The Origins of the Universal Themes of our Lives

All words are built upon all words.

The above quote is mine, oft repeated to my children during their formative years.

How do I come by this statement, and what does it mean?

When I was a child, I received a special Christmas gift from my great uncle. It was a collection of Greek myths, vetted for the young reader. I read that book over and over, until the page corners were all dog-eared and soft as leather When I later read the library many of us call “The Holy Bible,” I was struck by thematic similarities in the stories. The Bible even contains duplications of stories, each version with a slight difference—and I could also see thematic similarities between Greek mythology and Scripture. What could be more similar than the theme of the hero surviving multiple trials? And what could be more true of everylife?

And yet, through the ensuing years, I realized that these collections of literature were held in academic silos, never being truly and honestly held up to the same scrutiny and academic rigor, much less honest comparison. Mythological literature was studied in one way, “sacred” literature in another.

Justice, I had been taught via the church, is what one trusts a supernatural being will bring about…

And yet… and yet…

So, what do I believe? 

Well, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I’ve been reading in this vein—well, actually in two veins simultaneously—all my life long. I do not proclaim to be an expert in ancient literature, but I have read a lot of books on the subject(s), and I would have to say that there are blind spots, many blind spots, in our general education on matters mythological and spiritual.

I currently believe that the academic approach with regard to early introduction to Greek literature is a worthy endeavor. This provides a good start to presenting our common life themes. 

Yes, the subject runs into the world of the sacred, or the immortal, and we, being mere mortals, can hardly be expected to understand the unseen.

However, my personal experience of comparative mythology and comparative religious literature (as a non-classics scholar, a non-seminarian) has shown me a stark truth that the average person is all too willing to overlook: Mythology and Scripture share a role in presenting all the universal themes that occur in mortal life. While the ideas of the ancient Greeks do not seem to hold sway in modern times, truly the epic nature of life enjoys all the drama that can be found in Greek literature—and Biblical epic.

So many people are prepared to believe and have faith in a being that acts proxy or go between, an intermediary between this world and the sacred, unseen.

What do I mean to suggest with that outrageous statement? 

Well, first of all, the epic nature of Greek mythology and Biblio-sacramental literature is not all that different. The relationships that can be found between each of these sets of literature are by no means confined to these sets or generations, as the relationships reach back to earlier literatures, even to the earliest examples of Western literature. 

All of our history of literature is comprised of and built on clear and similar themes with variations; similar narratives as viewed through, sometimes, different lenses, and/or offered with different motives—frequently to explain what has just happened or to explain far distant historical events, or perhaps indicate the future.

The homework on all of this, by the way, has been done by bone fide scholars—and not just recently—but the results have largely been ignored, if not scoffed; previous work of classicists on ancient literature and its common themes has been ignored by Biblical scholars, to the detriment, I think, of all followers of Judeo-Christian faith. Christians, in particular, do not realize they err and even sin with regard to what they falsely believe is exceptionalwith regard to their faith. The average Christian is, I have found, frightfully ignorantof the context of writings they will quote by chapter and verse and claim to live by. Moreover, they are ignorant of how many innocent people have died throughout the centuries, so that they could wallow in their false sense of exceptionalism. In many cases, the Gospel message has been excised completely from their consciousness, if not twisted out all sense. [Contrast this with Thomas Jefferson’s exercise in recreating the New Testament by extracting everything outside the Gospel message, with the goal to bring that into harsh focus.]

If one looks critically at all the extant ancient literature available, one can see a very important and universalset of moral themes. The just person, the ethical person, must be an exemplar of hospitality to other. The only way that one be such is to examine and evaluate self, with an eye to self-improvement and, if need be, self-healing. The Greeks are purported to have invented journaling as a tool to self-knowing and self-improvement; this is an admirable technology still practiced in modern times. But the modern public has become disconnected with intent of this tool, just as it has become disconnected from the universality of themes contained in its world literature.

I propose that the universal themes within our ancient literature point to something vital and true: The Human Species is one single race, albeit divided politically, divided regionally, divided in so many natural and unnatural ways.

If this is indeed the case, then we are all meant to have a role in the lives of those in our community, with all the best of intent. Perhaps social justice, ancient and modern, is about insuring that we are capable of being the hero in our own lives, that our personal heroism in the face of trial is supported in the community, that our individual heroism has a role in supporting the community.

I know I will write about this more, but what I set here is enough, for now.

My wish for you in 2020 and beyond: Be the hero of your story and ours; be the light and love of mindfulness, generosity and thoughtfulness, ethical action and sustainability that makes a difference in your community; may health and prosperity visit you, your friends and family, and the ever widening spirals of your acquaintance; and may the abundance, blessings and beauty of this world be upon you, to uplift you as you shine your light! 

