Desire, Design and the Operating System

It appears to me that human history and all its inventions dwell within a circle of power.  The glorification, the use and abuse of power interacts with our human endeavours mostly beyond our control. There are nations and people who possess power but not forever.  Anyone who has had power over others or things fears they cannot hold their control forever.  As individuals and institutions we create laws, culture (media) and ideology in order to maintain an illusion of control, to protect ourselves from chaos.  If I were to say this is the truth - it would be my attempt to wield power over this instant.  If I were to study philosophy, science, law and culture to the breadth and depth of my capacity it would be in order to influence the world.  It's too late in my life to attempt this even if I could, and even if I achieved it (500 years after William Shakespeare), it would be for a brief moment in time and place, and it would be a call for the next player to deconstruct this theory.

As news stories appear daily about our prime minister, the mayor of Toronto, or the president of the United States as they play out the extent of their given powers while they can, some may believe they possess powers beyond their position and that all they have to do is manage it well. But all political leaders must negotiate with the ever changing directions of power in their lives - the interests that support them and attack them are like tennis balls on a court which they must hit and send back to their opponents.

All that we desire and design is negotiated with other desires and designs which we cannot see or even plan for. There is always the pressure of the operating system projecting and sabotaging our strategies.

Our human history has led us to believe that we possess the power to control the world and we give those willing to stand up as leaders our loyalty, as long as they convince us they can protect us from the chaos of invading interests. But when our leaders break or reveal cracks in this promise we sack them with derision and ridicule.

This is a very violent game - to the senses of all who are involved.  It seeks scapegoats and sacrifices.  It allows millions to suffer starvation, genocide, indignity and madness, mostly because we cannot see power as something beyond our will, that no matter how much we worship and strategize, we can never control.

Because we are addicted to our own sense of entitlement we believe our leaders hold the key to our security through some kind of magic.  The esoteric rites are for high priests only, who are trained to keep the secrets of their submission to powers we cannot name or see.

So how can we live free of oppression? First by understanding that the oppressor is not a person or party or nation or corporation - it is a co-dependent game of denial.   They play their part sometimes well, sometimes appallingly, but the news reveals they are exhausted.  Even the largest corporation treating civil society like an obstruction to their goals, installing  puppet governments to do their bidding, can only maintain their illusion if we keep believing in it.

If power is within and beyond us then we must learn how to negotiate with power as we would with nature - that it belongs to history and the future, to our ancestors and our great-grandchildren.  This requires a sense of shared ownership and responsibility.

The Inescapable Network of Mutuality - by Martin Luther King Jr.

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

There are some things in our social system to which all of us ought to be maladjusted.

Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear, only love can do that.

We must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation.

The foundation of such a method is love.

Before it is too late, we must narrow the gaping chasm between our proclamations of peace and our lowly deeds which precipitate and perpetuate war.

One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.

We shall hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.

(Singing the Living Tradition. Beacon Press, Boston. 1993)

Civil Society Dying Slowly and Painfully

Listening to CBC radio this morning I heard someone say that the federal government would not openly challenge Rob Ford in a call to dislodge or demand he resign as Mayor of Toronto because his supporters commonly termed "Ford Nation" are the same base as the "Harper Nation." 

Chantal Hébert writes in the Toronto Star "There is a jarring disconnect between the Conservatives’ punitive judicial agenda, their much proclaimed law-and-order principles and their efforts to look away from the public transgressions of the man who runs Canada’s biggest city and the disruptions to Toronto’s municipal life that result from them."  

What kind of people support political representatives who appear to have a contempt for their responsibility to uphold the laws of Canada? 

What qualities do those in the Ford or Harper nation possess?  What is their world view besides repeating the mantra "low taxes" and "the economy"?

Are they addicted to a drug-like notion, that our society is a shopping mall, where you choose the world you want to live in just as you choose commodities from a shelf? That virtues such as hard work, intelligence and self-preservation will keep them safe, no matter how many others suffer?  

Or are these "nations" invented/manufactured by corporate sponsored media?

