Person @ Stake
The Person is @Stake...
The very idea of person is under assault from all quarters, though never mentioned... "Conservatives" now only defend the human unborn, while "liberals" everywhere are shell-shocked with the rejection of their very reasonableness... "Salvation prosperity" seduces religionists... and "Holy Nationalism" jumps into "every man's" bed as a nimble and seductive mistress... Crisis is everywhere and amplified by those intent upon their angle for power... And fear is actively cultivated as Big Business... Meanwhile, the sanctity of person is lost in the general hysteria...
Average American Jane and Joe are divided by "feminist libtard" and "regressive con": tantrums are thrown on social media with new cutting names flippantly applied to every single difference. It is no longer an occasional lack of civility, but a cultivated crudeness, as if idiocy were a compliment or evidence of some sort of superior intelligence: but every Jane and every Joe are the ones who suffer: the Dominant System never does. In fact, the System has been designed for this very purpose: so long as the average Jane and Joe are divided, one from the other, the System itself is safely in Power... An epigram of this Systemic Reality would go something like this: "Happy the System that is served by the distraction of those whom It intends to Manipulate, Control, and eventually Consume."
Take a look at the comments on news articles, on Facebook, or on any number of personal blogs: the "cuttings" are everywhere! A "one-dimensional consciousness" is on the loose! "Libtard and Con" compete with the epithets of the selectively saved in a whirlwind of cultivated distraction: Power signs an Executive Order: some applaud with their "gottchas" and resisters vow to return to the streets: while Power contentedly marches on... When no one is looking, Average American Jane and Joe -- in their narrow focus on selected issues and reactions -- are silently feeding the beast who hides his hammer and whip behind the doors we cannot touch... The "one-dimensional consciousness", that is the epidemic of our time, is precisely that which gives Power its ability to rape this Planet and to ridiculously plan for its own survival when all is laid to waste...
Is there a solution that can enliven and unite both the "libtard and the con"? Is there anything at all that can renew a genuine spirituality of love-unleashed? If all politics is the acquisition and use of "power", can such politics be transformed from "power over" to "power in service of"? If the sight -- seen by millions the world-over -- of a Syrian child lying dead upon a seashore, or of a father and daughter dead on the shore of the Rio Grande -- cannot usher in a global transformation of heart, is there any hope left at all? It seems to me that the issue that lurks behind every issue and even our assumptions of "reality" is that of an "individual I" in contrast to a "person in relationship with the whole"...
The "I" wants to live and then to live forever: the "I" wants the satisfaction of every whim: the "I" wants a selection of preferences, an ease of satisfactions, and the happiness of an avoidance of suffering (for as long as possible): the "I" wants to be blissfully-deluded -- without thinking or knowing -- that nothing matters, save for the "I"... and on and on into a fabricated self and the loneliness of a "blue perfection"... Further, this "I" is always afraid: this "I" needs to share his fear by amplifying it in everyone and in everything around him: he knows that with fear comes untold opportunities for Power: manipulation becomes a game, privilege is the win: control is the winners spoil: domination is the nightly wet dream... That all of this is an illusory life never, in the least way, dawns upon the "I" in pursuit, endlessly, of more "I"... "I" fits perfectly within the Sacred Folds of the Dominator Paradigm: the Unholy Trinity of Profits, Privilege, and Power is gloriously served by a multitude of "I's"...
Ah, but where you can feel a soft wind against your cheek in the pause of your day, every leaf is the memory of the Canticle of the Creatures sung by Brother St. Francis on his wanderings through the hills of Umbria. And suddenly you can see yourself stripping naked like him and turning in the Sun and welcoming your Second Birth! You are Person! As person you are naturally free: no one ever gives you freedom: Power may claim the right to take it from you, to manipulate, control, or even eat your bowels in a lust for total domination: but as person, you cannot be fooled: you are free! As person, you have escaped the "one-dimensional consciousness": as person, you have awakened into Sacred Imagination: you have heard the Divine Conversation: "What if?" "Why not?" And "What next?" As person you are an "I" only for the sake of social communication: but you never forget that you are person: a flavor of the Quantum Consciousness: "I am You, You are Me, and We are All together: One." As person, you know that your self is now, and ever shall be, the Self that is the Web of Oneness within which all systems of life inter-relate in the eternal reality of inter-being: "one dimensional consciousness" is forgotten in the awakened multi-dimensional consciousness of "We were created by Love, for Love, to become Love." (Simone Weil). As person: Consciousness, Energy, and Imagination is the Real Reality: the Divine Trinity of Endless Possibilities existing within you -- and you know this peace and justice with the certainty of equality: this "same" is true for every other person and for all of creation...
