The Greening of America
Introduction
Predatory capitalism: chewing up and spitting out both Planet and People: are you satisfied with the trinkets advertised your way? Are your hopes and dreams coming to fruition? No worries about income inequality? No worries about democracy? Well, maybe the Dominator Paradigm is working perfectly -- or good enough -- for you: but does it not trouble you that 85 people have as much wealth as the "bottom" 3.5 billion? Maybe you believe the politician, businessman, and executioner: this is the greatest system ever in the history of humanity... But then again, perhaps you are looking for other and better possibilities, before you too are crushed and all that is left of Earth is a wasteland...
How are the economic and political workings of modern society organized? Supra-national corporations, financial institutions, and national governments each have their role is serving the primary goals of maximizing profit and concentrating power: regardless of the cost to people and the Earth. What are the means utilized by these blended-entities? 1) use of technology, police, and military to control, intimidate, and eliminate opposition -- especially in developing countries; 2) control of the media, which enables dis-information and inadequate information to prevent an understanding of the causes of social injustice; 3) globalization of the economy -- concentrating production in developing countries to minimize labor costs and producing for throw-away consumption to create the illusion of success; 4) weakening, with the intention of eliminating, organized labor; 5) liberal tax laws and regulations that further serve to concentrate wealth into fewer and fewer hands and corporations; 6) reduction of social investments and public services; and 6) use of the World Bank and other trans-national institutions and treaties to reduce the financial powers of national governments.
Of course, this is but a surface glance at our modern society: the role of religion, especially, in "blessing" an economics of domination, oppression, and exploitation is no small thing: perhaps that is the price it pays for stonewalling criticism of religion's many justifications for oppressing women... In the Christian West, how the Gospel of Love, Simple Living, and Human Solidarity came to be re-translated as the "Gospel of Accepted Greed, Exploitation, and Injustice" is a wonder worth pages of exploration... To identify these initial points as aspects of the Dominator Paradigm is really meant to turn our gaze in the direction of heart's dream: our desire for community, our love for the Earth, and our spiritual hunger for the Holy One...
Yeshua the Poet, Hildegard the Singer, Rumi the Ecstatic, Francis the Servant, and Dorothy the Worker each speak to the vast spaces of our dreams and sacred imaginations: through them, we may enter a realm entirely different from that of the "modern": perhaps in consideration of them, there is no better place to begin than with a hearty, "Welcome Home!" "Welcome Home" reveals the simple abundance of the possibilities of pleasure, of "enough", and of contentment: the hallmarks of community, health, happiness, and well-being... A communal gathering around a table and hearth has, since time immemorial, been the single most human understanding of family, meaning, and purpose... The miracle of the "Lord's Supper" was not that it was his last one, but that it sacramentalized our common humanity: this cup, this bread, is for you: pass it on, without end, until everyone is fed and everyone is part of the circle... From this sacramentalized perspective, all economics, politics, and power exists only to serve and move us toward this illuminating end...
It is Love that stirs our hearts and imaginations. It is Love that feeds our bodies, sustains our lives, and awakens our souls. It is Love that compels our contemplation and adoration. It is Love that walks with us into the Wilds and it is Love that inspires our passionate desires to preserve and protect our sacred home, Earth. And it is Love that transforms our consciousness from the isolation of "self" to the revelation of "I am You, You are Me, and We are All Together One": propelling our conscious acts seven generations into the future. We live, move, and have our being in a reality that extends infinitely both backwards and forwards in time: we name that reality "One Love" (of course, many other Names are also used: but isn't that always the way of lovers?). The insights of "this cup, this bread, pass it on" are meant to become for us both a way of life and a plan for organization and action: to hang one's hat upon the praxis of love-in-action is to participate in the redemption and re-creation of time: hospitality and a simple abundance -- more than enough for all -- is the ever-present miracle of One Love: now...
Love Is An Action -- Never Simply a Feeling
"Love is an action, never simply a feeling" -- this quote from bell hooks is meant to grab us by the scruff of our neck: jerk us clean out our ordinary lives filled with our ordinary views of reality: what is really Real? What is true in the gut where we breathe? The means to putting money in our pockets is our religion, as it is our politics, our culture, and lastly, our economics. The great "uncomfortable-ness" of modern life is the separation of our lives into a multitude of "parts". Lacking wholeness, and the richness of living a relaxed satisfaction, we attempt to fill our emptiness with something / anything that offers some relief of our secret discontent... (if one is not familiar with the writings and insights of the great American Poet, Philosopher, Writer and Farmer, Wendell Berry: please consider giving some hours to any of his writings: for Berry is, first and foremost, a Prophet of the Human and Good: and essential reading for anyone serious about personal and social transformation). Our consumerist culture simply cannot give birth to a "satisfied human being" because our economy requires endless consumption / expansion which likewise requires endless dissatisfaction, boredom, and disillusionment: behold the condition of modern civilization! AND, of course, those at the top of the Dominator Paradigm (the religious-economic-political ladder) have only one NEED for the satisfaction of their hunger for unlimited wealth and power: YOU MUST NOT AWAKEN!