Institutions and national identities have largely been built on the addictions of the privileged, and sooner or later, we shall see clearly that we have spent and wasted our achievements in an inebriated stupor of self-congratulation. Our governments and institutions uphold our delusions and cannot afford to save us from them. We must re-invent ourselves within a just society if we want our species to survive.

Extracting the Poetry from Power and Politics

There are some writers and journalists who have the ability to extract the essential character of events and express it in one paragraph.  Chris Hedges is one such writer:

The final days of empire give ample employment and power to the feckless, the insane and the idiotic. These politicians and court propagandists, hired to be the public faces on the sinking ship, mask the real work of the crew, which is systematically robbing the passengers as the vessel goes down.

Read the rest here: The Folly of Empire.

And another poetic observer, George Monbiot, alerts us to the threat of an empire poised to take it all for free through the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership:

They want it; they’re getting it. New intellectual property laws that they have long demanded, but which sovereign governments have so far resisted – not least because of the mass mobilisation against the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act in the US(11) – are back on the table, but this time largely inaccessible to public protest.

Read Elite Insurgency here.

But the question that comes to me, time and time again, is what can be done, and more importantly what will I do about it?  The most eloquent answer comes from âpihtawikosisân and you will find her wisdom in what a revolution looks like:- here.

Ten Tips on How to Save the World

photo from NASA/Wikimedia

I’ve used popular jargon for the title, because, as you’ll notice below, this is not political science, or any science at all. This is a riposte against the endless hours of brutal entertainment that suggests only might makes right. To save the world might be a heroic endeavour but I don’t believe it requires a Napoleonic campaign. It does, however, require the engagement of an alert mind and open heart. 

The instructions are simple. Learn from the bees, use your caring mind to gaze at the world, reclaim your power, reclaim your nature, hold onto curiosity, celebrate your creativity, give up blaming, live from a place of love, acknowledge your political self, and honour your spirit.

1. Learn from the bees.

Marilyn Hamilton, CEO of Integral City, told a children’s story not long ago, that is easy to remember.  Three key strategies enable bee hives to survive, which can teach us how to sustain the human hive  – take care of you, take care of others, take care of this place. Our ancestors learned how to do this but sophisticated social systems have alienated us from our own capacity to manage the hive. However, world crises shows we must re-engage in the process now.  

2. Use your caring mind to gaze at the world.

Look closely at the operating system, or the ‘apparatus’ as Simone Weil put it. Read ideas and opinions wherever you can find them. Ask yourself who benefits? Expand your gaze beyond your own immediate interests. Prepare to be disturbed but not defeated.

2. Reclaim power.

Power and all its parts: politics, wealth, language, science, economics, institutional religion, is not evil. What is evil is the way institutions have been corrupted from their original purpose – to serve civil society – into clubs of privilege. Good leadership is the conduit of responsible power which demonstrates humility, vulnerability, and serves the greater good.  Good leaders spend their powers to affirm and highlight the power in all. Infinite power is not a zero sum game, it is natural, inclusive and intelligent.

3. Reclaim our nature.

We are resourceful workers and stakeholders in our society. We are not a resource or a job description. We are not left, right, conservative or liberal – we are organic, politically mobile beings.  Labels are assigned to influence and control masses. We have courage, fear, anger, love and wisdom but they are not commodities, they are strengths that emerge and hide. The deadliest weapon of oppression is that which turns humanity and all of nature into a thing, a resource.

 

4. Hold onto Curiosity.

This is what keeps us exploring, examining, interrogating the conditions we live under or in. As long as curiosity is alive we shall never be content with serving an oppressive and corrupt social order.  

5. Celebrate your Creativity.

Music, theatre, farmers’ markets, poetry, gardens, maps, new political parties, conversations –  are the means of expressing and sharing our humanity.  Art is the what, where, how and who of our species as it yearns and evolves.

6. Give up blaming.

Blaming is not problem solving and the problem is not what other people do.  To solve problems we need to re-engage our power to care creatively, with curiosity and love.

8. Live from a place of Love

Love breaks apart the structures of false hierarchies. It demands attention to suffering and violence, and calls for healing. It insists on life as the source of knowledge.  Love is what drives great minds to take courageous stands outside of their particular disciplines for the greater good. Love is the openness to pain that makes injustice, corruption, cynicism and oppression unbearable.