We must learn how to see through the divisions fostered by the "one-dimensional consciousness" that always, in every way, serves the Unholy Trinity of Profits, Privilege, and Power. We must learn to see through Power's manipulations to the truth of our unity: every Average Jane and Joe are "average" only so long as they live in forgetfulness of their identity as persons: as separate "I's". "I's" can be identified: persons are infinite and without boundaries. "I's" need walls both for comfort and for distraction: persons know that their true Self includes everyone else -- so why not celebrate and have a feast and party? [If "I" were President, I would ask for volunteers to build a long series of volleyball courts as the new border between the United States and our friends in Mexico. And I would find donors to buy the balls needed for all the games we would be having.] The philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote, "I would rather be mad with truth than sane with lies." Beginning to practice the remembrance of this "mad truth" of person is our last, best, chance...
"The evils stem simply from the unrestricted pursuit of profit. Behind the manipulative deceptions there are capitalist desperados holding up the society for all the loot they can lay hands on... How to sustain the oak tree? More important, how to avoid crushing the wildflower? And yet such is the project that confronts those of us who are concerned with radical social change." (Theodore Roszak)
Getting To The Point
If, in fact (or truth), the person is the focal point of both consciousness and being, then it follows that we must include "in person" the complete ecological dynamic from which the person has arisen: not the "I", but the inter-being of existence is the Divine Root... Forget the need for the cause of control: rather, we must imagine desire rising and causing the ecstatic release of numberless possibilities: a symbiosis -- or tapestry -- called "Nature" or "Mother"... This is the primal wisdom of Lao-Tzu and the Way... Perhaps this outlook -- or, if you prefer, this "in-look" -- better than anything else clarifies the essential distortion of modern economics and politics: we can't (and shouldn't want to) raise the Gross National Product or strive to increase economic growth, but instead concentrate our energy and resourcefulness in developing a Planetary means for living happily...
Wouldn't it make more sense to prioritize play versus work? In other words, the human person is the scale of values that needs deep consideration: the human person expanding her consciousness in a vital state of inter-being with her natural environment. To play would mean to conserve and regenerate natural resources: to reverence the dynamic systems that facilitate life: and to scale back the mad rush to "more" to the pleasure of relationships, neighborhood, and village... To play would mean to activate one's participation in democracy and to establish kindness and compassion as the primary tenets of religion and spirituality. To play would be to re-invent intentional community: to fill one's days with love and respect: to understand that pleasure is both a right and a divine communion: and to live by mutual-aid in a network of friendships...
As person, we leap well beyond the limitations of static definitions: as person, we are a unique blend of opposites. We are the true conservative and the liberation of the radical: for we want to conserve what we have of Earth and regenerate for future generations: and we are the ones who want to re-invent the practice of mutual-aid and neighborhoods of genuine community. We want to enliven experimental inquiry and honor the questions that out-pace the answers. We want a bottom-up participatory democracy: we refuse to believe that life is supposed to be either boring or explicitly painful. Loving is a communitarian experience: enough of this vapid conformity to limitation! Communities that form partnerships in "ten-block" areas: safe housing for everyone, education for everyone, work and crafts for everyone, organic gardens and wilds for everyone, village care for children, differently-abled, and elders, recreation for everyone, health care for everyone, festivals for everyone, responsible and rotating leadership that includes everyone, equality and gender reconciliation, music and the arts for everyone, and a practical design for networking community-to-community... As persons, living is meant to be a joy...
