The same is happening again this year in America as if the power elite fear losing their wealth and privilege when the reflective majority are engaged in the creation of their society.
It's a plan that makes democracy seem ineffective against the power of the established hierarchy. What is this hierarchy made of? Is it instinctive? Is it earned? Is it simply brute force? The "common sense" that no moral superiority can outshoot a gun. No sensitive insight can win over greed. No rationality can fight against fear. Or can it and if it does when does it happen?
Viktor Frankl wrote about man's search for meaning from his experience of the Nazi death camps. His conclusion was that people had a better chance of survival through hope. How people found hope in a place that ritualized contempt for life can only be answered by a highly sensitive inclusive intelligence.
So rather than a hierarchy based on reptilian fear I propose there could be a hierarchy of what is essential for the survival and good health of this planet and its inhabitants.
Based on the premise that we should have our basic needs, these resources could include: intuition, creativity, language, comfort, belonging, humour, storying, empathy, knowledge, love, respect, sexuality.
I have placed them in this hierarchical order of importance in terms of weaving these values into a sustainable understanding:
12: healthy sexuality - incest, rape, harassment - are not good for us as a species.
11: love is essential for an infant to survive therefore it must be essential to our health.
10: belonging - no-one can grow into a healthy person if they do not belong anywhere.
9: language - every living creature has some form of communication, a way to warn of danger and a way to welcome.
8: intuition is a neural warning or announcement, a feeling, to alert us to pay attention to something.
7: creativity - finding new ways of growing and preserving what we need.
6: storying - conveying culture through stories.
5: humour - relieving stress through humility and being able to laugh at ourselves.
4. empathy - not feeling sorry for others but recognizing when others suffer.
3. respect - without this we are operating as lizards.
2. knowledge - in order to survive we must study what is true in nature and in our selves.
1. comfort - without this or the hope for this we shall go mad.
What order would you put them in? What would be at the top of this hierarchy? What would be at the bottom? What else would be on this list? What would be left off?
A general understanding that what makes us happy and at peace is what others need too. Acknowledging what others need is acknowledging our responsibility to all sentient beings on this planet.
How does capitalism, communism, fascism, socialism meet our mental health and physical needs? How does the economy measure the health and hope for our future? Are political power struggles a sign of our dysfunctional diminishing future?
• President Ronald Reagan promised the biggest-ever tax cut, to “increase opportunities for all Americans.”
ReplyDeleteBut the average income of the bottom half of Americans declined, our economics columnist writes, as it did after tax cuts signed by President George W. Bush.
- New York Times