As it turns out, there are academicians who have been working on articulating why we need a shift to HumansTogether values longer than I have. This is a great article called Real Change. I wish I was optimistic about our species’ ability to make the required transformation.
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Driven by Fear
In a previous blog, I talked about positive and negative freedom—how progressives are more apt to promote the freedom to and conservatives seem more oriented toward freedom from. For example, the freedom to get married for gays and the freedom from government intrusion for business owners.
But perhaps a stronger way to show the difference between conservative and progressive ideology is to think about positive and negative emotional energy. Negative emotional energy is fear, hate, insecurity, greed, exclusion and a rigid set of beliefs. Positive emotional energy is hope, love, sharing, community, inclusion, and open-minded critical thinking. As one who is solidly in the latter camp, it seems pretty obvious which ideology is positive and which is negative.
Conservatives, Republicans and Tea Partiers all seem to be driven by fear: fear of immigrants, fear of government, fear of terrorists, fear of gays, fear of their tax money being given to the poor who didn’t work for it. They have a totally erroneous belief that the world consists of isolated individuals, some who are deserving—themselves and the wealthy—and some who are not—anyone not like them or poor. They don’t realize no human being is an island and that we’re all connected.
As pointed out in an excellent Alternet.org article (link below), de Tocqueville observed about the distinctive American mentality more than 150 years ago, “Such folk owe no man anything and hardly expect anything from anybody. They form the habit of thinking of themselves in isolation and imagine that their whole destiny is in their own hands. Thus, not only does democracy make men forget their ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries. Each man is forever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.” [from http://tinyurl.com/29r2x3r]
Human progress is marked by successive expansions of the community of man, such as the abolition of slavery, the expansion of civil and womens’ rights, and an understanding that we all share one planet. Conservatives are desperately resisting this expansion of consciousness. They seem determined to hang on to views that are not consistent with progress, views motivated by the negative emotional energy of fear.
This site is about promoting an understanding that beneath each individual’s beliefs is a human who needs as much positive, supportive, and respectful emotional energy as possible. May hope, critical thinking and community, triumph over fear, rigidity, and greed. One can be optimistic because that is the general trend of historical progress. But we are entering a time of hardship, and fear is an unfortunate, negative, but natural human response. It will take more than hope for continued human progress and a more global species consciousness to evolve.
Evolutionary Afflatus
Afflatus means, roughly, divine inspiration. Evolution is the divine purpose of the universe. And humans are the best the universe has done so far in terms of being conscious of itself—at least the most conscious that living things on this planet are ever likely to become aware of.
In a talk this weekend (01/24/10), Andrew Cohen, spiritual teacher and founder of the outstanding magazine EnlightenNext, explained his belief that whatever divinity decided to suddenly create something out of an eternity of nothing 14 billion years ago when the big bang occurred is the still the conscious driving force of the cosmos.
What the hell am I talking about? Well, think about it. In the vast expanse of time since the known universe was created, humans beings are the most conscious forms of life that exist. We are aware of ourselves and the universe we live in. We are aware of being aware.
Even if the whole shebang is the result of random interactions of organic chemicals taking their own course, and consciousness arises out of the complexity of the human brain, we still possess the highest form of consciousness that has yet emerged. It’s as if the point of the entire 14 billion years of development was to produce human beings.
How can I conclude this? It is simply true that we are more aware than any other living beings on the planet, (assuming that all of the other creatures aren’t in some sort of telepathic communication ala Avatar).
So, given that humans are the only creatures that can be said to have a drive to create something new, to add to the collective conscious and deliberately create progress, it makes perfect sense that that drive is an evolutionary impulse that started at the big bang. And the more that we awaken to the fact that our purpose on this planet, in addition to procreating, is to create something new that contributes to the cosmic awareness, the more authentic and fulfilled our lives will become.
I find it downright inspiring to think that the creative flame I feel is the afflatus of evolution. It’s those who are most tuned in to this afflatus that drive progress, that advance mankind, that raise human consciousness to ever greater heights.
A sixties saying, if I remember correctly, used to be “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” An-o-tens saying should be “Tune in, turn on, blast off.”