The very idea of person is under assault from all quarters, though never mentioned... "Conservatives" now only defend the human unborn, while "liberals" everywhere are shell-shocked with the rejection of their very reasonableness... "Salvation prosperity" seduces religionists... and "Holy Nationalism" jumps into "every man's" bed as a nimble and seductive mistress... Crisis is everywhere and amplified by those intent upon their angle for power... And fear is actively cultivated as Big Business... Meanwhile, the sanctity of person is lost in the general hysteria...
Average American Jane and Joe are divided by "feminist libtard" and "regressive con": tantrums are thrown on social media with new cutting names flippantly applied to every single difference. It is no longer an occasional lack of civility, but a cultivated crudeness, as if idiocy were a compliment or evidence of some sort of superior intelligence: but every Jane and every Joe are the ones who suffer: the Dominant System never does. In fact, the System has been designed for this very purpose: so long as the average Jane and Joe are divided, one from the other, the System itself is safely in Power... An epigram of this Systemic Reality would go something like this: "Happy the System that is served by the distraction of those whom It intends to Manipulate, Control, and eventually Consume."
Take a look at the comments on news articles, on Facebook, or on any number of personal blogs: the "cuttings" are everywhere! A "one-dimensional consciousness" is on the loose! "Libtard and Con" compete with the epithets of the selectively saved in a whirlwind of cultivated distraction: Power signs an Executive Order: some applaud with their "gottchas" and resisters vow to return to the streets: while Power contentedly marches on... When no one is looking, Average American Jane and Joe -- in their narrow focus on selected issues and reactions -- are silently feeding the beast who hides his hammer and whip behind the doors we cannot touch... The "one-dimensional consciousness", that is the epidemic of our time, is precisely that which gives Power its ability to rape this Planet and to ridiculously plan for its own survival when all is laid to waste...
Is there a solution that can enliven and unite both the "libtard and the con"? Is there anything at all that can renew a genuine spirituality of love-unleashed? If all politics is the acquisition and use of "power", can such politics be transformed from "power over" to "power in service of"? If the sight -- seen by millions the world-over -- of a Syrian child lying dead upon a seashore, or of a father and daughter dead on the shore of the Rio Grande -- cannot usher in a global transformation of heart, is there any hope left at all? It seems to me that the issue that lurks behind every issue and even our assumptions of "reality" is that of an "individual I" in contrast to a "person in relationship with the whole"...
The "I" wants to live and then to live forever: the "I" wants the satisfaction of every whim: the "I" wants a selection of preferences, an ease of satisfactions, and the happiness of an avoidance of suffering (for as long as possible): the "I" wants to be blissfully-deluded -- without thinking or knowing -- that nothing matters, save for the "I"... and on and on into a fabricated self and the loneliness of a "blue perfection"... Further, this "I" is always afraid: this "I" needs to share his fear by amplifying it in everyone and in everything around him: he knows that with fear comes untold opportunities for Power: manipulation becomes a game, privilege is the win: control is the winners spoil: domination is the nightly wet dream... That all of this is an illusory life never, in the least way, dawns upon the "I" in pursuit, endlessly, of more "I"... "I" fits perfectly within the Sacred Folds of the Dominator Paradigm: the Unholy Trinity of Profits, Privilege, and Power is gloriously served by a multitude of "I's"...
Ah, but where you can feel a soft wind against your cheek in the pause of your day, every leaf is the memory of the Canticle of the Creatures sung by Brother St. Francis on his wanderings through the hills of Umbria. And suddenly you can see yourself stripping naked like him and turning in the Sun and welcoming your Second Birth! You are Person! As person you are naturally free: no one ever gives you freedom: Power may claim the right to take it from you, to manipulate, control, or even eat your bowels in a lust for total domination: but as person, you cannot be fooled: you are free! As person, you have escaped the "one-dimensional consciousness": as person, you have awakened into Sacred Imagination: you have heard the Divine Conversation: "What if?" "Why not?" And "What next?" As person you are an "I" only for the sake of social communication: but you never forget that you are person: a flavor of the Quantum Consciousness: "I am You, You are Me, and We are All together: One." As person, you know that your self is now, and ever shall be, the Self that is the Web of Oneness within which all systems of life inter-relate in the eternal reality of inter-being: "one dimensional consciousness" is forgotten in the awakened multi-dimensional consciousness of "We were created by Love, for Love, to become Love." (Simone Weil). As person: Consciousness, Energy, and Imagination is the Real Reality: the Divine Trinity of Endless Possibilities existing within you -- and you know this peace and justice with the certainty of equality: this "same" is true for every other person and for all of creation...