Martin Luther King Jr.'s Unfinished Journey

1968 was a bleak and terrible year, when I was just six years old. Here is a list of some of the things that happened:

·        March 16, 1968 would be one of the low points of the Vietnam War when between 374-504 unarmed civilians were killed at My Lai by United States troops. 2nd Lt. William Calley was charged with 22 of the deaths and sentenced to life imprisonment, but only served three-and-a-half years of house arrest.

·        President Lyndon B. Johnson announced on March 31 that he would not be run for president in the 1968 election. 

·         April 4, 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated on the balcony of his Memphis motel room. Ironically, seven days later the Civil Rights Act was passed by Congress. 

·        Two months and a day after the assassination of Dr. King, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated while celebrating winning the California primary during his 1968 presidential bid.  

·         The Yippies, led by Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, and other radical groups turned the streets of Chicago into a riot zone, battling Chicago police and U.S. Army and National Guard, while the Democratic convention was being held there.

·         Richard Nixon would go on to defeat Senator Humphrey in the general election.

***

Only one of those events is the focus of my commentary on this day, April 4^th. 

Fifty years ago, today, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. The shot that was fired ended the life of Dr. King, but not his dream. To some extent, every step forward towards greater recognition and acceptance of the all the variables that define personhood owes Dr. King and all of his colleagues a huge debt of gratitude.

Although the Civil Rights Movement, in the hands of King and other principals, seemed to be drifting, due to disputes about strategy and the rise and disruption a militant black power movement, as other factors, such as the Vietnam War, and ongoing labor disputes all over the country, the signing Civil Rights Act was a seminal turning point for the entire nation.

But King sought more than this. The Civil Rights Act was only a beginning.  King had truly radical ideas, bordering on democratic socialism. He advocated for government-run national health, a national jobs program and guaranteed income for all Americans. That kind of economic vision would have been as much an uphill battle, to say the least, as the Vietnam War, in a time of recessions, government cut-back in public assistance services and a rising neo-liberal philosophy coming from the elite that advocated cutting taxes for the rich in order to help the poor.

But King saw that the only way to achieve any of these goals was for disparate groups to unite in coalition using non-violent demonstration toward growth and  inclusive outcomes, so that the greatest good, and equal opportunity could be achieved for all Americans. In his speeches to labor groups, he talked about servant-leadership. The American dream was about being truly egalitarian. Social Justices not for just one group, but for all groups.

The Civil Rights Act was but the first jewel in the crown. What King suggested, next, because of the overlapping issues, was joining Organized Labor and Civil Rights for People of color in coalition. After all, the March on Washington’s full title was “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.” King and his colleagues knew that black workers and their lives were inextricably intertwine with the lives of white workers when it came to all issues of economic security and anti-discrimination. King’s rallying cry was, “All Labor Has Dignity.” But the stumbling block was that this was a battle not just about race, but also about class.

More than any other aspect of his radical thinking, this is what pulled the trigger on King, this day 50 years ago. King’s stance on Vietnam couldn’t have been enough to get him killed; but it was about Jim Crow and segregation, and specifically, poor white Southern labor was not going to stand for an educated and eloquent black man being the putative leader of a movement that combined race and class.

Here we are 50 years on, fighting the same battle, without King, without Ruether, without Abernathy and so many others who were critical to the movement in 1968.  We need to continue King’s journey without him. The future of our world depends on this, and this assertion is no mere hyperbole. Justice can only exist when there are no double standards, and when all people are treated with respect, dignity and equal access.

I may write on this topic more, as time goes by, but I’ll leave you with this excerpt from King's 1967 book, “Where Do We Go From Here; Chaos or Community”:

“Why is equality so assiduously avoided? Why does white America delude itself, and how does it rationalize the evil it retains?

“The majority of white Americans consider themselves sincerely committed to justice for the Negro. They believe that American society is essentially hospitable to fair play and to steady growth toward a middle-class Utopia embodying racial harmony. But unfortunately this is a fantasy of self-deception and comfortable vanity. Overwhelmingly America is still struggling with irresolution and contradictions. It has been sincere and even ardent in welcoming some change. But too quickly apathy and disinterest rise to the surface when the next logical steps are to be taken. Laws are passed in a crisis mood after a Birmingham or a Selma, but no substantial fervor survives the formal signing of legislation. The recording of the law in itself is treated as the reality of the reform.

