Tag Archive for fear

Anger vs. Rationality

September 20, 2010 Economics, Politics, Values No comments

The conventional wisdom is that 2010 will be a “wave election” in which Republicans are propelled into office because of an angry electorate who thinks that the country is going in the wrong direction. Well I understand the anger and the wrong direction feeling. What I don’t understand is why any sane person would think the Republicans have a solution. Being against improvements in healthcare, unemployment benefits, and re-regulation of Wall Street isn’t a plan. Stopping government action is not a jobs plan. Even the laudable goal of balancing the budget will not create more jobs. It will create more lay-offs.

The fact is that “throw the bums out” is not a strategy. The government is not in the way of the free market. The government, particularly the Republican leadership, is owned by the wealthy, who are simply looking out for their own interests. If unfettered capitalism is so good, why did we have a crash? And why do most Americans seem to think that returning control of the government to those who screwed it up is such a good idea?

Let’s say that the economy is a child who was injured by its caretaker—injured so badly that recovery will take a lot of rehabilitation and time. So now, because the healing isn’t fast enough, we want to return the child to the caretaker that inured it? If the polls are to be believed, apparently so.

Anger and fear-mongering about “socialism” are not a plan. I’m angry and fearful too. I’m angry that the corporate chieftains and Wall Street types who control the economy are perpetuating the myth that somehow government is to blame and that if we do nothing things will fix themselves. People seem to think that the rich have more because they deserve more and that we should not tax them because that will mean they won’t do as much for us. This is bull.

The rich, like all of us, are motivated by self-interest. This is fine up to a point. But when the rich control both parties and rig things so they can suck up as much wealth as they can, a little balance needs to be restored. Those who think that the government is the enemy are being duped into a self-fulfilling prophesy of voting for people who either have a misguided ideology that no government equals some miraculous cure or for people who are deliberately misleading them in order to keep the government from interfering with the continued sucking of the public’s neck by their wealthy vampire overlords.

I say be angry; but let’s have a rational plan of action that moves us toward a fairer government. The rich will survive just fine; even there is a little mandatory moderation in how much financial blood they can suck. Don’t be a willing victim and vote Republican against your own self-interest.

Driven by Fear

August 18, 2010 Consciousness, Energy, Politics, Uncategorized, Values No comments

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.

Positive Freedom and Negative Freedom

June 10, 2010 Politics, Values One comment

The Tea Party people keep talking about getting their country back. They don’t make much sense to me so I won’t pretend I understand the nuances of their complaints, if there are any. But I do understand that they somehow think Obama is out to take their freedoms away. They are angry and they think that the president represents a scary sort of big government that is going to take their guns, their hard earned money, and their constitutional rights.

From what I can get, they have a very negative view of freedom—freedom from as opposed to freedom to. They seem to believe that more government equals less freedom. The overwhelming impression I get is that they don’t want government to tell them what to do. The idea seems to be that the government is bad. It’s bad when it does stuff—like collect taxes, keep the economy from collapsing or regulate business. And it’s bad when it fails to do stuff—like protect the Gulf Shore from oil.

There doesn’t seem to be any consideration given to the positive freedoms that government can provide, such as programs to help lift people from poverty so they have the freedom to pursue their dreams. The role of government as I see it is to give citizens the freedom to pursue happiness. How is one free if there are no job opportunities and no affordable healthcare? How is one free if a big company can pollute one’s neighborhood with impunity?

Now I’m not saying that government can’t impinge on individual freedoms. But by focusing entirely on the notion that freedom means freedom from government the Tea Party people are only looking at negative freedom. Their whole movement is negative. It throws off nothing but the negative emotions of fear, hate and anger.

Fear and hate are not ever going to move the country in a positive direction, but anger might. For I too am angry at what has happened to this country. But this anger must be directed at getting government to do more, not less. Positive action is needed to put the brakes on our corporatocracy. But it doesn’t look like that’s in the cards. Most progressives aren’t angry enough and the Tea Party people are frightened of the wrong things and angry at the wrong people.

Under it all however, we all want the same thing—freedom to live a life of our own choosing, without fear.