We must learn how to see through the divisions fostered by the "one-dimensional consciousness" that always, in every way, serves the Unholy Trinity of Profits, Privilege, and Power. We must learn to see through Power's manipulations to the truth of our unity: every Average Jane and Joe are "average" only so long as they live in forgetfulness of their identity as persons: as separate "I's". "I's" can be identified: persons are infinite and without boundaries. "I's" need walls both for comfort and for distraction: persons know that their true Self includes everyone else -- so why not celebrate and have a feast and party? [If "I" were President, I would ask for volunteers to build a long series of volleyball courts as the new border between the United States and our friends in Mexico. And I would find donors to buy the balls needed for all the games we would be having.] The philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote, "I would rather be mad with truth than sane with lies." Beginning to practice the remembrance of this "mad truth" of person is our last, best, chance...
"The evils stem simply from the unrestricted pursuit of profit. Behind the manipulative deceptions there are capitalist desperados holding up the society for all the loot they can lay hands on... How to sustain the oak tree? More important, how to avoid crushing the wildflower? And yet such is the project that confronts those of us who are concerned with radical social change." (Theodore Roszak)
Getting To The Point
If, in fact (or truth), the person is the focal point of both consciousness and being, then it follows that we must include "in person" the complete ecological dynamic from which the person has arisen: not the "I", but the inter-being of existence is the Divine Root... Forget the need for the cause of control: rather, we must imagine desire rising and causing the ecstatic release of numberless possibilities: a symbiosis -- or tapestry -- called "Nature" or "Mother"... This is the primal wisdom of Lao-Tzu and the Way... Perhaps this outlook -- or, if you prefer, this "in-look" -- better than anything else clarifies the essential distortion of modern economics and politics: we can't (and shouldn't want to) raise the Gross National Product or strive to increase economic growth, but instead concentrate our energy and resourcefulness in developing a Planetary means for living happily...
Wouldn't it make more sense to prioritize play versus work? In other words, the human person is the scale of values that needs deep consideration: the human person expanding her consciousness in a vital state of inter-being with her natural environment. To play would mean to conserve and regenerate natural resources: to reverence the dynamic systems that facilitate life: and to scale back the mad rush to "more" to the pleasure of relationships, neighborhood, and village... To play would mean to activate one's participation in democracy and to establish kindness and compassion as the primary tenets of religion and spirituality. To play would be to re-invent intentional community: to fill one's days with love and respect: to understand that pleasure is both a right and a divine communion: and to live by mutual-aid in a network of friendships...
As person, we leap well beyond the limitations of static definitions: as person, we are a unique blend of opposites. We are the true conservative and the liberation of the radical: for we want to conserve what we have of Earth and regenerate for future generations: and we are the ones who want to re-invent the practice of mutual-aid and neighborhoods of genuine community. We want to enliven experimental inquiry and honor the questions that out-pace the answers. We want a bottom-up participatory democracy: we refuse to believe that life is supposed to be either boring or explicitly painful. Loving is a communitarian experience: enough of this vapid conformity to limitation! Communities that form partnerships in "ten-block" areas: safe housing for everyone, education for everyone, work and crafts for everyone, organic gardens and wilds for everyone, village care for children, differently-abled, and elders, recreation for everyone, health care for everyone, festivals for everyone, responsible and rotating leadership that includes everyone, equality and gender reconciliation, music and the arts for everyone, and a practical design for networking community-to-community... As persons, living is meant to be a joy...