This limited degree of concern is a reflection of an inner conflict which measures cautiously the impact of any change on the status quo. As the nation passes from opposing extremist behavior to the deeper and more pervasive elements of equality, white America reaffirms its bonds to the status quo. It had contemplated comfortably hugging the shoreline but now fears that the winds of change are blowing it out to sea.

“The practical cost of change for the nation up to this point has been cheap. The limited reforms have been obtained at bargain rates. There are no expenses, and no taxes are required, for Negroes to share lunch counters, libraries, parks, hotels and other facilities with whites. Even the psychological adjustment is far from formidable. Having exaggerated the emotional difficulties for decades, when demands for new conduct became inescapable, white Southerners may have trembled under the strain but they did not collapse.

“Even the more significant changes involved in voter registration required neither large monetary nor psychological sacrifice. Spectacular and turbulent events that dramatized the demand created an erroneous impression that a heavy burden was involved.

“The real cost lies ahead. The stiffening of white resistance is a recognition of that fact.”

No Double Standards; A sermon to myself

This is, as is obviously stated in the title, a sermon I have written to myself, not to you, gentle reader. It might perhaps surprise you to learn that I have written such sermons in the past, and even delivered them in public. Our lives are built on words, a fragile filigree of words on words on words, and I am offering these words to myself as an affirmation of something.

You are in no way obliged to read what I have to say, but putting it out there to you is an act of prayer.

In the days following our recent election, I have felt as if every value I had ever embraced as a building block for a better future for all, everything I had stood for, was revealed to be a house of cards, collapsed in a heap. The sense of disgust and shame, in the wake of all the “to the victor come the spoils” behavior I have seen and heard about in recent days is indeed demoralizing. The finger pointing, the blame, the reprisals, ignorance, fear and it’s obvious reactions. The ugliness of it all is disheartening, and it has quite literally sickened me. I do not know where I belong anymore.

I have been paralyzed.

Today, I went to church. I did not know if I would be able to sing, but I knew I could pray, even pray silently, for myself, and all of us.

The organ rolled off the opening play-through of the first hymn, which perhaps could only have been this hymn, on this Sunday: “In Christ there is no East or West.” I opened my mouth to start the first verse, as I’ve already stated, not knowing if any sound, at all, would come out.

But something did come out. A huge voice came out from within me, bigger, I think, than I had ever heard my voice in my own ear. My voice filled the large interior of the church, and was louder anything amplified. It was as if the architecture of the place had trained itself on me. A few heads turned my way, so it was not my imagination. What did this mean?

And all week long, I have been wondering, what do I mean—what does my life mean?

I am white, and some of my people came to this country on the Mayflower. They were looking for freedom to believe and be in a way that seemed right to them. Some of my people came to this country later from France, looking for the same thing. Some of my people hail from south of the border, in that very place a great number of people want to build a fence to keep out. And some of my people were indigenous to the Americas. But you could not know any of that by looking at me.

I have read, one of my mother’s greatest gifts to me, who had some sort of learning disability before they really talked about and knew what some of those were. She spent hours after school, unlocking the puzzle of words. And that key has been in my possession, and I have passed it on to a new generation. I have never stopped reading, because our lives are built on words, we are a fragile filigree of words on words. The only way to understand the world is to explore the forest of words. I have done that as well as I could. School has never stopped for me, but has been continuously in session, year after year.

I participated in my first act of civil disobedience probably at the age of 6, marching in protest of the Vietnam War. This was the first of many. In 1970, my family participated in the very first Earth Day Expo, and a year later, my mother kept my sister and I from school, instead taking us on the bus to the San Francisco waterfront, so that we could help with the effort to clear up a devastating oil spill and save the lives of birds. In 1981, I joined the HCI/Brady Campaign. These are but a few of the beads on the mala of my soul, a few instances of the “activist” side of my life, started as a child.

Nearly being snatched by a predator on the way home from kindergarten was a lightning bolt experience that forced me to be an aware individual at a tender age. And, oh, there was so much of which to be aware—and wary. The 1960s were a blood bath of trial and tribulation, some of which I was able to see up close, if not observe on the evening news. That people had to fight to do what was right was a mystery to me. I could see people fighting to feed children and take care of elders, because the government wasn’t doing it. I also saw people fighting just to fight, destroying just to destroy. I had been taught the difference between right and wrong; I learned on my own the difference between fighting for a just cause and “fighting” only for the sake of being destructive.

I feel fortunate to have grown up in a place where there are so many people whose backgrounds are different than mine. All the colors, all the sounds and music, all the smells of the food we can share together at the same table! I also feel fortunate to be bringing up my children here, where they can experience this.

