The Lost Hosts Awaken
“Oh say, can you see it’s such a mess;
Every inch of Earth is a fighting nest;
Giant pencil and lip-stick tube shaped things
Continue to rain and cause screaming pain …”
-- Jimi Hendrix
The 2014 elections are almost upon us. The very least that all citizens should do is vote. Never take the right to vote for granted, because as we have witnessed over the past decades, there are forces at work that seek to deny people the right to vote. Voting is more than a “right,” it is a responsibility. We should vote in each and every election.
Vote your conscience. Vote based upon your values. If you believe in voting the straight party line, good. If you vote, based upon each individual candidate, good. Vote for democracy, vote for social justice. Vote in every national, state, and local election.
Yet informed voting is the minimum of the rights and responsibilities we have as citizens. If we are indeed “informed,” than we recognize that while voting is important, it is surely not the solution to the many problems facing our culture. It is of value in terms of many of the individual issues that are important -- from voting rights to reproductive rights, from marriage equality to public education. The advances made in these areas are as significant as the right-wing reaction to them is dangerous. We can not afford to take them for granted.
Still, within our own life-times, we are witnessing a negative transformation of our nation, from an admittedly imperfect constitutional democracy, to a high-tech feudal state. The symptoms of our social pathology range from never-ending wars, the destruction of the living environment, to economic injustice, to hundreds of commercials for medicines to ease the pain of existence.
“Seraphim, the lost hosts awaken.”
-- James Joyce
Frequently, when I discuss “systems” on DU:GD, I use the model of a mobile, like those that hang over an infant’s cradle. If we think of the United States as a mobile, it certainly isn’t one that we should hang over the heads of future generations. It isn’t a balance of bright Sesame Street characters. Rather, it is a military-police state, which consumes massive amounts of energy, and emit’s the toxins of anxiety, depression, fear, and hatred.
Individuals and sub-groups definitely do contain human goodness: an obvious example is found in the medical community’s ability to cure disease. Still, the economic system creates inequity in people’s ability to access healthcare. More, when the greed of the few relies upon the defiance of Natural Law, not only is “preventative healthcare” snatched away from much of the public, but the life-support systems are poisoned.
So long as “war” is the central organizing force in our nation, it will remain impossible to institute social justice. There are certainly advances that have been made -- for example, the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s made real progress. Yet, it seems like every week, there are news reports of another murder of a young black man, by either a police officer or a George Zimmerman fantasy cop. The war mobile, by definition, demands an “us versus them” mentality. Indeed, this was what Dr. King spoke of in his April 4, 1967 address at the Riverside Church. He took a holistic approach to the war in Vietnam, racism, and poverty. He noted that unless America underwent a radical revolution in values, wars like that in Vietnam would continue to take place in other regions of the world.
When one piece attempts to shake the mobile, the other pieces become entrenched; if the single piece continues to threaten the balance of power, it is removed from the mobile. King, of course, understood his fate. But he believed his sacrifice could awaken the sleeping giant, and motivate thousands of the little pieces on that mobile to create a shift in its balance.
If that radical revolution in values was important in 1968, it is a thousand times more urgent today. Again: none of the serious problems we are confronted with can be fully resolved, so long as we remain a military-police state. For such a state must create an “us versus them” level of consciousness, that saturates large portions of society. We are divided by sex, sexuality, “race,” economics, religion, and political and social ideology, among others.
The external mirrors the internal: this country fears and hates; it is feared and hated by others; and it literally becomes fear and hatred in essence.
We have been lied to since our early childhood. You and I have been taught to believe in “leaders.” Hence, we continue to believe that those in Washington, DC, can change the direction our culture is headed in. This, despite the sad fact that, as the pace builds momentum, the overall quality of elected “leaders” drops in quality, ethics, morals, and conscience. Indeed, as long as we head in that direction, this cannot be otherwise. Still, despite the evidence that is daily shoved in our faces, we expect otherwise.
Real change -- the absolute transformation required to begin to move our nation in a different, healthy, life-sustaining direction -- can only come from the “bottom” up. From the grass roots. From putting into practice our “inner-Dr. King.” For while Dr. King was a powerful man, the measure of his power’s ability to institute meaningful change was found in the masses of people who stood with him.
Birmingham, for example, did not change because one inspired human being told the Truth. It changed, because hundreds and thousands of people understood the Truth he told, and internalized it, and then acted accordingly. These people were willing to sacrifice, to make change. This required more than a willingness to face the brute force of Bull Connor, and his thugs, dogs, and fire hoses. It was more than their willingness to go to jail. For in order to be willing to take those brave steps, they had accepted King’s teachings that they had to be willing to sacrifice their feelings of anger, resentment, and hatred of their oppressors and the system that sought to dehumanize them. Indeed, King taught that these negative emotions dehumanized them.
We can change America. We can create that revolutionary transformation that Dr. King spoke of. But we cannot accomplish this by investing all of our energies in the same manners that fuels the negative, that builds the momentum that is hurling us in the wrong direction. It is a human potential, on the individual and group levels. And it takes the exact same amount of energy to add to the positive force, as to the negative.
That said, the only real question is: how far are you willing to go?
Thank you,
H2O Man
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