9. Life is political.

You are an integral, intelligent, reflective part of a larger organism. Whether we survive as a species depends on protecting our earthly home from a system that enables a few egos to hold this planet ransom for the sake of temporary profit. There is no escape from politics. Its apparatus has been built on a grandiose delusion that refuses to see the natural world as sacred, and ourselves dependent upon its health. To be apolitical is to be a doctor standing at the bed of a dying patient, refusing to be involved because the disease is dirty. To dismiss the world stage and our part in it is to lobotomize the future.

10. Honour the spirit

The spirit is our energy. It imparts our intentions before we see them. It allows us to dream and care for the world beyond our own life span.  Imagination and love is the immortal  legacy we leave for our great-grandchildren.

These are just my thoughts.  What are yours?  What would you list as the top ten tips on saving the world?

As of Today

Yesterday I attended a memorial service for a man who was, and still is, loved among family, friends, and members of the congregation he helped to build.

From the time he knew his death was approaching to the planning of the memorial and the actual celebration of his life, the lives of about thirty people were consumed into creating this event.  People who held off sleep, housekeeping and other rituals of their life to think about, write, communicate, select, travel, arrange chairs and tables, cater, and clean up afterwards.  For the closest members of the family, including the man whose life was celebrated, the effort was extraordinary.  In a way it took whole life times across generations to come to this. Learning, striving, struggle, fear and joy, and ultimately the conclusion of this celebration was proof of the abundance of love.

As I think about the interdependent web in which I live, I see the same elements, the many celebrations of life, the art of living.  These include the skills of planning a dinner with love, cleaning the house and washing the dishes – all to celebrate the joy of food with company. I see the theatre festival built on thousands of hours of learning how to  write, stage, advertise, to garner an army of volunteers with lifetime training in their craft.  I see generations of scientific study and the institutions of learning that have endured centuries of change to produce the best doctors, lawyers, engineers and teachers, to sustain a functional civil society.

Our own children who have branched out to develop their own lives, struggle to nurture their own families which include their closest friends.  I think about their constant focus on researching and caring which all began with two egos who fell in love and decided to invest in life itself. I look on all these things and think – what a wonderful world! What wonderful surprising creatures we are. 

From the blessings of my life I have learned that building community requires me to listen to others whether I agree with them or not, to share my honest thoughts with them, to help others by working with their needs instead of giving advice, to co-operate, to do no harm, to find common ground and to celebrate their successes.  The energy I have learned to use in community is shared leadership.  

Then I turn on the radio and learn about another politicianwho won an election, not on nurturing the values most of us use every day, but on a campaign of fear and intolerance.  If I am to believe he was fairly elected how is it the voters give themselves wholeheartedly to life yet vote against the energies that nurture it?

How is it that we see power working in our lives when we work together, and yet we select the voices of intolerance, cruelty and bigotry as if the only power we have is to vote against those who are different.   How is it that we don’t get it when we are oppressed by transnational corporations, the 1%, the power elite – yet   we are outraged that those with less than us, may need help?

This is the gap in our understanding of how our power works.  It’s easy to gain more influence by funding movements built on fear and hate if power is already centralized in a system of values that keeps the masses unaware of their own value, their capacity to organize and to create the communities they want.

How do we teach people who celebrate life that the power they have can be good, as long as they don’t abuse it?  I guess that first we have to learn we are part of one family -  the whole interdependent web of existence.

Who Will Stand With the Innocents?

By Sam Hamill

"Fifty years ago, I found myself in the war-ravaged former nation of Okinawa, where some of the fiercest battles of the Pacific War had taken place, and where I began to learn of the true atrocities of the atomic bombing of Japan. I also heard there from fellow Marines first-hand accounts of the race wars in my own country, about lynchings, about Bull Conner’s dogs set on nonviolent civil rights marchers, stories I had known only from brief news accounts. I learned about how the impoverished people of Vietnam had driven out the imperialist French and now faced a growing American presence as they struggled toward their own democratic self-rule. President Eisenhower had spoken of our need “to protect our investments in tin and tungsten.”"

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Writing for Peace - a message from Sam Hamill