But this world is changing, is it not? Of the many and varied jobs I’ve had over the years, one that I treasure is working for a political sociologist. His simple philosophy became a mantra for me, because it was a perfect summary for what I had learned at home, in my community, in church, in meditation, in the world I had explored through books, a perfect summation of all that I believe to be essential truth that must be lived.

NO DOUBLE STANDARDS.

The greatest danger in our world today is the notion that we cannot have enough for ourselves if we share what we have with someone else. The government has been vilified, and now taken over by those who have vilified it. But it is not that our form of government is bad, but there is a cancer in the system that must be surgically altered. This cancer is capitalism. All the money in politics comes from an entitled and largely unregulated capitalism that has been anointed “human”, and our politicians are actors in a play being written by captains of industry who worship the “human” called capitalism.

Modern people talk about sustainability, and I say this goes to the heart of the matter. Capitalism is unsustainable if it doesn’t sustain all people. And yet, the garden of consumers is being culled, daily. The rents go up, and housing becomes more and more difficult to obtain and keep. The homeless encampments grow, daily.

The ideals of the 60s stated that we could eradicate hunger and illiteracy and dawn to a new day.

That day never dawned.

What happened?

I’ll tell you, oh my soul: Identity politics happened.

In the 60s, Black leaders joined with organized labor in a broad coalition, but assassins’ bullets ended one phase of the dream. 70s the women of the Equal Rights Amendment joined with the Farm Workers and equal pay for equal work was at stake, but the ones trying to break the glass ceiling couldn’t be bothered about workers’ need for water in the fields, and that killed off another phase of the dream. There is more to the story, here, and I am painting in broad strokes.

So we are a fragmented jungle of causes, none of which stands together. Our identities are what it is about, but listen to me, oh, my soul. We are all people! In the words of the immortal authoress, Maya Angelou, “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.”

Instead of embracing our brothers and sisters, instead of pulling everyone up, instead of opening our hands and working together to fulfill our mutual dreams, we have fallen off the train into all these little ghettos and silos. All our energy and resources of all kinds are dissipated in the striving to uphold far too many identities. Laws that should be applied equally to all, when they are applied, it is inequitable. “To each according to need” has been turned into a slur, hurled by those who have no needs, but only a desire to build unsustainable power through possession of everything. Divided into our identities, we have been objectified—and we in turn objectify!—into all kinds of different “others.” These “others” are all, now, under threat of being marginalized. I say this, oh, my soul, because I fall into some of these objectified groupings, too, yes, indeed, I do. It looks like I'll never be able to retire.

The greatest problem in our world today is that the naked truth is clothed in lies, and no one, nobody, vets the clothiers or the cloth or the thread that makes the warp and woof!

Because here’s the thing: You take away the illusory clothing, and we are people, all of us are people. That is our identity, first and foremost. As Americans, we are all American People, and we must stand up for each other, and support the least of our own and all those of our own who are in need, for they all are our own. Anything less is a disservice to individual self-respect, not to mention an assault on the world we each live in. This is what our Constitution is meant to uphold, and what we, as citizens, are meant to uphold, as our civic duty.

No Double Standards, this is social justice.

My life as an American must be meant to uphold our Constitution by demanding an end to double standards and by working toward a society that sustains everyone, in whatever way I can. As a Christian who has studied many believe systems and philosophies, I believe in something that has been called "radical inclusion"; quite simply, it means everyone is included.

What did it mean, that on a day when I thought I had no voice, I was transmitting hymns as if I was being amplified?

This was a signal to me that my voice, in this matter, is meant to be heard.

Random Acts of Generosity: Spitting in the Wind or Casting Bread on the Water?

This past Friday, I kicked off my birthday weekend. Here are some highlights of the transition into my 56^th year: I baked three cakes and gave two of them away; I gave away three lunch bags, each to a homeless stranger (one was a veteran who had served in Iraq); I wrote three letters, each one to someone with whom I had not been in touch with for some time.

I seldom talk about the things I do for others; I really believe that the things you do secretly for others makes it more about them. But today is my birthday, and I have decided to make confessions.

For many months, if not the past several years, there has been a sense of unease growing inside me, mainly resulting from the quickly growing economic disparity within my community. Throughout the region, the numbers of homeless have grown. Housing for many is threatened by decreases in availability and increases in cost, while wages have been stagnant in most sectors except tech, banking, property development, and a few others. The drum is beaten against the sensibility of tying minimum wage to a cost of living index; even at a rate $15 an hour, who can survive on it?

There is unrest; there is violence; there is anger.

During the 1960s, when I was a kid, there was a “can do” attitude. There was a notion that we could tackle problems like illiteracy and hunger and solve them. Not only could they be solved here at home, but throughout the world. People were committed to this notion.

