were in front of the White House with a group of women writers, artists, activists, arm in arm, standing in front of the White House, getting arrested. It was Women’s Day, International Women’s Day, that period of time, that you got arrested. Now, Barack Obama is opposed to the war in Iraq, the timetable not exactly clear how it will work to pull out, but supporting a so-called surge in Afghanistan. How do you protest someone you support so much?

ALICE WALKER: I protest them the same way I protest the ones, you know, like Bush and, you know, those people: whatever it takes—writing, speaking, being arrested. It won’t change. My part of the relay race won’t change. I know what my duty is. And my duty is to try to prevent war by whatever means I can manage.

And I love this person that we’ve elected. I love this gentle, seemingly considerate, thoughtful person. And that will, in no way, stop me from saying I don’t agree with, you know, X, Y and Z. I will not support this war. I think war is so incredibly backward, and I don’t think it’s intelligent, and it’s not sane. So why would you want to support it? And we’ve had leaders who would never be open to that kind of thought, and I think that he might well be open to the understanding that this is really true, that war is an insanity, basically.

AMY GOODMAN: Alice Walker, I want to thank you so much for being with us, speaking to us from Berkeley, California. Alice Walker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, poet, activist, recently wrote an open letter to Barack Obama, posted online at TheRoot.com. We’ll link to it at democracynow.org. Thanks for being there, Alice.

ALICE WALKER: Thank you, Amy.

OBAMA WATCH: SOME LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

Submitted by Om Effortlessly... on Wed, 11/12/2008 - 11:19pm.

1. Plans to dismantle Guantánamo Bay detention camp.

2. Building bipartisan administration

3. Plans to use his executive powers to reverse Bush administration policies on stem cell

research and domestic oil drilling.

4. Considering talks with Iran

5. Withdrawing troops from Iraq

6. Pets an Incan King puppy

alice walker video

Submitted by james on Fri, 11/14/2008 - 12:21am.

well worth watching. and i know he'll listen to it -- and i know he'll hear it.

the other day i was talking with a friend about the spiritual path. i mentioned that it is very difficult, and it is also very easy. he was unsure what i meant, and i too chose the Dalai Lama as a good model. i asked my friend to think about the Dalai Lama's tireless work, not only on behalf of Tibet, but on behalf of all beings. i asked him to think about the Dalai Lama's spiritual practice, much more intensive than mine and my friend's. and i asked him to think about the Dalai Lama's presence. all of this work, i said, and yet what does he feel? he is always laughing, always smiling, always playful. we say it is difficult to be present, to cultivate awareness -- yet witness true presence here in the Dalai Lama, and notice how effortlessly he manages it. and yet, of course, it is also very difficult. it is both things. but it could not be one without the other. Alice Walker speaks a powerful message: it is a primary responsibility to cultivate happiness. it seems to me this is the responsibility -- if HH is any indication, the rest is easy as pie ;)

Monday night thoughts

Submitted by Emily on Mon, 11/10/2008 - 10:55pm.

Hope lingers in the streets. I am surprised by how much lighter I feel when I wake up in the morning. Nothing has changed; the economy is still a mess, the world is still in turmoil, but I have this feeling, that began last Tuesday night, that I am part of something now – an effort to help change the tone and spirit of our country. It has made me reflect on my role as I become older and an older citizen to hold the past, while leaving it, and moving in the present, to take my place and cheer the new generation that has stepped into the shoes of leadership. It feels, contrary to what I thought, such a relief, to see one’s own place, to know where I stand. It is equally as promising to see those around me waking up from their own despair. A friend of mine said that she had no idea how depressed she has been about our country until she woke up the day after the election and felt lighter and happy to be outside and look at the faces of the people who were on the bus and the subway. It was as if without speaking, people had finally awakened and talked to each other.

It feels like a new day in so many ways. The veil of my grieving has been lifting and the air seems sweeter I looked at my front garden, now browning, fading, and leaning back into the earth, and began planning a new visual journey through it and thinking about what changes I will make. It is a tiny space, but it is my botanical gardens. The huge doghouse that Anya built in elementary school is beginning to rot from all sides and it has caused me great sadness to think of it disappearing from my garden. And then, a neighbor told me to take a saw and cut a few inches behind it’s great open door, and hang the red doghouse doorway on a wall in the house. I am lit up with joy. I can honor my past in this bright, new way.

I have so much joy in my life that when the sad times come, I know that it does not ground me in cement. I am writing everyday. I am looking. I think of how much growth there has been in my life just this past year and I am full of optimism not only for myself, but for everyone. Tomorrow I may fall into sadness, but that is tomorrow, and today is today. Clear, bright, limitless.

Please, my friends. Let me know how you are feeling. I want to know. Even in my silence I am there, and would always emerge from under my covers, if at any time, you needed another hand to hold.

I am very excited about the inauguration. They are already building outside the Capital.

Emily

Submitted by Megan on Tue, 11/11/2008 - 5:20pm.

Emily, I love the way you express yourself, your words bring me so close I feel like we are having coffee and I’m sitting with you on an old worn couch settled into the spot that perfectly fits my bum and the round of my back. I agree that the country has woken up, even those that opposed and still oppose Obama are acutely aware of the shift. If anything this great dialogue has begun. It has pulled us from a unified depression of feeling victims and helpless that our individual voices had no significance in the political context. I am at a conference today and the keynote speaker was talking about how each generation ( traditionalists, boomers, generation x, generation y, millennia) will play a unique role in this coming term. Obama is talking about bringing for the first time a Chief Technology Officer into the (I’m not sure if you say White House or Cabinet) that is going to continue to utilize technology to create momentum and change. And even better as you say everyone across the generational spectrum has a place to play a role and contribute. Like your friend I’ve noticed a difference on the train. Some of which is probably my own freedom of the hatred of blacks that my father wore so strongly as a badge when I was a child, that even as a young age bothered me a great deal; and some from the others I share my commute with. I wrote to our friend the other day sharing my observations: I noticed this subtle change from a couple days before the election through today that black men in particular especially those not dressed in business clothes on the train just seem to stand taller, they look me in the eye, smile back, move over on the train to give you space, nod and say good day. It is subtle and different. Not in an arrogant way more, pure and full of hope. I think they now truly feel equal. It’s pretty cool. I am enjoying it; it is like we are silently celebrating together. It's like the way you are just comfortable with someone even when you are not talking you can be there together in each other’s space. That is how it feels with these gentlemen on the train like they are just comfortable and more confident. It's pretty cool!

I am feeling excited and hopeful as well and a little bit cautions because I understand what Obama is up against and I know change take time. (Om some great stuff in your post) He is going to have to dig us out of a pretty good hole and bring us back to stability – whatever that means now, before he can even start to work on his own aggressive goals. Still a bit worried about the economy and what that means for the next few years, but worrying isn’t going to change that. This week in particular I am battling some old trauma that I just don’t have room for in my life anymore. It is a battle of the wills and I’m trying to give it room to force its way out. There is a deeper understanding that I’m struggling to reach, I wrote this weekend: I need to understand I need to find that bridge. It's there covered in the morning fog and it is just below my reach. I know I will find it and although it is extremely painful, it is time.

one: race

Submitted by james on Thu, 11/13/2008 - 1:23am.

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