Left Needs Soul Searching
To make people care, craft a 'politics of meaning'.
Lerner: Blame 'secular fundamentalists'
"We hunger for communities of meaning that can transcend the individualism and selfishness that we see around us and that will provide an ethical and spiritual framework that gives our lives some higher purpose." -- Michael Lerner, The Politics of Meaning
If progressives, whether in unions, activist groups or political parties, don't soon begin doing politics differently -- radically differently -- they will fail to show that "a better world is possible."
And the price of failure will be catastrophic.
We have known for years that our consumer culture is out of control and our obsession with having more and more stuff has reached the status of a virus. Our consumer-driven global economy is a lethal threat to the planet and every one of its eco-systems.
The lock that consumerism has on Western so-called civilization is formidable -- a virtual death-grip on our culture and our future as a species. It is a kind of madness but one which we can apparently adapt to. This manufactured addiction to more and more stuff undermines community, threatens the planet and doesn't even make us happy. Consumerism, driven by the most sophisticated and manipulative psychology the advertising industry can buy, has had the effect of atomizing us. We are defined more and more by what we have, less and less by our relationships to family, friends, colleagues and community.
One anecdote has stuck in my mind for over 20 years. A friend attending an international peace conference in Edmonton accompanied a group of Filipino women -- all from rural areas of the Philippines -- to the West Edmonton Mall as a "tourist" outing for the visitors. Twenty minutes into the tour the women burst into tears and pleaded with their hosts to get them out. The insanity, the grotesque over-stimulation of the place, no longer obvious to the Canadian women who had grown up with these monstrosities, was grimly apparent to the village activists.
They were right. We should all burst into tears after 20 minutes in a giant mall -- it would be a test of our mental and spiritual health.
Secular fundamentalism and its limits
It's not as if we don't know what the Filipinas knew. It's just that we have adapted to it -- like we might adapt to some physical disability. Yet if we all know this, why is it that we are unable to incorporate our understanding of this all-important cultural disability into our progressive politics -- into the ways in which we try to engage people in the struggle for a better, sustainable, world?
American rabbi and radical Michael Lerner blames what he calls "secular fundamentalism" -- the tendency amongst mainstream activists to stick rigidly to a rationalist and technocratic interpretation of both politics and culture. He calls for a politics of meaning which "posits a new bottom line. An institution or social practice is to be considered efficient or productive to the extent that it fosters ethically, spiritually, ecologically, and psychologically sensitive and caring human beings who can maintain long-term, loving personal and social relationships. While this new definition of productivity does not reject the importance of material well-being, it subsumes that concern within an expanded view of 'the good life': one that insists on the primacy of spiritual harmony, loving relationships, mutual recognition, and work that contributes to the common good."
Secular fundamentalists find talk of spiritualism intensely uncomfortable, probably because they draw immediate connections to either organized 'God' religion and its patriarchal authoritarianism or vaguely to some mushy "self-improvement" sub-culture. Spiritualism seems to fly in the face of the kind of rationalism that has been at the core of socialist and social democratic theory for nearly two centuries.
But organizers for social change face a critical problem. Trying to mobilize people strictly on a rational basis, and in particular with uncritical acceptance of the assumptions of a consumer driven economy, is proving increasingly difficult. On paper it should be working. Intensive values surveys of Canadians consistently reveal that they are progressive in their views about the role of government and the value of community. On the basis of such surveys, over 60 per cent of Canadians could be described politically as social democratic. And yet we see two neo-liberal federal leaders and their parties garnering two thirds of Canadians' voting intentions. Something is very wrong here.
What makes people identify?
It raises the question of why people get engaged. Why is that tens of millions get into an emotional frenzy over the death of a pop star or identify their lives with a professional sports team but can't be convinced to fight for social programs that would increase the quality of life of their communities? Why do further millions identify with right-wing evangelical religion rather than the call for secular social justice?
According to Lerner, they are in a search for meaning and in the context of the destruction of community of the past 30 years, they find in sports and Michael Jackson's fandom pseudo-communities they can identify with. In their quest for community they pass by the door that says left-wing politics. Why? You need not search much further than the typical political meeting -- overly earnest, boring, economistic, gloom and doom and, except on rare occasions, distinctly unwelcoming to the newcomers who have braved their first tentative outing.