What happened?

The simple answer is greed happened. Institutions of all shapes, sizes and purposes have been carved out. Corporate stockholders are less likely to invest, more likely to sell off. Municipality, transit and utility boards have been deferring maintenance for decades, so that people at the top can make more and more money. The centralizing, commodifying, chartering and privatizing of everything is squeezing our institutions for every dime possible, while delivering their missions less sustainably and reliably. The so-called “sharing” and “gig” economies are merely code words that mean “we can’t make it with one job alone.”

Humanity bought capitalism and capitalism is failing humanity.

All of this makes me angry. My family struggles to make more and more money, and we have much, much less. And we look around and see that we are not alone in the struggle.

Of the issue of homelessness, people are quick to say that millions and millions of dollars have been applied to solve it and have not done a thing. “Spending money on homelessness is like spitting in the wind” is a sentence I have actually seen in the editorial pages of my regional newspaper. This is too frequently an excuse to do nothing, or worse, to criminalize vagrancy. “If we must have homelessness, I don’t want to see it” is the attitude.

So the can is kicked down the line to the next generation.

People, this just will not do.

But it is my birthday – this is my party. I could “cry if I want to”, as the lyrics from Lesley Gore’s 1963 song suggest, but I’m not going to do that.

I am going to live more audaciously, as the sermon I heard last night invited (thank you, Rabbi Judy Shanks!). That impulse to brazenly, if in haste, pack some food into flimsy lunch bags and hand it out my car window when encountering someone in need – I want to live like that, casting what bits of bread I have on the water, sharing it with a stranger.

The truth is that each of us has the world; we don’t need more than that. But what we possess, we must responsibility to uphold and steward. There is plenty, if we will but share. But this giving, we have to do it, we have to live that, every day.

Today is my birthday (and the birthday of the world!). It’s my party, and I declare it’s our party, and I invite you all to join me, in whatever way you can.

What you will do? How will you cast your bread on the water? What random acts of generosity will you perpetrate?

– Wait, don’t tell me. Let it be a surprise!

All Those Expendable People, Where Do They All Come From?

In the wake of the court decision in the Florida case of George Zimmerman, who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, I wish humanity could “wake up” and realize that all people are in need of and deserving of respect, no matter where they come from, what they look like, how intelligent or not they may be. The planet is not likely to survive very much longer, unless respect is bred and nurtured so that all people know they are needed and wanted.

There are so many people of various religious or social orders who feel they can say they are better than other people and that people who don’t believe what they believe or who don’t come from where they come from are outsiders, even worse, people who are no better than dogs. Such people are the vilest of hypocrites.

You are to treat the resident alien the same way you treat the native born among you—love him like yourself, since you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.  (Leviticus 19:34)

We all live on a fragile planet that would work for us better and longer if we were good stewards. The place to begin is for us all to realize that all life is integral, and perhaps even more symbiotic than the material lifestyles we fret about and foster.

Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. (Exodus 22:21)

Since the beginning of human existence, there has been injustice and inequity. Throughout the ignoble and iniquitous social history of humanity, women, children, the aged and ill, people with varying preferences of all sorts, foreigners and travelers, the highly intellectual, the mentally incapacitated and those who have been crippled or maimed, have each been over-run exploited, exiled, oppressed, trafficked or enslaved. In these cases, race might or might not be a factor, but most certainly, domination, generally by power hungry males of the species has been the common factor involved.

The LORD watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. (Psalm 146:9)

The same moral dilemma exists now, as ever. Is it right to oppress and suppress any group of people? Rhetorically, we know the answer to be NO, OF COURSE NOT. Every exemplar throughout time has advised that it is better to be good. Every monster throughout history has laughed in that person’s face and sentenced that person to death, invoking the “I can do anything I want because I am stronger than you are, so I don’t have to be good” logic of the sociopath.

If you come with us, we will share with you whatever good things the LORD gives us. (Numbers 10:32)

How can it be explained to controlling people, unscrupulous dictators, corrupt business leaders, hypocritical gurus and demagogues that human beings are the biggest natural resource on the planet? And in no way do I mean in terms of expendability. This is the cardinal error of the control monger, the bank executive, the authoritarian, the mob boss; the common thread of thinking, based on common actions and the results of such actions, is that people are expendable, that it is okay to use them, abuse them, even to use them up and dump them.

…when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are an expendable, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. (Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr.; I changed “a Negro” to “an expendable” and added emphasis.)

Here is a truly radical statement: If we each cared about ourselves enough to extend that caring to everyone and everything around us, the entire world would be better off.

