Spirituality and Politics, a Blend

Can we grow spiritually and, at the same time, be interested in politics? First we need to define terms. What is spirituality? It is that state of feeling deeply connected to ourselves and the world around us. The more we are truly ourselves the more we are living in the Spirit and the more we do that the more we are connected to all existence. The Spirit is where everything connects or, to put it another way, it is pure love which is essentially pure connection.

Politics is the process of being in society thus all social activity, all work, all community involvements are political. Politics is not about what the US. media covers in the “news” that is obviously and clearly a project to manipulate our lives and opinions concerning a very narrow band of issues we may or may not be interested in but furthers some agenda beneficial to the owners of the media and the power-elite. Real politics is, obviously, much deeper and wider than what we are led to believe it is. Politics is beyond political parties, social movements, but starts once you leave your house and enter into the world.

To be spiritual is to connect with the world and society and that is political. You cannot be spiritual and not be political unless you are a contemplative living alone in the mountains somewhere and then other sorts of connections are sought. Sadly, we are now seeing a kind of politics that involves anger, hatred, tribalism, blaming others, indulging in fear-mongering and jumping to conclusions. Even for the worst kinds of people you can imagine assigning labels like “bad” or “evil” are not good for our spiritual development. I usually assign those kinds of labels to organizations which clearly and unambiguously cause death, fear and suffering to people like, say, Goldman-Sachs, the US. Military, Monsanto and, really, most other very large organizations—but I don’t assign the label “evil” to an Army officer say or an exec and Goldman—I do wonder why they persist in those organizations and try to see their positive motivations—they may feel they are doing good in the world and interpret life in a way very different from my own values. A spiritually-based politics would cause us to listen to others and look for connections and assumes that behind most people there are “good” intentions that may be twisted out of shape but that must be there somewhere.

As I’ve grown older I am much more aware of other people’s pain and the twisted ways they seek to relieve that pain—not because these people are “twisted” but because society offers them very few ways to relieve and solve the problems that cause their pain. I did this through self-examination and realizing how, in my own life, I’ve used many twisted paths deal with my pain or unmet needs. I’ve seen and see my own idiocy in life and I forgive myself and, thus, I forgive others as well—as John Lennon sang “whatever gets you through the night, it’s alright, it’s alright.” From this base we can think about our political life.

There is another aspect of politics that involves power whether personal, group, or simply the power to get things done. Each of our activities may have some bearing on power-politics. When we work for a company whose goals we don’t share we are, in effect, dis-empowering ourselves. When we cooperate with laws that violate our own standards of decency and morality we are also dis empowering ourselves and we must face up to that fact.

So here we are kind of stuck on issues of values and social morality. Without a discussion of those fundamental issues all discourse about all aspect of our political life, whether social, religious, or in our debates about what the media considers political issues the big missing factor is what are our fundamental frameworks of social morality? Underneath political conflicts about war/peace, social justice, the legal system, laws, regulation, federal programs, and monetary policy is social morality. If we do believe that, like Margaret Thatcher said, there is no such thing as society only groupings of individuals, then our viewpoint is much different from those who believe that society does exist as functioning whole with a life of its own and that a convivial society elevates the scope and well-being of individuals who are encouraged to live a life that goes beyond selfishness. This may be one of the fundamental differences between right and left. For the right individual liberty, even the liberty to oppress and hurt others is the highest level of morality. For the left the situation is murkier, and has no easy answer but, basically, the left sees that well-being should be something most of us share but its goals are so confusing that there is strong need to pull together a more compelling world-view.

Religions are, essentially, mythological frameworks that we can live within. Even if we are not religious (from religio, to bind) we live within a mythological framework. Doesn’t mean the framework is based on illusions or delusions or facts and science. Human frameworks are based on our upbringing, our laws, our traditions, the sum total of movies and books we have read and any situation or event that truly moved us. In addition myths have deeper multi-dimensional truths called “archetypes” which are deep patterns that come from mysterious places in our collective and personal psyches that cannot be comprehended other than through symbols, intuitions, dreams, sudden conversions, grace, altered states of consciousness, visions, metaphors, and epiphanies. There is a whole category of knowledge that comes from this general area that we ignore at our peril.