And after the meeting? Nothing. No nurturing. No ongoing connection. No community.
While the U.S. example does not apply as clearly here, Lerner's analysis of why the Christian right in the U.S. has been so successful has lessons for Canadian activists.
"We find thousands of Americans -- from every walk of life, ethnic and religious background, political persuasion and lifestyle -- with lives of pain and self-blame, and turning to the political Right because the Right speaks about the collapse of families, the difficulty of teaching good values to children, the fear of crime, and the absence of spirituality in their lives. The Right seems to understand their hunger for community and connection." Lerner clearly acknowledges the destructive and often vicious politics of the right but argues most people vote for the Christian right because they feel understood and cared for by it, not because of its policies.
Nothing exciting here, move on
The left, on the other hand, fears that the people it is trying to persuade and mobilize aren't capable of imagining or accepting a truly radical vision of the future. So the NDP, instead of developing and presenting such a vision (assuming it is still capable of imagining it) that addresses people's need for a broader meaning, reduces that vision to a package of disconnected, minor reforms that doesn't offend the media power brokers. Of course, it doesn't inspire anyone either, as evidenced by its inability to get beyond 20 per cent support. Social movement organizations are in some ways even more trapped in the single issue incrementalism that fails to inspire all but a relative handful of politically conscious followers.
Convinced that "ordinary" people are incapable of radical change, says Lerner, too many left activists themselves retreat into a middle-class, consumer existence that they know deep down is not only unsustainable but deeply unsatisfying. We fight the good fight -- and then drive home, turn on the TV and watch the news report on a world that does not acknowledge our existence.
'These are radical needs'
Lerner's call for a politics of meaning is truly revolutionary given the extent to which consumerism is embedded in our lives and our culture, and the failure of our organizations to address the coming catastrophe. Who will be amongst the first revolutionaries to challenge the system? We will -- the activists who are now exhausted, demoralized and convinced there is nothing new they can do to make change.
Says Lerner, "Having been burnt by past failures, these former activists will not quickly jump into new political movements. Yet, as a meaning-oriented movement gains momentum many of them will feel a homecoming that reconnects to their deepest hopes. They will become the transformative agents who move these ideas into the mainstream... These people respond out of a real inner need, not from a commitment to an abstract idea, nor out of a sense that someone else ought to be treated differently..."
"These are radical needs," writes Lerner. "Unlike needs for economic well-being or political rights, these cannot be fulfilled inside our society as it currently is constructed."
It's time for reconstruction. The economic and climate change crises can serve as an enforced breathing space: an obligatory opportunity to get off the consumer/wealth accumulation/hyper-individualism tread mill for long enough to realize it was taking us over a cliff.
Related Tyee stories:
- From Crisis Comes Hope
But only if a weary left can lead with new ideas. Here's a few to start. - The Optimism of Uncertainty
An historian takes solace in the world's zig-zag towards decency. - A Love that Feeds the Hunger
Interview with Sara Miles, author of Take This Bread.
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
doggone
08-07-2009
Is taking us over a cliff
Not was.
(I am confident that Murray chose these words carefully - I'm not arguing here).
We (herself and I) have a policy: we simply do not shop in large malls. They give me the "creeps" and most shoppers seem ugly and fat.
Then they push a huge cart through the checkout so they can get even fatter - or at least maintain their weight. Sundays are the worst: no parking!
What on Earth is the point of all this?
Highways and parking lots to look after the cars and breakable goods to decorate with (or hire "Mini Storage" for) and FOOD, FOOD,FOOD?
Yuck. I'm going back to Margaritaville or Lao PDR or Cambodia where the people are happy
VivianLea Doubt
08-07-2009
meaning of politics
In his book, Lerner says he insists on the “possibility of possibility”. He also uses feminism as a model for the transformation that needs to be effected – that movement that attempts to change the way women are treated, how they are spoken and written about and otherwise portrayed, how women feel about themselves, and how men feel about them – rather than being solely focused on legislation or legal battles. I think this is an interesting model for the left at this particular moment, when, as Murray points out, we are exhausted and dispirited.
