A Thanksgiving Message — Calling Forth Our Sane and Sacred Center:
From Divide-and-Conquer to Unite and Prevail
“We the people must oversee what our overseers have been overlooking.”
— Swami Beyondananda
Now that the most toxic election of our lifetime seems to be resolved, let us congratulate ourselves on making the better of two binary choices, to take our country back from self-serving lies, divisive meanness, and autocratic rule. We have excised the malignancy, and now we must deal with the chronic heart disease that allowed the opportunistic infection to take hold.
We now face the even more challenging task of taking our country forward. This cannot be done by one political party, or even a faction of a political party. It requires cultivating a “sane and sacred center” that reflects the virtues and values that the 90% of us who aren’t sociopaths hold dear and have been unable to assert because of the toxic divisiveness that has characterized our “bi-polar” political system.
In my Medium post this past August I call for a two-step program:
Step One. Take Our Country Back — De-Elect the Misleader
Step Two. Take Our Country Forward — Bring Americans Together to Face the Music and Dance Together
We have taken the first step, indicating that collectively, we prefer working together to spending our time, energy, resource and attention fighting one another. While it hasn’t been fully articulated, we are ready to evolve past the tug-of-war that has been pulling us apart, to a “tug-of-peace” where we all pull together in the same healthy, coherent direction.
And that means gently yet firmly taking our attention and energy off the old Newtonian battlefield of force vs. force, and onto a new quantum playing field where the dueling dualities of left/ right, yin/yang, growth/protection become dynamic duo dance partners.
Yes, it sounds like an ideal all right.
Fortunately, we have the ways and means to turn the ideal into the real deal, if we intentionally use the next four years as a transition period from oligarchic rule to self-governance. The good news is, the same technology that has been used from the top down to manipulate public opinion can be used from the bottom up to cultivate and focus public will.
Imagine … three new independent institutions that will help counterbalance the unchecked, unbalanced, unmitigated power of money, help us overcome the misperceptions that have divided us, give us the opportunity to collectively collaborate on finding solutions, and then being able to present these solutions to our legislators, just as corporations and other special interests present their legislation to our “robber-stamp” Congress.
These new institutions include National Town Square Advisory Voting that will give every registered voter a free, verifiable (as secure as your bank card) advisory vote on the issues that impact us — this site will be nonpartisan, non-governmental, not influenced by media, and non-commercial. Your information will not be mined, and in fact all it needs to know about you is your zip code. Imagine what would happen when 50 or 100 or 150 million people speak in one coherent voice. Not only would our legislators recognize our political strength acting collectively beyond the two-party narrative, but we would also recognize our own power.
The second institution is already being created, and now must scale up. Organizations like Living Room Conversations and Braver Angels have been bringing individuals on both sides together to “re-humanize” one another — to listen to one another respectfully, to honor the other viewpoint rather than seeking to change it, and to lay the groundwork for fruitful collaboration that moves past defending positions to addressing and solving vexing problems. Imagine a much larger conversation — on a reality TV show scale — where citizens from all sides from all across the country, reflected on our shared purpose, and how we fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence as we become wise citizens worthy of self-governance. (If you think this is not possible, consider this — it’s necessary!)
Finally, imagine citizens from all sides coming together to work on specific issues, to come up with breakthrough policies that move past “compromise” to what sociologist Johan Galtung calls the “Fifth Way” — creative solutions that are only possible when conflicting parties stop staring each other in the face, and turn to look at the situation from their own perspective, listen intently, learn from one another, and see new possibilities. For decades, visionary activists like Tom Atlee, Jim Rough and many others have been perfecting practices for gathering the “wisdom of crowds” — how ordinary people given the proper guidelines can come up with extraordinary wisdom. Now imagine these collaborations leading to legislative proposals that 70% of Americans would support.
Democracy — or more accurately put, government of, by, and for the people — has just experienced a “near-death experience.” We are at a collective choice point. We can fall back to try to achieve a “normal” that can never create the future we all desire. Or, we can use the significant emotional event to say … NEVER AGAIN. Never again will we allow ourselves to be divided and conquered … because we have the wisdom to unite and prevail.
I give thanks that we have taken the first big step to restore the heart and soul of who we are. May we celebrate next Thanksgiving with our family members, all sides together on the same team, using our differences to work together and truly celebrating e pluribus unum — out of many, one.