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world... (Imagine, John Lennon)

Simplistic? A Pipe Dream? Or could it be an environmentally sound economic plan?

Right now, there is an amoral rationale among a jockeying and ever smaller group of people we might call “the Elite”—certainly these people think of themselves as such, and all the power they have and the decisions they make that affect your life and my life and the lives of people all over the world—who don’t seem to be related to us by anything other than an overwhelming powerlessness—follow the formula that says: use it up, use it all up, now and until there isn’t anymore. This is the formula of expendability. Natural oil reserves, once gone are gone forever. The drill, baby drill and frack, baby frack ethos has created a daisy chain of natural disaster waiting to happen—doesn’t anyone remember that the liquids in the ground are like joint lubricant? Pump it out, use it up, it's gone.

By the same token, we are sold and fed foods that are bad for us, so that we become unhealthy and in need of expensive medical care and drugs that frequently have known or unknown side-effects and unforeseen consequences. We are taxed on income and further taxed on homes, on transportation, infrastructure, indeed we are taxed because we are alive. This is more in the unbroken chain unsound economics; once we are pumped out, used up and gone, what next? Homelessness and worse is the answer to that question for a lot too many people.

I could be a bit in the nutty side—I’ll just go right ahead and admit that—but I think that we could build a better and more equitable community if we work the stewardship angle, where we do the very best we can do for ourselves and other people. If we keep the water clean, and make it available for everyone; if we grow natural food and make it available for everyone to purchase for their families; if we educate people for the sake of educating, rather than money; if we develop urban farming and new housing alternatives, not just here (wherever “here” is for you), but everywhere, we can create jobs that help the environment. Heck, even if all we did right now was to hire people to answer phones, we would improve the quality of life.

Do you see where I am headed? Right now, it is all about shooting down, cutting, eliminating, taxing, spending, expending, ravaging and stealing, diminishing, extinguishing.

Maybe the world would be different if we understood economic growth to be about all people equally (and responsibly) engaged in creating, making, growing, educating, earning, upholding, maintaining and sharing. If such a model were to emerge, it must work top-down as well as bottom-up; all need to be willing, invested and engaged. People: This is how you maintain your tax-base as an infinite resource, not just for earnings and for upkeep, but for GOOD!

If we lived in that kind of world, a man like Zimmerman might not have felt threatened or tweaked by the presence of a man named Martin, and we would be celebrating life, rather than arguing and rioting over laws that do not protect, legal decisions that allow people and governments and corporations to kill and steal, a way of life that makes us all expendable.

… time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity. (Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Now is, and has always been, the time; not just here, but everywhere.

If not now, when?

© 2013 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Austerity For ALL!

There has been a great deal of political talk about security in this century. Growth is the security of organic life. The security of the imagination lies in calling, all our lives, for more liberty, more rebellion, more belief.  

 - Muriel Rukeyser

Men may lack vocabularies, but men in danger share more thoughts than they are given credit for, because they share the same dilemma. Let death draw near, and all men gathered together in twos or threes cease to be shy in their discussion either of it or of life. No school of philosophy can boast a better teacher than peril, when it approaches at a pace lively enough to be contemplated. 

- John Mason Brown

I must say that I find the political stance of conservatives, worldwide, quite amusing. 

The idea that there must be austerity, in these times of world financial crisis, might make sense if the austerity was intended for each, according to their ability. Strangely, the austerities are only meant to be experienced by those people who already experience austerity; the austerity that threatens to be meted out does not cut in all directions. The same breath that proclaims austerity for the rest of us also says that the wealthy should not be taxed, if we want the wealthy to invest in the economy, to create jobs. 

How could anyone believe such rubbish--this is the very thinking, championed by Reaganites and Thatcherites, who double-teamed it to deregulate and privatize, that ultimately led to the disaster we are all trying to live through now. 

The Third World War, in essence, has arrived! It is characterized by a the complete abandonment of any notion of collective endeavor, by which all might be raised up. Can any of you remember when it was a goal to end hunger? Instead, what we have is an overall sense of shameless individualism. Drill, Baby, Drill! is the shrill cry from Wall Street and The City. Think not what I can do to help you build your investment portfolio, but what I can do to fleece you! The environment be damned, I want you to drive your old beater until fossil fuels are but a memory. This shameless and amoral attitude is not limited to investment companies, insurance companies, the banking industry and corporate manufacturing; the Pod People have taken over your unions, your municipal governments, your primary, secondary and higher education systems, your political parties, your government buildings. Moreover, we have been trained to the idea that equal opportunity toward materialism, toward having (of the same rather than the unique) is synonymous with freedom.