Politics never lost its meaning for me, but I no longer participate in the party machinery that concerns itself exclusively with winning elections. The ‘machinery’ – of every party – has lost the interest of the electorate to the point where many simply do not even vote. And one does not have to be a sociologist or psychiatrist to see that our culture is deeply dysfunctional.
Back to feminism: the movement can’t claim to have won the battle perhaps, but the reality for women has certainly changed – and this was accomplished by a few large organizations, some ad hoc organizations, and many individuals who believed the “personal is political”. The politics of meaning – or the meaning of politics, if you like – may arise from activists, or maybe it will rise up out of those people – a substantial majority if you believe the studies – who say that they are seeking a deeper meaning to life. The ones who come to understand that to attempt to live without meaningful community and substitute material goods is a part of the death process.
The possibility of possibility might be annotated to this: clean air and water and green space and wild rivers and wilderness. Meaningful work. Safe streets. Decent housing that does not require an indenture for life. This for everyone, not just some. Family. Community. Culture. Only those aspirations, actions, organizations, or governments that enhance these primary human needs will be tolerated. Of course, many have articulated these possibilities far more eloquently than I, and have been criticised for putting forth Utopian ideals that the taxpayers can’t possibly afford. But just as with the feminist movement, when individuals see that they do not have to accept demeaning and limited and disgracefully shallow attitudes that reduce everything to its price and fail to recognize the priceless…it begins to change.
I say the work of speaking (writing, singing, dancing, acting, etcetera) about what has the deepest meaning can be done by each of us and it is the only work that can hope to bring about transformation.
wayfarer
08-07-2009
Dobbin on the right track
Dobbin presents one of the better meditations on the state of the left in Canada I've read in recent years. One of the great reactionary failings - and there have been many - of the left has been an inherent, automatic suspicion of spirituality, whether it be the formal religious type or the more modern varietals. Yet, how quick we are to overlook the fact that our greatest civil rights leaders in North America were either staunch followers of religion or preachers (Tommy Douglas, Martin Luther King Jr, Malcom X); our favourite developing world revolutions fused with liberation theology.
One of the problems in our search for meaning as a movement is that the left paradigm is shifting faster than we have a chance to stop and analyze. Climate change and peak oil, in my view, change everything about the old leftist equations, and we need to be more creative in adapting to these realities. Returning to the proletarian manifestos of 100 years ago, not gonna work. Neither Marx nor Adam Smith envisioned a world without fossil fuel. Consumerism is no longer some surplus value equation based purely on my relationship to the mode of production. And my political consciousness is no longer based only on my economic class relationships, but on my relationship to oil, it's imminent end, and my carbon footprint, both as an individual and as part of a collective. We need to be more animistic in our approach.
Dobbin's assessment of consumerism as public enemy number 1 - yes. If there's one issue that sends me into a nihilist spiral downward, it's that endless race for more stuff. Sometimes I believe that Madison Ave has surpassed Wall St in the net power it holds over us.
Good article, Murray.
Cynic
09-07-2009
Most people on this planet
Most people on this planet will agree with Lerner and Dobbin's very good, compelling arguments. Most, but not all. There's no question that the vast majority of us want love and peace, community, prosperity for all in a clean environment. But what about our so-called "leadership"?
It's not consumerism per se that is the virus. The "system" is not one of our choosing. It is being foisted on us by an elite that could care less about the values espoused in this article. The elite are the virus. Their agenda to sequester the abundant wealth of the world into their private pockets is laying waste to our planet. Those who are at the pinnacle of the power pyramid are not on our side.
We the people don't need more convincing. We can stop pointing the finger at ourselves. Just look at Obama. The source of elite power is the banking system and he's installed Wall Street as his administration. He's a tool of the elite. They have no intention whatsoever in improving the lives of the people, and every day they shake their heads in disdain at our limitless gullibility.
Jeffrey J.
09-07-2009
Riveting Analysis
This essay is simply brilliant. One of the most insightful columns I've read in years. And absolutely correct. As Cynic notes above, it is indeed about elites determining social conduct. Always has been, but doesn't have to be in our future.
