Liberte, Egalite, and the Unity of Humanity, Back to the Beginning

In an effort to discuss the intersection of morality, spirituality and politics I am going to reprint a few essays and when I can write a few new ones. Here is a (slightly edited) reprint as a jumping off point.

(Please don’t cut off my head for changing from “fraternite/brotherhood” to the Unity of Humanity! )

When it comes right down to it those are the principles or the ideology of “The Left.” Freedom for all, Equality for all, and a spirit of “brotherhood”…or, cooperation.

It cannot be said much better, and in a way, anything else is commentary, lol.

So let’s get to the commentary! As some have said, perhaps the term ‘The Left” should not enter the discussion at all, and I agree in principle. But we are stuck with the fact that there are a large group of people who believe that these principles should be the blueprint for the human race and a large group of people who don’t. We could just as easily call them Humanists and Corporatists but those don’t really cover it either…mainly because each is a somewhat archaic term with it’s own baggage.

So perhaps one of the things we need to do for the purposes of the discussion we are having here…here…and here is to define our terms. But everyone knows how boring that is, lol.

For me the message in my sig line has always served as shorthand for the state of the world…”Reality is the result of war between two rival groups of programmers.” These two forces that shape the world we live in have had many, many names in the history of the world. But there have always been basically two opposing forces.

What are they? How old are they? How basic, or intrinsic are they, to the Human condition? Here is my answer….

And now I get to use my favorite cheesy movie quote, from Big Trouble In Little China: “Even David Lo Pan cannot deny that all movement in the universe is produced from tension between the negative and positive furies!”

Translation! There are two forces in our world, one fighting for a world of freedom, equality and unity, the other for a world of domination by the strong and subservience by the weak.

Throughout history these two forces have worn different masks, been represented by different factions, been manifest as different movements…Left and Right are just their current names, also coined during the French Revolution and based on the earth shattering principle of…..no wait, they were based on which side of the room people sat on.

So yes, Left and Right are irrelevant. And if we can come up with better…more accurate and descriptive name for them we should. Perhaps that is in fact a key of moving the basic struggle of mankind forward. After all, one of the things we certainly need to do to move this struggle forward is to educate the seemingly vast majority of people who do not see the struggle for what it is…or perhaps do not see the struggle at all.

As with everything in modern politics, framing is everything….since the average attention span of the American voter now finds thirty second commercials to be an intolerable ordeal. Marketing is everything, and I don’t find it too incongruous that our modern world has reduced the grand scope of this primal conflict into a battle of sound bite messaging, squeezed between commercials for butter substitutes.

One does not go to war with the army (citizen, voter, consumer) one wants, etc.

So this is our generations battleground….marketing and framing.

And our task, in my estimation, is to market a world, or the idea of a world, where the principles outlined in the phrase Liberty, Equality and Unity have come to fruition.

To present that vision, and to educate and persuade along the way to obtaining that vision.

To paint a picture of that world as an alternative to our current world and to paint it well enough that not only will people want it….but that people will start asking (again?) why we don’t have it.

RFK wrote the companion piece to that phrase:

“There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why… I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

Those “things that never were” are in effect a world where Freedom, Equality, and Unity rule the day…instead of greed, submission and death.

In order to market that dream, that world….and thus turn it into reality….we need to do the best we can at defining it. Defining it, describing it, painting it’s picture…and then embedding that picture in the mind and hopes and dreams…of a critical mass of The People.

Perhaps…only then can it be created.

We are at a pivot point in history. The old way, war, colonial dominance, the rape of the earths resources simply does not work any longer.

The world has lived through Bush and the Banksters and the corruption of government by the opposing forces has never been more apparent.

But The People are succeeding (somewhat, in a kind of a limited way for an off night) at influencing our government. The government, the establishment and the Ruling Class will do everything in their considerable power to maintain a status quo, a status quo that fights as hard as it can against the very concept of Liberte, Egalite, and the Unity of Humanity.

At the same time, powered by more information, leading to more disgust, leading to desperation, leading to an increasing willingness to make themselves impolitely heard, The People of the world ARE starting to fight back.

From this growing tension….There WILL be a new way that emerges.

The pendulum between light and dark IS in the process of swinging…but swinging to …what?

To where?

If we can help to define, to illuminate, to paint a picture of that where, that COULD be a basis for the new Way.

A basis that would spawn a new ethos, perhaps a new political party, perhaps eventually a new shared morality ….and perhaps eventually a new world.

The People want to change, the Planet wants to change….but what does it want to change into? And how will that change take place?

“It” needs a vision, or at least a set of principles, to guide that change.

If we build it, will they come?

If we can do a good enough job defining, describing and marketing these basic principles into a new morality based on common human principles, weaving all of the worlds traditions of spirituality into a new morality…..

…and thus changing the moral center of humans…

…and thus deeply affecting the arena and laboratory of politics…

Which IS where the weaknesses of Human Nature confronts the ideals of Human Nature…

Would that not be the change in the human race we are looking for?

Indeed is that not the only way to achieve the deep systemic change needed to literally save Humanity?