Archive for Emotional Energy

The 99

October 8, 2011 Economics, Emotional Energy, Energy, Media, Politics, Republicans, Values, Wealth No comments

I am very hopeful that the folks occupying Wall Street and the Build the American Dream movement are getting some traction. George Carlin had it right. It would be great if he were still around during these crazy political times.  In the clip, he gives us the reason why the other 99% are starting to make noise: it’s the behavior of “the owners” and those who work to keep them in power.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q&feature=player_embedded

But the owners are only doing what we define as success in this society. As long as success is about amassing a personal fortune and controlling everything to protect and increase that fortune and not about the explicit contribution that was made to the greater good–reducing poverty, subjugation, war and the destruction of the environment–we will continue to worship and want to be like the rich.

Now the right wing in this country will say that by following your dream and becoming wealthy your are helping everyone. You are bringing value to the world and creating jobs. And this is not untrue.  But it is only one side of the coin. Like electrical regulators that control the flow of electricity so that power stays within a narrow bandwidth that is usable by all, the human energy and power that flows to and is stored by the wealthy needs to be regulated. Because when too much of the economic energy that drives society is tied up in too few hands a different sort of energy builds.

The stored energy of anger and frustration is finally being targeted at the real source of our increasing economic hardship, the disproportionate amount of economic energy currently being sequestered for the exclusive use of the top 1% .

The current flow of energy is unstable. Hopefully the new energy being generated by the other 99 will result in a more equitable distribution of power.

Thanks to my Facebook friends for finding the clip.

Love is Wise

December 29, 2010 Consciousness, Economics, Emotional Energy, Politics, Values No comments

From a friend’s Facebook post, I saw a video of Bertrand Russell giving advice to people who might see the tape in 1000 years. His quote was “Love is wise, hatred is foolish.” What a great thing to live by—something that should be taught as the basis of all moral teaching. The Golden Rule is a corollary to this statement.

One might also conclude: “love is positive, hatred is negative,” or “love is positive emotional energy, hatred is negative emotional energy.” This is in line with a metaphor I’ve been thinking about lately that I think is very powerful as a guide to human activity: humans are emotional energy batteries. We store the emotional energy we receive and generate that emotional energy back to the world.

So if kids receive a lot of negative emotional energy in their formative years they transmit this negativity back as dysfunctional adults. If kids receive a lot of positive emotional energy they also tend to reflect that back as successful adults. Of course, there may be a genetic component that helps determine whether people are generators of positive or negative emotional energy. But regardless of a person’s innate orientation, negativity begets negativity and positivity begets positivity.

That’s why wars seldom solve things, particularly when the negative energy of violence does not have a clear target. WWII presented a clear evil with a mad dictator directing a well-defined, military entity. In the kind of wars we’re fighting now, the negative energy of violence is much more likely to create stored negative energy in a population than to curb future violence.

At some level our civilian and military leaders understand this, which is why there is an emphasis on building schools and stabile, secure areas in Afghanistan where people can live their lives without the negative energy of fear and violence. But our bombs often create more negative energy than can be overcome by other positive acts. And our fundamentalist enemies are big time negative energy generators.

The Network of Spiritual Progressives has a better solution.

“The NSP wants advanced industrial countries of the world to use their resources to eliminate once and for all global and domestic, poverty, homelessness, and hunger; provide quality education and health care for all; and repair the global environment. As an initial commitment, we want the U.S. to donate at least 1-2% of its Gross Domestic Product each year for the next twenty years, in the form of a Global Marshall Plan (GMP).”

The link is here: http://www.spiritualprogressives.org/article.php/gmp_one. This would certainly be following a wise policy as defined by Bertrand Russell.