The study of social change demonstrates social justice can increase, but only with the mobilization of citizens. Gandhi 's example is probably the most inspiring, but Martin Luther King is a very close 2nd. The man Jesus of Nazereth was able to lead impoverished people in the same way. All were able to identify deep injustices occuring to a large group of people, all were known for deep compassion and love, and all knew the elites were the problem, not the solution.
With the rise of modern propaganda, mass advertising and industrial manipulation, citizens are up against an even more sophisticated form of tyranny.
As Dobbin identifies, how to extricate ourselves from this cloying, sick cloak of tyranny may be the single largest problem facing humanity. If I were to vote for one thing we can all do to begin a change, it is this: cancel your cable TV. You will be amazed at how your life begins to change once you've done so.
Excellent, excellent article.
coyoteman
09-07-2009
Then on the other hand...
"It's time for reconstruction. The economic and climate change crises can serve as an enforced breathing space: an obligatory opportunity to get off the consumer/wealth accumulation/hyper-individualism tread mill for long enough to realize it was taking us over a cliff." Wrote Dobbin in his conclusion.
I agree, of course.
But then, within capitalism, that "waste consumerism" has an even more groteesque class face. While wanton waste consumerism runs rampant amongst and across some class elements to the system, on the other hand are growing masses and "national strata" such as Natives within Canada certainly, including large masses of children everywhere, who don't have enough and languish in relative and absolute poverty, by any measure. And we haven't even begun yet to look at the many multiples of difference in "economic share" between the top 1% of the ruling class populatation and those, at the other end of the class spectrum, who constitute the overwhelming majority population, even within advanced capitalism who produce the sources of profit wealth for them. Then, of course, there is the growing under class population surplus to their needs, and who act as a "threat check" on the demands of the rest of the working class population, ensuring that they "behave" or face the threat of joining the under-class.
The System sucks on all the levels described by Dobbin, of course, observed by him as a relatively privileged member of the (working class) intelligentsia). But it sucks in so many other and no less grotesque ways as well, that effect other, more hard pressed class strata within status quo capitalism-, which the "official" left, no less manifested by the "Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition" NDP, and only marginally less so by "Official Labour", both of whom dare not speak of it, certainly in any way that would mobilize "the people" outside of the formal and "controlling" electoral system.
No wonder so manny of the mass of people are sleep walking through socio-political life right now. They are not the only ones. And for this state of affairs to change, they must first percieve a plausible glimmer of hope, which is not seen in any serious, differentiable way to be coming from "the left" right now, especially not the "Official Left" with its "career preoccupations" and "legalistic" only, within the "status quo system " framework.
VivianLea Doubt
09-07-2009
The good life
"If some other someone wants to put forward a vision of a society that suggests that life is about ACCUMULATING, realizing growth, love, friendliness, playfulness, but that it just isn't well represented/encouraged by the kind of culture we're 'in'..."
I think that is what Lerner's book is advocating, although Murray has focused on one aspect of it; his exhortation and inspiration to the troops, maybe. It is certainly what I am advocating; and further that these accumulations are very much in our own hands. We don't need to point the finger at ourselves or anybody else, simply reflect on what has most meaning for us. The culture is awash with consumer goods, but we are told that health care spending is out of control, and welfare spending is been tightened yet again...If we did not believe this it would not happen.
Like Lerner, I think that people's needs are not being met by western culture. It has nothing to do with trading abundance for austerity, but more to do with understanding what is priceless, and what is dross.
realisticman
09-07-2009
Seek and ye shall find
Spiritualism is really the only real path to happiness and contentment. The best way is found in the wise words above not through more phony money for more stuff. Give all your money away. Be finished with it! Don't take welfare from the state that's demeaning and accepting their system.
A new society should be formed.
NEMESIS.
Non-Elite Meaningful Evangelical Spiritual International Socialists
Fiat lux
09-07-2009
Once again, for the
Once again, for the umpteenth time: Politics are the execution of economic theories and politicians only do what their brainwashed economists tell them.
Waste, consumerism is "growth of the GDP" and the more people are replaced by machinery, demanding incredible energy demands, it is "more efficiency and productivity" in their warped minds, made possible by the deregulated money creation rights of the banks, financing the destruction of the Earth and humanity.
