If you look, you’ll see.
If you listen, you’ll hear.
If you touch, you’ll feel
That’s what I’ve learned since posting here at Docudharma.
buhdy asked me to be a contributing editor to a new blog he was forming. I had heard this story before and never was much interested in joining new blogs.
I had done so once, joined a new blog, that is, after the 2006 election. I had worked on Election Diary Rescue (which I’m doing again this year) and through reading all the stories by Daily Kos diarists of their on the ground experiences, my heart was transformed. I had never read before about individual experiences of grass roots politics from people who weren’t professional writers, or even all that interested in writing as a vehicle for communicating more than information alone.
Anyway, it was a great experience, even though it was a lot of work, and after the ’06 election I was invited to join a blog that would track the progress of our new representatives.
Fresh off the high of EDR, I accepted. I got very involved in the nuts and bolts of government, even started a column entitled “Nuts and Bolts,” wrote about the pros and cons of Nancy Pelosi picking Steny Hoyer or Jack Murtha as her House Majority Leader as well as other subjects I felt dealt with the nuts and bolts of government. Other folks wrote great posts about various Congressional reps.
Well the EDR high wore off, and I think it did for some others as well, because the blog didn’t last, or maybe it has a new name now, I dunno.
So I wasn’t all that excited when buhdy contacted me. For some reason, though, I said yes. I was asked to commit at least to writing one piece a week, an original piece that I wouldn’t post anywhere else. I thought that was a fair agreement.
Posting on the front page of Docudharma was definitely a different experience than at Daily Kos. I could get a lot more eyeballs and commenters at Daily Kos, but at Docudharma, the vibe was just different posting on that side of the screen. Because that’s all it is, really, a side of the screen.
Yet I felt some midwest work ethic pressure to give it the best effort I could.
Anyway, enough about my blog history.
I’ve had to reexamine my values, beliefs, heart, mind, spirit, hundreds and hundreds of times as the result of being a member of this community.
The theme of this blog, to me, is that there is no common theme. So if you join in that vibe, you can’t rely on old habits or patterns of thinking, or even of feeling.
Yes, we share the big goals of saving the world stuff like being against Cheney and being against Bush and Cheney and being againsts criminals and folks who want to turn our Constitution into paper dolls and play with them.
But each individual’s approach is different, is individual. So there’s no common theme, like “Electing (Better) Democrats.”
And I know we talk about having a common battlecry.
But I’m beginning to wonder if that’s really the only way to get things done.
And one other thing. I have seen real leadership emerge from buhdydharma since he began this blog. And that leadership is, to me, what provides the space for the rest of us to make each other constantly reexamine ourselves (whether we want to or not!) by remaining individuals while searching for a common cause.
I’m not much of one to observe anniversaries, as a rule. I’m not consistent enough. But this one grabbed me so here it is. The observance, that is.
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Another week comes to an end. And Monday is the full Harvest Moon, if anyone is interested.
Docudharma is one of my favorite blogs for sure, and coincidentally, I just published a list of my favorite blogs where you are listed.
that twanged with this midwesterner. 😉
A place to come learn, share, grow, and figure out how to make life better for all.
I think DD has a spirit of its own and a beautiful aura to boot.
.. I know some relatives of some famous people (who wish to remain anonymous) that read Docudharma regularly. I only wish I could reveal who it was.
Consider yourselves lucky.
reminded me of this song. Even though it has been horribly commercialized, I still love it!!!
And you know that old saying about “it takes one to know one”? I think its not a coincidence that you are the one who named me Pandora.
That takes a boatload of courage, so congratulations on one helluva year!
just sink in here, too? (just sank into Robyn’s Ties That Bind without saying anything.) soooo tired. but good tired. gotta get up way early and go into work tomorrow. but it’s all good, you know? useful, productive feeling. the small aches of sore muscles, just enough to let a body know it did something. no stress, either.
and agree, love the love flowing around. want to curl up in the corner and snooze, like the cat. try not to step on me. ha.
