Political Cleverness

Be careful of political cleverness.  The big trick with high stakes. The "gotcha" that's irreversible. I'm talking about political expediency. Creating division between peoples who have become friends. About shaming someone for the sake of maneuver. 

Ultimately what it creates is the disruption of a whole society because the operating principles have changed while the minority of the people are still using the culture they were born and raised in.

Now I know that empires have risen and crumbled on political cleverness and the losers are the ones who often have the most integrity. Political progress has, for the most part been corruption, disruption and violence.

It is no wonder that young people believe they have to give up integrity in order to win in politics and business. Cleverness has become underhanded, fraudulent, sophistry. The most vulnerable are thrown under the bus while psychopaths are rewarded with high positions.

This is not simple naivete. It is the underground train that logs old forests, pollutes the air and the ocean, turns populations into criminals, parents into agents and children into pawns. It turns all relationships into corporations, and leaves a void where the village used to be.

We are rightfully disturbed when we witness our democracy crumbling under authoritarian rule, when the news is a list of violent events, and the town hall becomes a supermarket.

The trickle down currency of inequality is exploitation but even that word is too polite. Citizens become consumers then the consumed (cell phones, social media, then data).

In this environment we lose our leaders to gamesmanship, we ignore facts, dismiss science and swallow fake news because it resembles the familiar soap opera.

Now I'm not saying we all take the easy way out. I'm saying the playing field is full of snakes and pot holes so even competing in the game can leave us with permanent injuries. I'm saying that our earthly home has become a site of domestic violence as the corruption penetrates the spirit and the heart and our kin become prison guards.

I'm saying that good mental and physical health includes a healthy community. Yup that's social conscience  I guess.

The Age of Integrity

What has become very clear to all who are interested in global issues, revealed through mainstream and social media, is the absence of true leadership.  The ways in which absolute power corrupts absolutely are being revealed day by day. The young are more affected by this because they  weigh the meaning of their lives with what they observe from the outside.

Because the power of rulers is mostly about control and intimidation, the world for them is not a place of texture and diversity. Everything must be managed and dominated.  Even those who instill systems of justice live under the constant threat of being dethroned. The rulers who stay in power longer, it seems, are those who have behind them the military, the media, other superpowers, and the determination to do whatever they must to stay in power, including killing their citizens.

War may appear to be about land and resources, but is, if we look deeper, about something else. It is about controlling the imagination and creativity of human nature.  It is about ideologies that keep people in fear and doubt about their own power. There must be war to interrupt the capacity for people to organize and gain knowledge. Hatred and fear of femininity, of homosexuality, of the poor, of social justice, is inflamed in order to keep us suspicious of our nature - the means to be fully engaged humans.

The war is against humanity, the environment, and nature. The war is against the future, against hope, against love and compassion, and against the capacity we all possess to change our world.

If we fail to find the integrity to create justice in our communities, to fight injustice, then we shall feel Orwell's 1984, and Atwood's Oryx and Crake, very intimately.  We shall live in the trenches of WWI, in Sarajevo, in Syria and all the other places of siege.

Integrity is not a political party or a club.  It requires our conscience to question our representatives, those given positional power, our community, our church, and our selves. It requires mindfulness, diligence, and most of all - insight.

There are no instructions on how to lead a life of integrity.  Our friends and family will not applaud. The subject won't be made into a Hollywood blockbuster. There will be no Nobel prizes for those who build the world for the good of all. (Nobel winners such as the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela are two who have been recognized but most of the integral work is done by millions who are never recognized.) It will go unnoticed by mass media - in fact, blacked out, just as any sign of civil engagement is intentionally censored there. All we have is our determination to seek and act upon truth, to do what we believe is right, and to live in love and compassion.

However, if this age of integrity doesn't come to pass in thought and action, life will not be worth living.

I think the most important thing to remember though - is that the terror and destruction our world has endured is not accidental.  It is not simply through ignorance and the failure of humanity to live in peace. It is the strategy of abusive power to keep the masses powerless through chaos and violence.

The point is not to kill those who have power but to replace their power with our own power - that which loves our grand-children, and is integral to the survival of life on this planet.