Why is everybody so scared to question the criminal economic theories of the last century?
This is the one thing I can not comprehend: Everybody is yammering about everything,with the exception of looking for the real causes of the self destruction.
Does the Lerner book have a single sentence on the criminal economic theory that causes all these problems ?
I don't think so, just as all the writers on this blog never mention, or dare to talk about it.
Boggles the mind !
Ed Deak.
Stuart the Drone
09-07-2009
This Doesn't Work for Me
Actually, I think the left's biggest problem is that the lords of empathy keep the logical people locked up in the nerd isolation chamber. Labour unions, social justice groups, and the NDP are heavily dominated by people who are top-percentile emotional communicators.
If you look at the last provincial election in BC, the left basically ate itself alive by abandoning any logical analysis of the carbon tax, and refusing to read any newspapers or textbooks that discuss risk, mortgage default, and recessionary economics. And then you get a bunch of heavyweight empathizers on the doorsteps saying "up is down, orange is green, we care about community values, vote for me." Then there is a new message each week (which research would tell you is a bad idea). Rationalism is not the villain, it is the prisoner-of-war.
The relative dominance of logic over emotion is not a "disease" that can be cured by putting emotion above logic. The two have to be integrated into each other, into a vision that considers the context of geography, history, culture, and the economy. The right does all of that, the left does none. And to the talent go the spoils of victory, fair and square.
Wilfred Laurier
09-07-2009
The Title
Says it all. The left indeed need some soul searching if it wants to hold power. Yet, even when it comes from within, these pleas fall on deaf ears. The fact remains that if you cannot win elections, all your good intentions don't amount to a hill of anything. The left has a severe problem accepting anything critical of itself, to the point that it is lacking any coherent direction or path because it is too occupied fending off real or imagined "attacks" from within, without or both. The left in Canada is completely preoccupied with this and don't think their opponents don't know it; they are well aware of the left's strengths and weaknesses. Even more importantly they are well aware of their own. Finally, when a mainstream party like the federal Liberals get flummoxed like they did last time, they are pretty good and taking their lumps and learning from it.
The left needs to be for something, not constantly against everything. It needs to send out a positive and realistic message to voters, "if we get power, we will improve your lives by doing this and we will pay for it this way." It has to stop simply calling their opponents names and vilifying them and distance themselves from those doing so. It has to distance itself from the crackpots that are always on the fringe of the left and make it clear in no uncertain terms that said crackpots have no place in social democracy.
Will this happen? Well, the last provincial election tells me it won't. The left ran exactly the same campaigns they ran in 2001 and 2005 and they did not win from them. Calling you opposition the Devil doesn't do much but make angry lefties happy an it certainly doesn't win elections as the evidence has clearly shown.
Finally, the left has to come to the conclusion some way along the way that anybody who does not vote for them is not "stupid." In my life, pretty much everybody I have ever met had a valid or astute point to make about practically anything. Just because they do not vote for the same political party as I do does not make them "stupid." This is a major failing the left has and I wonder if can rectify it.
ME2
09-07-2009
Stuart the Drone
While I generally agree with your contention that the Left suffers from an oveabundance of emotionalism which can sometimes cripple logic, I disagree with your contention that because the Right is concerned only with hard realities, it can offer reasoned, practical solutions.
Sure, it sounds good alright..... if it wasn't that all Right Wing theory is ultimately tested with only one core value in mind - money.
So no thanks, Stuart. You can put your "market" where the Sun don't shine.
Fiat lux
09-07-2009
I've lived under every known
I've lived under every known ideological and political system in 4 countries, have studied the historical precedents for over 60 years, but still don't know what the "left" and "right" means ?
All I could see and have read about are the predators and their victims.
The predators may claim to "spread the faith", or operate under nazi, communist, or capitalist flags, but they're always the same people pounding various scriptures that allow them to steal, rob and enslave.
The biggest communists under the Soviet era are now the biggest capitalists and our biggest capitalists would be the biggest communists if the tables had been turned.
The scum always floats to the top and it makes no difference what it is called. They all stink the same, whether they're politbureaus, or Bilderbergers.
As far I'm concerned, I fought against all and will keep on fighting them, till the last kick.