Contrast the functioning oligarchy of the 21st century version of the Dominator Paradigm with this quote from Mahatma Gandhi: "Economic equality is the master key to nonviolent independence." On every level this is true. Because of the profound inequality of real wealth and power -- and the vast majority of Americans and Earth Citizens -- the world is awash with violence: violence is always the justification for every following act of violence: and the citizens fear of becoming a victim of violence "justifies" the arms trade of the military-industrial-technological complex, gun manufacturers and propagandists, so-called "citizen militias", street gangs, and so on... each and all actually in the service of the Dominator Paradigm and the world-ruling oligarchy. We are enslaved to the exact degree that we have "bought into" the myths supporting this "system": a militant, with gun in hand, standing anywhere in the world, while thinking that he is "free" because he has taken up arms in resistance, is actually the perfect "poster boy" for the system at work: fully alive and reaping the wealth sown by violence, exploitation, and oppression: there is no fundamental difference between the right-wing "militia" parading around the Bundy Ranch in Nevada, Chicago drug / street gangs, and the Taliban in Afghanistan: no one has bought into the myths of the Dominator Paradigm to a greater degree than he who holds a gun...
It is precisely "under the belly of the beast" where the greatest work needs to be done: culture, religion, economics, and politics converge in every living room, around every dinner table, at every work site, in every recreational activity, in every classroom, and in every single conversation: everything that we do is of a seamless nature, invariably woven with threads related to every other thread: do you use heroin? Well then, welcome to the "New World Order"! You are probably funding the Taliban in Afghanistan -- and you may have paid for the bullet that shot a young girl who had the audacity of wanting an education! Do you smoke pot? Congratulations -- the plant from which your pleasure derives requires 6 gallons of water everyday -- and at the very same time, millions of people don't have clean drinking water... Everything is connected to everything else! It is in the advancement of a "Constructive Program" that considers all of our decision-making (both personal and social) with profound reverence and regard for the children who will be alive seven generations from now where we need to focus thought and energy...
To be continued...
Predatory capitalism: chewing up and spitting out both Planet and People: are you satisfied with the trinkets advertised your way? Are your hopes and dreams coming to fruition? No worries about income inequality? No worries about democracy? Well, maybe the Dominator Paradigm is working perfectly -- or good enough -- for you: but does it not trouble you that 85 people have as much wealth as the "bottom" 3.5 billion? Maybe you believe the politician, businessman, and executioner: this is the greatest system ever in the history of humanity... But then again, perhaps you are looking for other and better possibilities, before you too are crushed and all that is left of Earth is a wasteland...
How are the economic and political workings of modern society organized? Supra-national corporations, financial institutions, and national governments each have their role is serving the primary goals of maximizing profit and concentrating power: regardless of the cost to people and the Earth. What are the means utilized by these blended-entities? 1) use of technology, police, and military to control, intimidate, and eliminate opposition -- especially in developing countries; 2) control of the media, which enables dis-information and inadequate information to prevent an understanding of the causes of social injustice; 3) globalization of the economy -- concentrating production in developing countries to minimize labor costs and producing for throw-away consumption to create the illusion of success; 4) weakening, with the intention of eliminating, organized labor; 5) liberal tax laws and regulations that further serve to concentrate wealth into fewer and fewer hands and corporations; 6) reduction of social investments and public services; and 6) use of the World Bank and other trans-national institutions and treaties to reduce the financial powers of national governments.
Of course, this is but a surface glance at our modern society: the role of religion, especially, in "blessing" an economics of domination, oppression, and exploitation is no small thing: perhaps that is the price it pays for stonewalling criticism of religion's many justifications for oppressing women... In the Christian West, how the Gospel of Love, Simple Living, and Human Solidarity came to be re-translated as the "Gospel of Accepted Greed, Exploitation, and Injustice" is a wonder worth pages of exploration... To identify these initial points as aspects of the Dominator Paradigm is really meant to turn our gaze in the direction of heart's dream: our desire for community, our love for the Earth, and our spiritual hunger for the Holy One...
