More and more often as I read articles or listen to pundits spout their observations about the political processes we are witnessing I am reminded of the painting by numbers advertisements. There is rarely an original and insightful observation. It’s always the same drama that lasts about a week or two to be replaced by the next one.

Currently the political drama features the villain Eric Cantor whose gang of patriots/ruffians has backed the hero/sucker, President Obama up against the wall. But wait, Wonder Woman, his wife is on the way to rescue him with her warmth and wit.

It’s not that there is “no truth” to this story line. It’s simply that it is too simple. Where are the complexities that drive each of the characters in this struggle. It is sophomoric (sorry sophomores) to pretend that it is all about re-election. Are we to believe that none of these people care about anything else?

More to the point of journalistic responsibility is this question: if that is all these people care about, if that is all that any politician really cares about then how are we to be governed?

If that is substantially true, it makes no sense to have elections. Why replace people who only want to get re-elected with other people who only want the same thing?

No one, no overpriced and overpaid pundit is saying anything like this out loud, probably because they ignore the obvious implication of what they do say out loud. But I believe that is the underlying thought combination that has our population depressed about our current political scene. Depressed and frightened because whether or not they remember their history, history is always alive and operative in the present. The Weimar  Republic and its successor reside like siamese fraternal twins in the basement of our brains, waiting for the chance to find their way back onto the stage. They will wear new uniforms, like Shakespearean dramas done in modern dress, but the lines  and the outcome will all be the same.

]]> http://todaysdrama.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/writing-by-the-numbers/feed/ 0 todaysdrama http://todaysdrama.wordpress.com/2011/06/04/the-danger-of-political-pandering/ http://todaysdrama.wordpress.com/2011/06/04/the-danger-of-political-pandering/#comments Sat, 04 Jun 2011 17:11:36 +0000 todaysdrama http://todaysdrama.wordpress.com/?p=163 ]]> Meanwhile, the world whirls its way, with political destructiveness in what could be mistaken for a super bowl like contest with the climate to claim the title of most out of control. The reactivity of some regimes in the middle east is a physical manifestation of the kind of emotional verbalizations of our own process.
There the regimes pander to their own sense of self righteousness; here we watch politicians pander to what the media calls their base. The double meaning of the word “base” seems to elude the punditocracy.

To pander, from an on-line dictionary: The verb meaning “to indulge, to minister to base passions” is first recorded c.1600. The ironic significance of the origin of the word “pander” seems absolutely lost and out of the realm of consideration for all the “news” purveyors who regularly comment knowingly on the need for politicians to speak to and for their political base.
But more important understandings get lost as well. As the media uses the drama of the conflict between the Democratic and Republican bases to sell its daily wares to an audience raised on entertainment, what happens in the reality of our political process is that the idea of representative government gets abandoned.
“He or she is my congressman, my representative in the federal government even though I didn’t vote for him” becomes,” He’s not my representative because I didn’t vote for him.” Now then, how far is it from that position, to “the majority in the Congress does not reflect my views, therefore I don’t have to obey their laws.” Not far enough. Disrespect for the those who make the laws automatically leads to disrespect for the laws.
As always in these kinds of “makes no sense” situations we have to ask ourselves, “who would profit from this process?” Certainly not those who are charged with enforcing the law. Stretched thin, and understaffed as they are from the street level to the regulatory level, the enforcers prefer an environment where, as our Founding Fathers intended, no one, but the Law is King.
No, the ones who profit from an environment that withers the law are those who prefer to live their lives according to their own laws unhampered by police or regulators. The main difference between the thug on the corner and the corporate pirate or the Wall Street manipulator is where they do their business.
The irony that lives in the bones of what pretends to be a populist movement is the way they cherry pick the words of the writers of our constitution, and that their movement is financed by those enormously wealthy individuals who have the most to gain personally from the disembowling of our legal system.

The next morning as I resumed my rumination of what I had heard, the image that popped into my mind was that of a tour guide. It seemed to me that what they had been saying could be most vividly understood within the framework of that metaphor.

Each of them takes the audience on a tour of their inner comedic world and shows them the sights, sometimes odd and strange at first, but then with their safety assured by the skill and confidence of the guide, the audience begins to see what is familiar in what at first seemed so foreign.

I found this image both comforting and intriguing because as I settled into contemplating it I realized it had much broader and deeper application.

The first iteration produced the thought that perhaps all art functions in the same way; that is, the artist in whatever medium, takes the viewer or listener, or reader on a guided tour of his/her artistic world. And when successful, the audience goes through a process similar to that already described. What is initially experienced as different evolves into a mix of the new and the familiar.

The next iteration produced the recollection of learnings from educational psychology which makes the point that we learn new ideas by linking that which is familiar about them to what we already know. Without that available link, we do not learn or understand the new material.

The next to last link was to the way we talk with each other and share the details of our separate lives as we try to establish relationships ranging from that of mutual respect and understanding to appreciation and intimacy. In conversation we can be said to be taking each other on guided tours of the ways and byways that structure our self understanding.