So when we have disagreements with people we have to try and understand their framework. While, I don’t agree with the right-wing idea of the primacy of the individual over the group, I do believe that without fully honoring the dignity and well-being of individuals society cannot be convivial—thus we could have room for agreement and then argue our cases. But if we demonize each other as being “bad” or “evil” because we disagree about guns, or war, or social policies, or cultural mores then we cannot benefit from our neighbor’s or our enemy’s wisdom. We, in fact, learn more from those who may oppose or challenge us than those who go along to get along with us. The diversity of our society could be our strength if we only could learn to respect each other and understand that most of us have very limited information and little or no training in critical thinking techniques. I would urge all of you to begin to learn about logic, science (social and “hard”), and dialogue featuring what the great Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, called “radical listening” which means listening without attachment to our own views and in total sympathy with your interlocutor—in a sense, we can become that person even physically through feeling his or her mannerisms. “Reality” and “truth” are not so easy to parse out. Sure I think I possess the truth about a lot of things but, at best, it is partial; sometimes we have grasped what seemed to be the essence of something real and true yet missing one small but essential component may cause to completely miss the actual truth of the matter. I believe a continual dialectical process is the only way we come close to truth—it may be that truth itself is more an attitude of openness as well as a “motion” of embracing the world—so less arrogance on our part might be indicated.

Now, to comment on what we usually regard as politics involving national/international issues but if you we look at the crises we actually face in a society suddenly (by historical standards) gone terribly wrong you naturally recoil and/or assign blame. But we must all start with looking in the mirror—who are we? How are aspects of society the I find very negative expressed in me? This is always the starting point. How is this or that politician or executive expressing something within me? We are faced with severe environmental problems our that are dramatically beyond anything previous generations faced—so how do I approach the environment around me? I don’t mean recycling or not driving a lot—I mean the details of our environment—am I really aware/conscious of my surroundings—do they reflect what I want? We are on the edge of global war so we have to look at how we each handle conflict—am I demonizing people who have a different culture or religion than my own? Every issue we face collectively has a link in our personal lives we must look at. At the same time, we have to identify what we do know to be wrong about these situations outside of ourselves and work both ends the personal and the public sphere. I should, for example, do my best to debunk clearly bogus rationales for war, like the WMDs in Iraq that I knew were not there and I did my best with millions of others to make my opinion known because I knew for a fact the narrative was a lie and one easy to verify. But seeing that lie as something separate from some of the lies I tell myself would have been a mistake—we must work both ends. So this is how spiritual practice and politics meet.

Thoughts on the Movie: Wild Wild Country

Last week we binge-watched the gripping story of Rajneesh (aka Osho) on Netflix called Wild Wild Country; while I have some caveats about the story, it was a well-done documentary well-paced and presented all sides of the story pretty well. My only problem was that it did not show that Rajneesh's ideas were really much more sophisticated and interesting than indicated--there was a reason why so many people were captured by his teachings and that was not really emphasized enough. But, as is usual for American documentaries, this was about people not ideas. As for people, this documentary showed in high relief the issues and conflicts that underlie our deep cultural differences and the folly not only of the Rajneesh people but the locals and the State. I highly recommend watching it.

In raw terms this showed an upper-class/upper-middle-class bunch of spiritual adventurers who were looking for a deeper meaning to life and, even more, a pleasurable and thrilling way of living. The Rajneesh devotees were a charming and vital bunch (one of my close friends actually joined them and he was a erudite intellectual) compared to the locals who were stogy, old, stuck in their ways, prejudiced, small-minded right-wingers that populate that part of Oregon. The contrast could not have been sharper. On the other hand, I sympathized with these people because they now had to face major disruptions in their lives from a globalized and insensitive people who copulated in public and were hyper-charged with what appeared to the locals as Satanic power.