Let's face it: bankrupt politics and policies, promulgated by politicians that have been bought by the so-called "Free Market," are bankrupting our municipalities, the very places that need infrastructure and job development, and passing the costs of bankruptcy on to you and to me.

Career politicians, so far removed from what actual people have to deal with in the world that their bankrupt policies created, dole out clichés from the Reagan/Thatcher playbook, and expect us all to pay their salaries, not to mention their pensions and their healthcare. There is no austerity for them, and neither for their masters. Our politicians are willing puppets, because the system they steward feeds them. This is why the so-called "bipartisan" political realm looks and acts like a circus. 

We are, to a greater extent, unwilling puppets. The blame has been put to us, for electing these very officials. I submit that this is yet another case of "blaming the victim," but I concede that there is an element of truth to the assertion. Where is the truth of it? Well, when our economies shifted, in the wake of deregulation that paved the way, from manufacturing to finance (along with it's ugly twin real estate development), the attitude shifted from fiduciary responsibility to unfettered greed. There has been another economic shift, however--one just as devastating. 

The shift has gone hand-in-hand with the move from manufacturing to finance, and it has been fueled by the very technologies that have given birth to social networking, fostering elitism and bolstering a false sense of individualism, one that values the one-line chat quip or the anonymous reactionary rant over a stimulating discussion of actual values between people who stand face-to-face in order to work together.

How can this be? The very medium that has seemed to offer greater democratic action for average people, in such movements as "The Arab Spring," have been used by their creators and primary corporate manipulators, the gatekeepers, as it were, of a worldwide system of corruption.

Does my statement mean that I am a morbid conspiracy theorist? No, not at all, not at all. I may be reading history a certain way, but it is history that I am reading, and the indicators have been hiding in plain sight. I need go no further than the recent and continuing Murdoch Hacking Scandal. Who was Tony Blair serving, while visiting Murdoch in Queensland? Was he serving the British Public or was he serving Rupert Murdoch? He has testified that Murdoch was attempting to pressure members of Parliament to call off the investigation. What does this mean for the public, wherever Murdoch media enterprises exist? It means nothing less than that influence of the filthy rich cuts in on your free speech, not to mention your expectation of privacy or truth in reporting/advertising.

Social media allows us to communicate internationally--as long as political forces don't censor the internet, as in China, Cuba, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, and other countries. Interestingly enough, most of the countries that sensor the internet have repressive governments. The other end of the spectrum is the Murdoch variety, where the internet so free it is mined for information that is used to make money, and possibly ruin lives. On the one hand, there is the hyper-regulation of closed-government, on the other, the unprotected world of deregulation and the so-called "open" government "free market" fracas. In both cases, the people in control are people of power and wealth, people with no self-control, who are all too willing to tell you how to live, just so long as they don't have to live that way themselves.

Additionally, the internet is also used to fuel identity politics. With our good intentions, many of us seek to establish greater freedoms and foster choice for all. We sign up with groups that claim to be for the purpose of activism toward the social values we say we desire. But then these groups tell us how to think and how to act and how to vote. Unwittingly, we have allowed ourselves to become pawns in what ends up being an identity politics smokescreen. Someone else writes the letter, we just click the button.  Sorry to burst the bubble, but that really isn't how democracy works. 

Obviously, equal rights and social justice should be for all, but the way it plays out, sometimes it seems as though rights and justice are for some, even few, rather than for all. While we are all arguing identity politics, war crimes are being committed all over the world, by ours and perhaps every government. People in all parts of the world are being abused and denied access to food, shelter, clean water. But because we are bickering about how one kind is either oppressed or even entitled over another kind, we don't see the larger issue, that we are all being oppressed and used, if not abused and denied. And we are all guilty of denying that humanity is one kind and that all are entitled.

In short, for the "freedom" to "share" our thoughts, we pay. We pay in the way our every move is documented and analyzed for what we do, who we like, how we live, how we spend, so that we can be objectified in the morass of unfettered materialistic capitalism that aggregation feeds. We pay, and we will pay until there is nothing left to pay with.

There is nothing left to say about this, except that fools and their money are soon parted. Do you resemble that remark? I know that I do, and I suspect that you do, as well. Not always by choice is this true.

Remember this during the upcoming election season, particularly when some talking-head tells you that you need to be austere in your spending (what little you have) for the good of everyone and that public programs should be sacrificed for the good of the system. That is one horse the talking-heads will ride. And then they'll attempt to ride another, at the same time, and you know what that will be. 

