My last post with the title, “What a Week,” was about racial violence. Although it would be easy to write a new post on all the racial violence that has happened since, I will focus instead on the political mess we (those of us in the States) have created for ourselves. I’ve seen a lot of elections over the years, and I can’t recall any previous election when so many people disliked both candidates. Hold Your Nose and Choose provides a strategy for deciding between the lesser of two evils. One of the jokes making the rounds about the upcoming election is that voting will be like choosing which venereal disease you want. I know a number of intelligent people who are not going to vote or will vote for a third-party candidate in spite of those candidates’ dearth of qualifications. I won’t mention any names….
Meanwhile, we need to have answers to the question, “What is Aleppo?” If nothing else, Aleppo exemplifies life in the Mideast at this point. Life in the Mideast has, of course, never been easy. People there were having problems before the crusades and even before the Roman occupation. Bitter cultural memories last a long time. You may remember the Bosnian War, which pitted the Serbs against the Bosnians, but if you dig into the history of the area, you will learn that what happened in the twentieth century was getting even for what happened in the thirteenth century.
Those of us living in the West have no right to feel smug. We too, have the primitive impulses to get even for past wrongs and to justify current aggression. In the States, we currently have ongoing conflicts between Native Americans and ranchers and between Native Americans and the gas and oil industry. We also have ongoing conflicts between the descendants of slaves and descendants of slave owners. In addition, we have conflicts between those who support the fossil fuel industry and those who monitor global climate change and favor solar and wind power.
You may have noticed when you read the above that you have a personal vested interest in more than one of the ongoing conflicts, even if have not been personally influenced by the related history. That history, however, is influencing our current Zeitgeist, or “spirit of the time.” Our anxieties are high for good reason. Facebook is only one example of our expanded (and expanding) opportunities for self-expression and communication. In the States, most of us have both an Internet connection and cable TV. Most people who can, want to stay “tuned in.” In the 1960s, Timothy Leary advocated turning on (with marijuana or LSD), tuning in (to “higher vibrations”), and dropping out (of main-stream culture). This was the hippie experience (for more on this, see my article in the Beyond Mastery Newsletter.
There’s more than one way to tune in and drop out, of course. Meditation, whether sitting in meditation or a moving meditation (walking, running, swimming, or other movement-based repetitive activity). Regardless of what actions you might wish to take, a calm, relaxed mind and body are probably going to be more helpful in choosing what you say and do than an excited and worried mind. If you, like me, want to have a positive influence on the future of humanity, to the best of your ability, chose your actions to help create the future you desire. Mahatma Gandhi is often quoted as having said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” That’s the basic idea, but what Gandhi actually said was a bit more sophisticated:
“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.” – Mahatma Gandhi
The natural human tendency is to do unto others as they have done to us rather than doing to others what we would have them do to us. That saying is known as Golden Rule for good reason. That rule is the standard for being the change you wish to see in the world.
One of the reasons I discuss politics and vote is that I believe in democracy. I have no desire to be an isolated hermit living off the land some place where there are no other humans—if such places still exist. Even though I am not a very social person, I enjoy many of the advantages communities have to offer. Good restaurants and grocery stores come to mind. “Community” implies “cooperative living,” “division of labor,” and “monetary exchange.”
Such things (and more) imply shared government. They also imply shared values. We can have different religions, different ethnicities, and a variety of behavioral difference as long as we have shared values. They also imply inclusion rather than exclusion. I am simply not concerned about someone of a different gender or different sexual orientation using the same bathroom as I do. To the best of my ability, I want the government here in the States to be inclusive, to be of the people, by the people, and for the people.
I feel obligated to do what I can, and the one thing I can do is vote, even if that means voting for the lesser of two evils.