Ed Deak.
Stuart the Drone
09-07-2009
Well you can be my guest...
But that's not what I was saying. Politicos knowing what to say about the financial meltdown is kind of like knowing what to say about natural science as it relates to greenhouse gases. Maybe it's not your field, but if it becomes the top issue all of a sudden, you should be able to root around a little and handle the basics. Then figure out how it fits into your broader vision.
It should be fairly easy to take the most pressing issues of today, figure out what the underlying content is, and think of a coherent socially democratic or socialist solution. Then, um, create a, like, FRICKIN' CAMPAIGN MESSAGE that relates to it. Instead, the clearest message I got from the NDP was "Gordo: Kick him in the nuts!"
The liberals had a proposed price mechanism to curtail carbon emissions, a tighten-your-belt message regarding the deteriorating finances, clear non-involvement on the US mortgage fiasco, and an assertion that Gordo and his type (and, really, his class), would "keep BC strong." I didn't like it, but you have to admit it was well thought out, coherent, and appealed to the largest base.
Booker
09-07-2009
Secular fundamentalism
I agree with the sentiment of this article, but find certain statements fallacious and objectionable. The 'rationalism is bad, spiritualism is good' equation is not going to lead us anywhere. The opposite of "rational" is "irrational" and I don't think we are going to solve our problems by being irrational. I haven't read Lerner yet so I don't know exactly what he means by "secular fundamentalism" but I suspect it's just a label he applies to the non-religious or non-spiritual, whatever spiritual means. And that's the problem -- "spiritual" means so many things to different people that the word conveys no meaning at all.
The non-spiritual left does need to work on building community, to help fulfill the emotional and social needs of the individuals in the group, to have families with kids come to the gatherings, to have people take care of the sick and the elderly, to have its members watch out for one another, in other words, to care for and interact with one another. You can do all of that without resorting to the magical-thinking inherent in most spiritualism. In my opinion our society does not suffer from too much rationalism, but rather from an epidemic of irrationalism (see Oprah, see Jenny McCarthy, see "The Secret").
Non-spiritual groups are forming and meeting up and finding common ground to build a better society, one that seeks to understand, to respect, and to preserve the natural world, and all the creatures, humans included, that are a part of it.
coyoteman
09-07-2009
"The biggest communists
"The biggest communists under the Soviet era are now the biggest capitalists and our biggest capitalists would be the biggest communists if the tables had been turned. " wrote Fait Lux.
You know it, brother. The scum of the human condition has, to here at least, always managed to float to the top. It's the real great dilemma of the human condition.
And the really great question posed by human history is, will we ever really be able to save ourselves from the self servers and dilettantes of the class system, and its linked party system?
Stay tuned. It's not a foregone conclusion yet that we do not get taken, or take ourselves into extinction. The record of the good guys at winniung is not really great.
Cynic
09-07-2009
Take the left/right
Take the left/right conception and rotate 90 degrees. The problem is vertical. All the various political systems, whether democracy or communism or fascism etc, are corrupt systems structured to maintain elite dominance. We need to point the finger and name names. Rockefeller and Rothschild, Kissinger and Perle, the Bilderbergs and the Trilaterals, all the psychopaths who hold the levers of power must be brought down. It's of no use to blame our own behaviour, our behaviour is the result of elite control of our lives.
Just me
09-07-2009
Homicidal bitchin'
There is an aspect to modern life more frightening than the soullessness of consumerism: war.
War has been a constant for everyone now living. War is the ultimate demoralizer, everyday low-level violence its most constant debilitating influence, whether we experience it on the street, in work relations, in the bullying our children may experience in the schoolyard and the vice-principal's office, in traffic. These and other minor terrors are aspects of a constant war culture.
Yet when I studied Marxism in university we approvingly called it "conflict theory." We spoke of "class war." Our movements were "underground," "alternative" or "oppositional." We positioned our arguments with reference to "dialectical materialism," which was thought to be a good thing.
Unfortunately, for the left, Lerner's "communities of meaning" often are communities of blaming.