Naturally, I sympathized with the Rajneesh people because they were culturally similar to me yet, their notion that they could just step in and disrupt a community without care is and was typical of the globalization movement. The idea of globalization is that countries, culture, communities, localities don't matter.  A piece of land, as the globalists see it, is neutral and not steeped in tradition. The irony, of course, is that the ancestors of the local residents were vital and dynamic people who came in and disrupted the land of the native peoples without caring about those people and their traditions. The Rajneesh people were arrogant, multi-national, privileged and flaunted their disregard for traditional morality and were happy to offend people with their practices. These people were impulsive, seemed to ignore the obvious political problems they face with local, state and federal authorities. The decision makers of the Rajneesh movement (Rajneesh was removed from all this staying in an haze of nitrous oxide) were only able to think in short term crisis mode that ended up feeding their more murderous impulses. The trouble with moving too far too fast into a mass movement that preached the breaking of restrictions was well-illustrated by the documentary.

On the other hand, the Rajneesh people illustrated the extraordinary ability of people to bond together in groups. These people who populated the commune were closely bonded large family unit in many ways. The rapidity of the movement to embrace their fellows is in stark contrast to the rigid separation of people that is still considered normal in our society. We believe in a small unit "nuclear" family that provides little of the nurturing extended families used to provide and still provide in most cultures around the world. Only in the advanced countries in the West and most intensely, in the USA, is there a militant anti-community ideology of the individual who feeds his/her lack of connection with others through consumerism and the culture of narcissism we increasingly live in today.

Human beings are meant to be deeply connected with each other--not just marital partners and children but through deep friendships, deeply felt communality we all feel when working together towards tasks that are mutually beneficial and beneficial even to people we don't know rather than our model of working a job we either hate or are indifferent for the enrichment of corporate masters who care less and less about any community other than their own. Despite their rudeness, occasional criminality, and lack of respect for their neighbors the Rajneesh people come off as at least being explorers in new social relations--something we must do. If we don't, and I don't mean we have to believe as the Rajneesh people die that we ought to remove all resItraints (there are always more restraints) and have sex with anyone we like in the moment but that we need to think about real community, real social ties that humankind once had. I did not approve of what Rajneesh devotees thought back in the 80s nor do I now. We can find new ways of forming community that go beyond our very  narrow social contacts. We know too many people casually and few intimately and that may be our greatest problem. Without working on that there is no hope to improve the state of our lives. I'll write more about this later.

We Are Not Who We Were or Who We Think We Are

I don’t believe most Americans believe in the institutions and traditions they claim to believe in. People will talk about the President as the “leader of the free-world” even after the fall of communism in the USSR and Eastern Europe. I never, even in the days of the Cold War thought that the USA was “free” and the USSR was “enslaved” because I looked for other views. I saw then that our society is mixed—we had certain liberties other countries lacked but had some oppressive institutions as well and, on balance, I knew we were more free than most countries. I knew that people in the USSR were not allowed to have contrary opinions to that of the State, yet, in private a vigorous dissident community, perhaps because it was a small minority and consisted primarily of intellectuals, was usually tolerated so so me extent. On the positive side, there was little extreme poverty in Eastern Europe to the extent there was in my day. Still, there was no comparison between the two countries racism and Vietnam War not withstanding. Since then things changed drastically. Communism was dead in Europe and new sorts of societies in accord with the various nationalities of Europe gradually emerged and they are all following their own course today to the extent they are able to.

In our country things have changed rather dramatically particularly since the end of the Cold War. First, we are now in a political economy that, despite the end of serious external threats (and that threat from the USSR was minimal and governed by a series of agreements that held for some time), is based on a permanent-war State. At the same time our legal system has become increasingly corrupt, punitive, and unconstitutional. Much of the Bill of Rights has been suspended and the separation of powers seriously crippled. Today the Executive Branch can, upon declaring any one of us a “terrorist” (there are no real criteria here—it is enough to be accused) and we can be indefinitely detained without trial or legal procedure, we can be tortured and murdered at the whim of the State and our property confiscated. As a practical matter these actions are rare but the State can do these things to us without recourse.