If austerity is the solution, then austerity must be for ALL--one for all and all for one (--or it should be for no one)!! No more bond issues to grease the wheels of a few, no more tax breaks to business entities and moguls with offshore accounts, no more municipal shell games with taxpayer money, no more bailouts to banks who run citizens into bankruptcy with service-charges, and no more of all the rest, while denying basic needs to those who have been ground down in the fallout of World War III, the invisible war declared on you and on me.

If we believe that what we think matters, we need to read more (to be better informed), we need to talk more (not merely exchange chat quips and tweets), we need to rise up on our hind legs and declare ourselves to be active members, all for one and one for all, against the bipartisan circus act that will keep telling us we have to pay the price for their bad and self-interested, self-perpetuating policies.

Examining The Occupy Movement: Government is of, by and for what? PEOPLE!

“We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”


       President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

“Democracy is direct self-government over all the people, for all the people, by all the people.”

       Reverend Theodore Parker (1810-1860)

“There are more and more people in the streets in this time of stunning disregard for the health of social service in our nation…”

       The Very Reverend W. Mark Richardson, Ph.D. (Grace Cathedral, October 21, 2011)

“To restore prosperity we must return to a spirit of shared sacrifice. But our elected representatives have failed to find the courage to create a tax system that will allow us to contribute to our own prosperity. This must be done while removing loopholes for those who refuse to pay their fair share. It also is the legitimate role of government to provide oversight of the economy. Overstimulation and a lack of regulation - as we have seen in the stock and housing markets - create unsustainable bubbles.”

       Steve Zolno (“Why We Need To Tax Ourselves”, Open Forum on Democracy, San Francisco Chronicle, November 18, 2011)

Recently, there have been letters to editors of newspapers, in this and other countries, decrying the unruly crowds of protesters who have set up encampments. “These are nothing but filthy homeless encampments,” one such writer whines.

Homeless and homelessness. The problem of homelessness has been a long-standing and neglected fact of life in the United States. And now homelessness has unwittingly become the symbol of that travesty has been made of our economy by people who have believed themselves to be privileged to ravage the financial infrastructures of the world, while they were in administrative positions charged with responsibility and oversight.

The foxes are in the henhouse, folks.

The headlines cry out about the inequities, the plunging rate of job availability and the rise of unemployment. Wall Street, rewarded for their reckless gambling with public money (that is, money belonging to the public) by having been bailed out with more public money from our Federal Reserve, are now reporting record profits. Fancy that.

The foxes are in the henhouse, folks.

Articles report on the 10%-15% rise in health insurance rates, while professionals have made meager 3% raises or had to take pay cuts in order to keep their jobs. An article a few days ago asserted that 20% of a family’s income goes to health insurance. My own family pays as much for health insurance as we do for housing. Fancy that.

The foxes are in the henhouse, folks.

Administrators cry, “We must cut the budgets! We must cut services! The costs are too high to be sustainable!” These very administrators, working in industries ranging from healthcare to education to insurance to government (local, state and federal) cry out for across the board cuts, cuts, cuts! And they give themselves, either by the conceit of vote or by acclamation, raises, bonuses and benefits that the average person cannot obtain in the marketplace. Fancy that.

The foxes are in the henhouse, folks.

Lobbyists have bought out our administrators in exchange for the many quid pro quos that will allow their masters (“captains of industry”) to hoodwink the public into thinking that the health and wellbeing of our nation, of our people costs too much. The silent assertions are: caring costs too much and people are not worth the expense. Fancy that. How does that notion make you feel? Do you think that this is true?

The foxes are in the hen house, folks. The hens are gone, now. Where will the foxes go from here? What will they raid next? What will they kill, aside from dreams for a better life?

This life that we lead is all about life. “Progress” has been advertised for generations as moving all of humanity toward greater equity, but the reality is that a few people have been carving out territories and staking claims where they have no right to do so, and we are all the poorer for their sins and their reckless disregard.

The protesters have taken to the streets, as well they should. The foxes are currently hiding in their henhouses, but their mass media slaves have either been told not to report on the protests or to spin tales of omission and that complain of all the rabble and the noise and the homelessness and the filth, if they do report. And some of the public buy into this notion, hence all the whining I see bouncing out of the editorial pages.

All these filthy people, where do they all come from? They are saying something, but their message is unclear. Because their message is unclear, we don’t need to listen.

However, this nation was formed to be a more perfect union. Democracy was supposed to work for all people, not just some.

As we enter into this winter season of caring and sharing, we need to be not for ourselves alone, but for our neighbors and our neighbors’ neighbors, we need to be people helping people. Because our administrators won’t do this, we must. And we must consider casting down our administrators, because they no longer work for the people, but for themselves and their industry masters alone.