And the final link in this series brought me full circle to a place I have often visited in my explorations of ideas about  who and what we are. Based on an exchange between Bogart and a female character in one of his movies, this idea has rested comfortably in an armchair in the living room of my mind where it watches the world at work and play from a large, and not always clear window.

In the movie the woman is defending the poor behavior of her husband towards Bogart the night before. She says, “you must forgive my husband for his behavior last night; he wasn’t himself.”

Bogart looks at her for just a moment and then says, “Oh, who was he?”

Who are we, when we are not being ourselves? I consider that a question in form only. We are always ourselves, maybe not always our “best” selves, but our selves nevertheless. And in our encounters with each other we are always taking each other on a tour of who and what we are; the demonstration may not be kind, may not even be informative in the way we want it to be. But it does show who we are; we are always tour guides for each other. Even in “costume” we are the owners of our roles.

We were eager to take a closer look, and walked a little faster. I was very eager and got there first and could not make sense out of what I saw. I waved my friends to hurry up, and when they did, they too were momentarily bewildered. The orange car had turned into a deep, but not unusual purple. We began to laugh.

Initially we thought our eyes had played a trick on us, and then, of course knowing that we all experienced the same “vision”, we decided that the sun had played the trick: the angle of the reflection of the light that we saw from where we had been standing gave us the impression of the color that we saw from there; now from a different angel, closer to the car we could see that it wasn’t orange, had never been orange, but was in “fact” purple. My friends left it at that. I did not. i ruminated on the experience, thinking about the sun, and truth, and perception.

What follows now are the thoughts that have gathered themselves around that experience.

One could very reasonably say that the car was never orange; we had a misperception, and upon closer examination found its true color to be purple. That certainly would be a true enough statement of the circumstances.

On the other hand we do know that there are colors in the spectrum we cannot see, and sounds in ranges beyond our ability to hear, so that our perception of color and sound is always constrained by our position in time and space in relation to that at which we are looking. We also know that we are also limited by our physical abilities.

It’s at this point where someone might fall back on the common phrasing that “truth is relative” or, in a more confrontational mode, “one person’s truth is another’s fabrication.”

But confrontation, while good for the entertainment/news currently in vogue, generally does not lead us to a deeper understanding, and I suspect that the notion that “truth is relative” is a short-cut kind of confusion. It seems more likely that truth is what it is, and we are in some kind of relationship to it. That position is what the orange car experience demonstrates.

We can only experience any truth from where we are seeing it. If we stand fast and cling to our position, then that is a choice, not based on the truth as we see it (no matter what we may claim) but on our need to be identified with that truth. In my mind, that position is designed to deny the reality of process and change, and instead insist  on a permanence that does not exist.

Is there then nothing permanent? Yes, but it is not the fixed kind of permanence we fall in love with and long for as children. What is permanent in this universe is the process.

I turn now to Wikipedia for a description of that process:

“In other words, energy cannot be created or destroyed, and energy, in all of its forms, has mass. Mass also cannot be created or destroyed, and in all of its forms, has energy. According to the theory of relativity, mass and energy as commonly understood, are two names for the same thing, and neither one is changed or transformed into the other. Rather, neither one appears without the other. Rather than mass being changed into energy, the view of relativity is that rest mass has been changed to a more mobile form of mass, but remains mass. In this process, neither the amount of mass nor the amount of energy changes. Thus, if energy changes type and leaves a system, it simply takes its mass with it. If either mass or energy disappears from a system, it will always be found that both have simply moved off to another place.”

I would submit that the experiences the wisdom teachers are describing in the language and metaphor of their time and place is the illuminating discovery described above. From one place at one time “The Kingdom of God is within you.”  From another time and place comes the process understanding called Reincarnation.

Quantum physics explains that we do not have to choose, in fact we cannot choose: wave and/or particle is subject to where and how we do our observation. Despite the awkwardness and limitation of our language dominated intellectual understanding both are true at the same time. Again, a nod and quote from Wikipedia:

“Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interaction of matter and energy. “

Thus I conclude that the car was orange and purple at the same time. It didn’t change it’s color; I changed my position.

“Of course,” I thought to myself, “first comes the inspirational experience, then comes the attempt to explain and teach others about it.”

So when Jesus (and other wisdom teachers) says ‘The Kingdom of God is within you,’ He is talking about the inspirational insight he experienced. And along with that experience came the internal requirement to share it with others. So Jesus, and Buddha, and other “revolutionaries”, spiritual, philosophic, economic, political, scientific, whatever category of social experience and at whatever “level” of influence they engage the society of their time are sharing their experience, convinced that their message will help people live better lives.

The paradox is that language is required in order for us to share our experience, and language proceeds in linearity while illumination is all at once. The disciples of the master are always constrained by their cognition and attempt to get beyond that to the illuminating experience by arranging sequences of rituals designed initially to create the environment that will promote the possibility of replicating the illuminating experience.

As time removes generation after generation from the initial experience the leadership of what has now become a “movement” or a “school of thought” or a religion leans more and more heavily on the requirement for people to “believe” what has now become a teaching. And of course with that organization comes rules for membership, tests for certification: Jew, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Doctor, Lawyer, Plumber, Electrician, or REALTOR.