Local governments through their police departments can seize our property and use it to fund their own activities (and as a practical matter, fill their pockets) by claiming the money was used in drug transactions or that our vehicle of home was funded through drug transactions—and, they don’t have to prove it. Technically, this is subject to judicial review but it sometimes takes you ears to recover you property though rarely your cash. If you are caught with more than some arbitrary amount of cash it assumed you made that money illegally. At the same time, a cop can, if he or she so desires, beat you break your bones (this actually happened to an NBA player), torture you and kill you simply because he or she has a badge. To be clear, this varies quite a lot with different police departments. If a cop wants to search you or your car without just cause you have the Constitutional right to refuse and sometimes this works if that police department or state agency has a policy of following the Constitution. If it does not then you are liable to have your property destroyed, your kids terrorized and hurt and you beaten or killed and you have little recourse. If you have sufficient money and the incident is recorded on camera you can take the cop to trial but it is very rare you will win because the American people do not believe in the Constitution or the legal rights of citizens—they want a police force that is brutal and administers justice on the spot—that’s just the way it is and people on the left refuse to understand this. At the same time prosecutors are very reluctant to prosecute any cop for any crime because they work together closely and there are a whole lot of reason not to cross armed police whether you are another cop, a prosecutor, a judge or ordinary citizen.

Since the fall of the USSR and even more dramatically after 9/11 we have found a dramatic rise in the loss of civil liberties legally and on the practical level. Advice: don’t cross the authorities—better to not be noticed or to stand out. This movement also has gone into what was once the left. On college campuses, in our popular culture, conformity is increasing and tribalism is decidedly in vogue. Both left and right purge people in their own ranks and dissidents are ostracized from both sides. Cultural flags are waved by the media and people respond. A country or a leader of a country or movement is classified as “bad” and most people just march in place without the necessity to offer anything but declarations from the authorities—examination of proofs or possible motivations are ignored. It is enough to say Assad, for example, is “bad” and thus anything he does is motivated by insane evil done for its own sake. When he is said to “gas his own people” the question of “why?” is ignored and alternative explanations are ignored.

The old rules I grew up with that championed freedom and liberty while ignored to some degree by the State were still honored and there were mechanisms to call the State or local authorities to account because the American people, basically, supported the principles of rule-of-law and the Constitution when push came to shove. But this is no longer the case. I believe Americans are not interested in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights or the Western conceptions of Justice. People are confused, easily spooked, fearful or nothing in particular, suffering from depression, general anxiety as well as anxiety over money. Those that are better off are obsessed with keeping things stable and safe for themselves and their families and could care less if families on the other side of the world are blown to bits by Hellfire missiles or populations are killed and traumatized by massive bombs or their health ruined by depleted uranium munitions, or their skins destroyed by white phosphorous. Compassion for humans are at all-time high while compassion for cats and dogs has increased very dramatically.

Every day I wake up and feel gratitude to be alive. Just to be able to breathe and move around is quite a lot in my view. There is plenty to worry about, plenty to mourn and celebrate and ultimately it is up to us to appreciate our lives and not worry about what we cannot control. In the case of the health of our country, our culture, our political-economy it is hard to be grateful yet it could be far worse. Most of us still have agency in our lives to some extent and we must try to make use of it where we can. We must learn to trust that people are hard wired to do good and are only perverted by ideology and toxic mythological frameworks that feature negative emotions like fear, anger, suspicion and so on. Despite the tendencies we see most people can turn their lives around by moving away from negativity.

So it’s kind of over for us. We are no longer who we were or who we think we are. I think that the hardest thing we have to do is to face that collectively. Sadly, we are not ready to do anything collectively but, who knows, that may come someday when we recognize that there are values that lay beyond the culture of narcissism.

About This Blog

This is my new blog about my ongoing work Swimming in Paradox based on my feeling that we lack any kind of solid narrative or sense of personal and social morality which are all linked. The paradox is that we are dealing with a world that is overwhelmingly paradoxical when looked at closely.

Underneath our usual activities we are often unsure about how to act or how to react to a variety of situations. We don't know if our food is healthy, we don't know if the pharmaceuticals we take are going to help us or hurt us, we don't know if the wars we fight are good for us or for anyone, we don't know if the company we work for or whatever the work we are doing is ultimately for the good and we don't even know if we are for the good because, in fact, we cannot really articulate the good.

My interest is to help us think about the real world we live in rather than the confused muddle that we notice. There are ways to examine the various issues and problems that swarm around us when we understand who we are and where we are in the stream of history.

My pages will consist of sections of my book as I put it together sometimes in order sometimes not. My posts will reflect my current concerns, bits of research I've uncovered and so on.