{{{Docudharma}}} more than i can say.
this song I think belongs here in this blog, in this thread, today.
Maybe someone else can tell me why?
The nearest reason I can figure is that maybe it’s metaphorically a little bit like:
“…and if you want a linguistic adventure, go drinking with a Scotsman, ’cause you can’t fuckin’ understand them before.”
— Robin Williams
And now I have no idea what I’m talking about… and the scary part is it all makes perfect sense.
If you read this thanks for reading… you could have just enjoyed the music, which is what I would have done, digging the Anniversary Groove. 😉
I can’t prove this is true, but it helps me to think of our situation as beings who can actually raise their natures to something better. Something creative, wide, deep, and ultimately un-imagable and ineffable.
But the thing is, there’s no conditioning possible, no outward pressure, that can force people to make the effort beyond what nature gives them. I think you can provide a better environment, a better soil if you will, and you can promote certain qualities and interests, but in the end it’s always the person making a deep choice about what they value most.
So a better world is a strictly volunteer matter. Not just in the external world, but in the internal world as well. Which means a lot of uncomfortable things have to be faced.
Then there’s the “hey, I’m part of the herd, ain’t gonna do anything to make anyone worry I’m not” choice. The majority choice. Well, herds have alpha males and strict hierarchy. That’s just the natural fact. So, in a herd humanity, it’s almost impossible that you avoid having a Bush. Himself in the mold of the World’s Government/Gangsters. Which has been typical of most of the earth for most of history.
As I see it, when we talk about an actual (and yet-to-be-practiced) Democracy we talk about a nation where enough people are engaged in volunteering to go with the “better angels of their nature.”
This astonishes me: for the first time, the alpha-gangsters have a way to manipulate and monitor the population in an almost total way. Now, I’m old enough to where everyone getting a tv was a new thing. Over the decades you could watch how values, common sense, life, and human decency were being subverted and savaged by the marketing forces. (Whether this effect was intentional or not (hahaha), is another debate.)
The results are a generation or two that really has no idea how their “individuality” is little more than a branding exercise. Rather than make a genuine effort, we’ve become content to imagine our opinions and our appetites are what define us as individuals.
All of this is just background to the topic:
1) Let’s say Democracy is what I said.
2) Everyone is coming at it from it from a completely customized perspective.
3) Well, there’s chaos for you. Which is one reason the “herd mode” has been so durable and successful. It guarantees that the herd will at least survive, if not all it’s members.
4) Except, with today’s technology and interconnectedness, whether you are with the herd or completely out of it, we aren’t going to survive much longer. If we do, it will be in chaos, misery, and greatly reduced circumstances.
5) So, it is imperative that the traditional herd-mind be evolved (for want of a better word).
6) That doesn’t look like it’s coming quickly. And there’s no way to make it so. It’s all a volunteer matter.
So, for the short term, you’d need to get our Gangster/Government Class to use the fucking brains they were born with.
Sigh. At this point I don’t know where to take it. But at least I think this might be a useful summary of the salient features of our political reality. I imagine that in sum, we’d have to each refine even more our understanding of our task. And that would only be possible if we put a self-imposed ban on expressing “hooray” or “boo” about things, but dealt with trying to assemble the known facts in the first place. Being multi-natured, and democratic, what we’d come up with would probably be along the lines of a half-dozen or so battlecrys, all of which had a section of the people whole-heartedly behind them. Chipping away at the problem from a dozen angles.
We need some good solid brainstorming, refinement, and follow-up.
Goo-night & sweetest of all possible dreams!
for a wonderful year of blogging together. Though I’m not a regular I’m still a wayward family member who straggles in from time to time to have a cup of tea.
Wonderful writers here, wonderful spirits here, wonderful people
and…
You survived Armando!!
hahahaha
Love you guys,
CD