Yeshua the Poet, Hildegard the Singer, Rumi the Ecstatic, Francis the Servant, and Dorothy the Worker each speak to the vast spaces of our dreams and sacred imaginations: through them, we may enter a realm entirely different from that of the "modern": perhaps in consideration of them, there is no better place to begin than with a hearty, "Welcome Home!" "Welcome Home" reveals the simple abundance of the possibilities of pleasure, of "enough", and of contentment: the hallmarks of community, health, happiness, and well-being... A communal gathering around a table and hearth has, since time immemorial, been the single most human understanding of family, meaning, and purpose... The miracle of the "Lord's Supper" was not that it was his last one, but that it sacramentalized our common humanity: this cup, this bread, is for you: pass it on, without end, until everyone is fed and everyone is part of the circle... From this sacramentalized perspective, all economics, politics, and power exists only to serve and move us toward this illuminating end...
It is Love that stirs our hearts and imaginations. It is Love that feeds our bodies, sustains our lives, and awakens our souls. It is Love that compels our contemplation and adoration. It is Love that walks with us into the Wilds and it is Love that inspires our passionate desires to preserve and protect our sacred home, Earth. And it is Love that transforms our consciousness from the isolation of "self" to the revelation of "I am You, You are Me, and We are All Together One": propelling our conscious acts seven generations into the future. We live, move, and have our being in a reality that extends infinitely both backwards and forwards in time: we name that reality "One Love" (of course, many other Names are also used: but isn't that always the way of lovers?). The insights of "this cup, this bread, pass it on" are meant to become for us both a way of life and a plan for organization and action: to hang one's hat upon the praxis of love-in-action is to participate in the redemption and re-creation of time: hospitality and a simple abundance -- more than enough for all -- is the ever-present miracle of One Love: now...
Love Is An Action -- Never Simply a Feeling
"Love is an action, never simply a feeling" -- this quote from bell hooks is meant to grab us by the scruff of our neck: jerk us clean out our ordinary lives filled with our ordinary views of reality: what is really Real? What is true in the gut where we breathe? The means to putting money in our pockets is our religion, as it is our politics, our culture, and lastly, our economics. The great "uncomfortable-ness" of modern life is the separation of our lives into a multitude of "parts". Lacking wholeness, and the richness of living a relaxed satisfaction, we attempt to fill our emptiness with something / anything that offers some relief of our secret discontent... (if one is not familiar with the writings and insights of the great American Poet, Philosopher, Writer and Farmer, Wendell Berry: please consider giving some hours to any of his writings: for Berry is, first and foremost, a Prophet of the Human and Good: and essential reading for anyone serious about personal and social transformation). Our consumerist culture simply cannot give birth to a "satisfied human being" because our economy requires endless consumption / expansion which likewise requires endless dissatisfaction, boredom, and disillusionment: behold the condition of modern civilization! AND, of course, those at the top of the Dominator Paradigm (the religious-economic-political ladder) have only one NEED for the satisfaction of their hunger for unlimited wealth and power: YOU MUST NOT AWAKEN!
Contrast the functioning oligarchy of the 21st century version of the Dominator Paradigm with this quote from Mahatma Gandhi: "Economic equality is the master key to nonviolent independence." On every level this is true. Because of the profound inequality of real wealth and power -- and the vast majority of Americans and Earth Citizens -- the world is awash with violence: violence is always the justification for every following act of violence: and the citizens fear of becoming a victim of violence "justifies" the arms trade of the military-industrial-technological complex, gun manufacturers and propagandists, so-called "citizen militias", street gangs, and so on... each and all actually in the service of the Dominator Paradigm and the world-ruling oligarchy. We are enslaved to the exact degree that we have "bought into" the myths supporting this "system": a militant, with gun in hand, standing anywhere in the world, while thinking that he is "free" because he has taken up arms in resistance, is actually the perfect "poster boy" for the system at work: fully alive and reaping the wealth sown by violence, exploitation, and oppression: there is no fundamental difference between the right-wing "militia" parading around the Bundy Ranch in Nevada, Chicago drug / street gangs, and the Taliban in Afghanistan: no one has bought into the myths of the Dominator Paradigm to a greater degree than he who holds a gun...
It is precisely "under the belly of the beast" where the greatest work needs to be done: culture, religion, economics, and politics converge in every living room, around every dinner table, at every work site, in every recreational activity, in every classroom, and in every single conversation: everything that we do is of a seamless nature, invariably woven with threads related to every other thread: do you use heroin? Well then, welcome to the "New World Order"! You are probably funding the Taliban in Afghanistan -- and you may have paid for the bullet that shot a young girl who had the audacity of wanting an education! Do you smoke pot? Congratulations -- the plant from which your pleasure derives requires 6 gallons of water everyday -- and at the very same time, millions of people don't have clean drinking water... Everything is connected to everything else! It is in the advancement of a "Constructive Program" that considers all of our decision-making (both personal and social) with profound reverence and regard for the children who will be alive seven generations from now where we need to focus thought and energy...
To be continued...