2008 Elections
(This post was inspired by a topic started by John McNally on Sethnet by the same name. I began to write a reply and I realized that it belonged here.)
I am more optimistic about the Democrats chances in November, even Clinton will be better than McCain, though ironically, some Republicans are debating that! However, it is now possible that a groundswell of Barackomania may sweep him into the White House in January.
I don't often post political speeches, but Barack Obama has a real gift to galvanize his audience and provide hope for much needed social changes. We Boomers lived through the sixties and saw times of turbulent change and a new, postmodern worldview emerge (what we call the GREEN altitude in integral). So this has harmonic resonances to those times, feelings, and issues, but I don't know if the collective has enough momentum yet. Yesterday's speech certainly puts his candidacy in a new light, and may be a watershed moment in his presidential bid.
Also, for those of you who get HBO, check out the John Adams mini-series. It shows the American Revolution from his Bostonian perspective, and how the revolution sprouted from The Boston Massacre and Tea Party to Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill and spread across the Colonies. I was born in Philadelphia, PA and worked at the Franklin Institute Science Museum for ten years, so I've had a front row seat to learn about how the American Experiment has unfolded through history. And I suspect we may be witnessing, and participating in another small but unique shift in the process during this election cycle.
As Margaret Mead said, "Never doubt that a thoughtful committed group of citizens can change the world. Indeed it's the only thing that ever has."
Additionally, we can now factor in Jane Roberts's moving American Vision that closes The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto to reveal how hopeful she was of our American Experiment, and how The Seth Material, and related bodies of work, could take their place in the public sector some day, and stop being relegated to likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and other fundamentalists. That is, what she called psychic naturalists could provide a grass roots groundswell of authentic, psychic, spiritual, altered-states fueled contributions to the collective, free of the premodern, superstitious nonsense that riddles so many religious movements based on metaphysical Absolutes (like virgin births, bodily resurrections, heaven being up in the sky, etc.). Jane's work is a testimony to post-post conventional cognitive and spiritual lines that not only took a rational approach to her altered states and abilities, but began to understand the systemic nature of collective co-creation.
Perhaps the Obama candidacy will be one small step in the direction of addressing to the much needed social, fiscal, educational, military, and economic changes needed to realize Jane's American Vision to burst forth. In other words, we need a strong foundation of healthy, educated, dedicated, awake, and creative citizens to achieve that Vision, and the current system, as we all know falls way short because of old wounds, racial, class, and gender divides, ethnocentric ways of thinking, and ingrained patterns that no longer provide adequate solutions from a global, systems perspective.
Further, the worldviews of current entrenched political and economic interest (AMBER/ORANGE conservatives) tend to commit what Wilber calls the level-line fallacy, thereby reducing all authentic transrational, inner senses fueled cognition to Freudian prerational, infantile dissociative pathology (a variation of his pre/trans fallacies).
Therefore, we also need to consider the emerging integral movement of Ken Wilber and Don Beck, among others, who are showing new ways to solve problems by taking a wider view with an Integral Politics and integral approach. As Einstein is oft-quoted, "The significant problems we face can never be solved at the level of thinking that created them."
Barack Obama is showing signs that he has the pluralistic vision, spiritual depth, and political will to begin what could be an eight year run at countering the regressive policies of the Bush Family legacy (Wall Street Republicans = AMBER/ORANGE in integral stages). To this end, I share the following:
March 18, 2008 ~ Philadelphia, PA
Barack Obama ~ An Excerpt
"We have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle—as we did in the OJ trial—or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina—or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words.
"We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
"We can do that.
"But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
"That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.
"This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
"This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
"This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.
"I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation—the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.
"There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today—a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.
"There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
"And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
"She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
"She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
"Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
"Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."
""I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
"But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins."
You can watch or read the entire speech here:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hisownwords
Final comment: change begins at the grass roots level addressing to basic issues required to build, support, and nurture a healthy, educated, and spiritually awake citizenry. Issues like universal health care, equal job opportunities, creative outlets, gay and lesbian rights, immigration, corrupt banking and financial practices, an over-extended military, and more need to be addressed from the bottom up, in integral terms, not the top down. This is what is required to support the kind of shift in consciousness that Seth, Elias, Kris, Rose, and others talk about, so it may fully blossom in the next seven decades (that's 3-4 generations!). At times it feels impossible, and yet I also am beginning to sense the light at the end of the tunnel and realize that it's not a train, but a new worldview beckoning from an increasingly most probable future. In any case, get out and vote your conscience during this election year.