The analysis of consumerism as a kind of poison is not wrong, but it is inadequate. Just as we seek meaning (or mere social status?) through material accumulation, even worse we accept hierarchy and attempt to position ourselves within it through a kind of moral accumulation, expressed, as Leonard Cohen puts it, in "the homicidal bitchin' that goes on in every kitchen." So, the non-left fit a spectrum from stupid to well-meaningly naive to venal. Dissenters become "opponents" become "enemies," as the ad hominem demonizing so common among Tyee posts amply shows.
I am convinced that many decent people reject the left because they are sick of blaming and other forms of violence. They understand implicitly what even Dobbin's excellent piece gets wrong in his example re: the West Edmonton Mall. Dobbin writes: "The insanity, the grotesque over-stimulation of the place, no longer obvious to the Canadian women who had grown up with these monstrosities, was grimly apparent to the village activists." No, the Canadian women had not become numb to this alien environment; they were comfortable in it because it had been built for them. In other words, they were complicit in its very existence. We all are. If there is to be blame, we also share in it.
I am not making a case for guilt. I believe this is a platform to abandon the politics of blame (the politics of guilt-tripping) and ultimately the politics of class conflict, not because class is a poor analytical tool but because it has so failed as a strategic basis for winning hearts and minds.
No more war, not even class war!
I consider that I speak as a leftist, not immune to my own criticisms.
The left has barely begun soul searching in large part because so many on the left do not believe in any such thing as a soul. We often believe, finding all the evidence we need, that the blame resides with others more than we believe the solutions reside within. At war with others, we also are at war with ourselves.
Fiat lux
09-07-2009
Cynic........ The elite
Cynic........ The elite control of our lives can be stopped. It isn't easy, but it can be done to a high degree and we've been working at it since the end of WW2, when we became homeless refugees, while still in our teens.
We remained poor, but free to a high degree.
When people were going on fancy holidays, we were buying land, materials, tools and equipment to reach the highest degree of self sufficiency and now, in our old age, are reaping the benefits.
Very few people know that the long planned destruction of the family farm system and generally rural lifestyles, both by Marxist and capitalist economists, is for the purpose of stripping of societies of any degree of self sufficiency and survival competence.
Sometimes people just have to say: "To hell with this, stop the world we want to get off" and then build their own.
Obviously, not everybody can do it, for a large number of reasons, but those who can
should think about it and then do it.
Ed Deak.
frank2
09-07-2009
Good article. How to fill
Good article.
How to fill the spiritual void in a positive way? ANd in a way which leads to reform? Religion as opium for the masses (to coin a phrase) continues. The big evangelical churches offer a sense of community and belonging (and sense of being under God's wing)--and also foster feelings of distaste, even hate, towards non-believing liberals. Liberal Christians are seen as irreligious, apostates even, who may need to be "saved" but will not be raptured. What must be sought is a spirituality and sense of community which is potentially much more inclusive. Is that possible? Or is the designation "the other" (or others -- liberals, criminals, barbarians, communists, terr'ists, you name it) a necessary condition for cementing communities capable of joint action (such as voting in one way or another)? Advances in understanding of the operations of the brain and consciousness, elementary as they are, are also casting doubt upon the usefulness of seeking spirituality itself (or at least, as evidenced by spiritual experience) as an objective which can motivate large numbers of people to become socially cooperative. As contrasted with providing the psychological tools to compete harder and take more out of the common pie......
morechatter
09-07-2009
The Right Need Soul Searching?
I just went through this very experience as a prominent individual was selling that very concept.
What I found incredibly sad was the motivator behind all the community stuff was just someone taking from those who could least afford it. All the while preaching and pocketing the cash.
And all this Left and Right nonsense is nonsense as clearly its politics as usual and who do you believe.
As I thought the Tyee wasn't taking a stance on parties but more on what the parties are doing like lies, stupidity and corruption as the Left is not left out as Tyee is also on their case.
Its Democracy at its finest as Bill takes a round out of the NDP as surely as he would a Liberal or Conservative at that. I also have taken some politics in university and disagree about all this left right stuff as often politicians pick the party they believe will get in. As we all know to well how party members jump ship with the promise of a position of importance. Its Greed and Power and politicians sell their very souls for and its doesn't matter if they are Left or Right. Take Campbell who runs his Liberals government more like a extreme right Conservative. Is he a Liberal because he knew it is what it would take to get in. Did you know Tredeau was an NDP before he switched to Liberal believeing it was the only way to get in office. Didn't we have one of Campbell's Liberals join the Conservatives and then come back and provide Campbell with a wealth of info. As former MP now is rewarded with a cushy job as their is no soul searching there.
