lurching

As the USA lurches towards some sort of a conclusion on Nov. 3, or maybe a commencement, I think it’s important to notice the signs and signals that are being generated by our culture.

Epic divisiveness would be on the list, distrust, disinformation and rampant conspiracy theories - noted. But also the undercurrent, what’s not reported, what’s happening in people’s lives who aren’t celebrities. Record voting turnout across the nation would be a sign, people planting signs in their yard would be a sign - not just political signs but signs that say something. My neighbor planted a sign like that in his yard; it lights up at night and it has a turret that rotates on top of the message board powered by solar energy; on the sign he writes quotes about hope. The signs are abundant but subtle: people are moving towards self-awareness, meditation, yoga and healthy eating. I might throw self-sufficiency in there too.

The corrupt politicians and corrupt governments are nothing new, but imagine for a moment a government that represented all the people and functioned cooperatively to help solve the problems of the people. Just as a thought experiment, imagine a government that actually governed. The word government comes from the Greek ‘gubernaculum’ which means to steer a ship using the rudder. Imagine the ship of state moving through the stormy waters with a sure hand and a clear heading.

Some people might call that a fantasy, but that’s where things start - as an idea. We are human beings, we can imagine anything and set about creating it.

When they started up this country it was a radical idea. To break off from the monarchy and all that tradition, all the old ways of doing things? But people were fed up with it and wanted to try something new. Let’s do a democracy, we can all unite together. We can call it the ‘United States of America’.

Ok, maybe not everyone was altruistic about it, there were some real estate developers, some con artists, no doubt, some greedy and devious bastards, but in the main everybody was focused on making the radical new idea work.

They started up a whole new system from scratch, incorporating ideas from the Enlightenment in Europe where they were talking about freedom of speech, equality, freedom of press, and religious tolerance, and also from the Protestant Reformation which encouraged people to think for themselves. The printing press, which had been invented 300 years earlier, was a new technology and it helped spread all these ideas far and wide. Sound familiar?

The new nation started up as an idea in people’s minds first and then grew in popularity until enough people believed in it, critical mass, then it became a reality.

We can do that again. Why not? To say the old traditional system is corrupt and doesn’t represent the people is almost trite; everybody knows that.

We’re lurching like a drunken cowboy towards someplace that we don’t even know. Yet maybe somehow, within our drunken haze, there is a homing instinct; a way to get back home. Maybe we don’t know where our home is but maybe our horse does. Maybe we need to trust the horse. Stay in the saddle and don’t fall off. It could be we’re not lost at all, we’ve just forgotten how to do it. Muscle memory works even if you don’t have a cognitive pattern plugged in to the situation.

Listen to the kids. Have fun, play, in the sense of spontaneous adventurous play. Enjoy life, in the sense of ‘oh my God I’m alive’. Discover all the features that come with this deal: laughter, the ability to love, the ability to see, to hear, to imagine - the list goes on and on.

There is no hope for the Republican/Democrat divide. How long has it been that we’ve been waiting for it to work? It only seems to get worse.

Try something new, we are the humans. We can imagine anything and make it real.