Other signs of faithfulness that distinguish members from all the others are developed and while the original illumination is held up as a flag waving standard, the practical day to day necessities of keeping the organization functional takes over.

In the spiritual realm the original illumination is of universality of opportunity; a connectedness of human life with each other, and with life itself.

In all the other realms including the religious, ideas of truth that are shepherded and promulgated by the organizations become competitive which translates into different levels of aggressiveness and defensiveness.

Belief is a cognitive experience and belief  in the “truth” that now forms the structure of the ongoing system becomes essential. The capacity of the leadership to tolerate ambiguity and new interpretations of that truth determines whether or not the organization itself evolves or forces the new ideas to establish themselves in new movements and new competing schools of thought; thus the Protestant Reformation emerges and itself splinters into new denominations.

The tribal reality of Judaism allowed  it to develop Conservative and Reformed branches whereas Catholicism which incorporated different nations with differing cultures could not contain those differences and maintain its identity.

In response to intellectual challenges which cannot be refuted, belief systems within an individual or an organization either re-structure their beliefs to incorporate the new ideas or transform themselves from belief into faith. Thus faith can be understood to function as a ‘fortressed belief ‘ putting itself beyond the reach of evidence. It makes no difference whether or not the belief system is religious or political or economic. It depends only upon how the evidence is understood to affect the organizational structure.

In this country, at this time, a number of ultra conservative religious organizations have begun to accept the evidence of climate change, while ultra political conservatives (some of whom as individuals belong to both groups) continue to reject the evidence.

Transformative change can occur when the new evidence  manages to get past the defenses, and is incorporated into the existing faith system. When that happens it can re-energize the organization bringing it sometimes into new arenas of activity.

In the case of the conservative religious groups climate change has found a home in the idea of the faithful steward of God’s creation. Such a shift is at least imaginable in the political sphere within the framework of support for the development of sound ecological environments being developed in localities across the country from one cost to the other.

Sometimes, for some of us, the experience of a new way of seeing and understanding the world in all the complexity of its pain and promise becomes in its own way something of an illuminating experience. And while not often enough to light up the larger world with the newness of our understanding, it can be enough to give us the courage to continue.

We share the problems of life, the disappointments, the failures, the promises that couldn’t be kept. Where we differ is in our understanding of the causes of our distress, and the proposed solutions we find most satisfying. I say proposed solutions because if there is a solution that takes place, that automatically implies some satisfaction, whether or not it was our proposal or came from someone else. A solution to a problem removes the problem; we argue only over what is proposed because we do not trust what we do not know.

For the purposes of this discussion, I am suggesting that we each have very different tolerances for ambiguity, and very different requirements for certainty and it is those differences, as they encounter the particular problem, that we find unresolvable. Furthermore I would suggest that it is the difference in our comfort level, or lack of comfort with ambiguity that fuels the emotional fire that burns around the proposed solutions to problems which on the surface seem only to require a dispassionate cognitive analysis.

Interestingly, and perhaps counter intuitively  not only does one man’s insistence on ambiguity threaten another’s confidence in certainty, but the insistence on certainty seems to threaten the other’s confidence in ambiguity. Why else would conversations held by professionals on the subjects of their profession devolve into personal attacks on integrity as they so often do? Why else would we convert facts into sticks to smack each other with?  If I am certain in my certainty or certain in my ambiguity why does your “stubborn” opposition enflame me? If I know what I know, or know that what I know is limited, either way, your opinion of my opinion should engender  in me a curiosity about you. When that happens we can move into dialogue and may find answers different and more satisfying than what either one of us started with. When that doesn’t happen, when instead of curiosity we respond with animosity we are manifesting a vulnerability in our position and rush to defend it as we might rush to defend our sense of self. At that point we have left any attempt at problem solving.

The promise of Communism was to rectify the abuses of the Capitalist system, but in practice the commissars acted just like any opportunistic slick trading financier. We are forced to live with Eric Hoffer’s truth: “you can’t get enough of a substitute”  That simple reality on an individual basis explains Greed. We can leave the system truth to what is credited to Yogi Berra: “In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is.”

Name the country and the political/social system that governs it, and point to any one that isn’t plagued by greed motivated corruption. The best any system can do is to make the consolidation of corruption difficult, if not impossible. To that end our system has held up pretty well, but there is no question that at the moment the result of years of carefully orchestrated indoctrination by the financial elite have us drifting ever more closely to an out right oligarchy.

We assume at great risk that the democratic principals that form the foundation of our political structure are so secure in the hearts and minds of all of our citizens that no one, and certainly no group of people, and least of all enormously wealthy people would deliberately design programs intended to capture political power  while operating behind the mask of grass roots popularism. And yet, that is where we are today.

With the media captured by the economic power of the entertainment industry, and most of us worked silly by the demands of the day that we sit eagerly in front of  banal and hypnotic episodes offered by t.v. dramas and sit-coms just for some relief, we ignore the danger to our political system.

Collaborative decision making is difficult, that is why, to a large degree, plain old people are easily governed leaving political decision making to the “experts”, failing to realize that the political “experts” are themselves manipulated and misled by the architects of the oligarchy.