William Hayes
09-07-2009
Spirituality is redundant
"An institution or social practice is to be considered efficient or productive to the extent that it fosters ethically, spiritually, ecologically, and psychologically sensitive and caring human beings who can maintain long-term, loving personal and social relationships."
For me, removing "spiritually" from this definition removes no essential meaning.
"An expanded view of 'the good life': one that insists on the primacy of spiritual harmony, loving relationships, mutual recognition, and work that contributes to the common good."
For me, removing "spiritual" from this expanded view of 'the good life' removes nothing of value.
In both cases, I feel that the inclusion of a spiritual component adds no meaning or value and is simply redundant.
Dale Jackaman
09-07-2009
Academics Gone Wild
As one firmly in the secular fundamentalist camp, and a populist technocrat to boot, I found myself mildly amused by this piece that’s being propagated by the “generation never there” who look upon the technological wonders of the modern world with mixed horror and suspicion while fondly remembering the old days of kowtowing to non-existent deities or mouthing the mantras of swamis – all the while banging away on typewriters. I also remember how well all that worked out...not. Searching for meaning and social belonging? Volunteer. Looking for direction and motivation within a political movement? Find a secular Obama and get behind him. Our current political crisis is essentially a vote for none of the above, nothing more, nothing less. You can academize this all you want but people are looking for leadership and vision, and to otherwise be left alone to enjoy their new toys. Take away our hard fought for medical and scientific technologies at your peril, take away my 46” HDTV and you’re toast, move a modern political party to Ludditeville and you risk political oblivion.
Want to make a real political difference? Capitalize on the raw failure of capitalism in the area of pensions and the lack of a social safety net for those generations about to retire. Bash the Conservatives within an inch of their life for their horrid and despicable treatment of the sciences and scientists – to the detriment of our current and future physical well being. We’re going backwards at an alarming rate, not forwards, and it’s the faith based non-secular camp that’s taking us there.
zalm
09-07-2009
Freed Willy
I was gonna ignore you like everyone else did, but no.....
'The left needs to be for something, not constantly against everything. It needs to send out a positive and realistic message to voters, "if we get power, we will improve your lives by doing this and we will pay for it this way." '
Interesting view you have of the left. The only ones who are into bootstrapping the global poor out of poverty by offering them locally-grown jobs and export markets are... the left. The right only seems to offer credit and contracts for arms and minerals, and that only to the highest bidder, which shuts out the poor in those countries.
Your choice. A thousand farmers getting a fair price for coffee beans, or one arms merchant and a thousand child soldiers gooned on drugs fighting to secure the rights for a tantalum mine for Chengdu.
And back home, the left more seems to be satisfied with what it's got. They may be a bit self-righteous about being satisifed with hemp clothes and birkenstocks, but let's face it; the right has made a specialty and national pastime in the past seven decades promoting a prosperity gospel of the WASP merchant class that's had a devastating effect on the environment, economy, social fabric and discourse, and seems to have gone hand-in-hand with the most devastating wars since the Enlightenment.
The right (you excepted, notice?) always seems to want more than what it's got. Except taxes - they want less of those, but more personal benefits from them. More monopoly, copyright and patent protection, more tax exemptions for their small businesses, more fuel subsidies, more government support for private pensions, more upper-echelon salary increases "or we'll take our ball and go elsewhere". No social housing for you, Mister Aboriginal Man...
I can hardly wait for your next argument about "who is the left" and "who is the right". I suspect your opinions will hew much closer to the Canwuss/Fraser Institution definition than the dictionary one.
"It has to distance itself from the crackpots that are always on the fringe of the left and make it clear in no uncertain terms that said crackpots have no place in social democracy."
Fine. You distance yourself from crackpots like Dick Cheney, and I'll distance myself from crackpots like Garth Mullins. You tell me who's the greater menace. And I'll even spot you a loaded shotgun.