Reclaiming Our Elections

As of this moment, Joe Biden has still to announce whether he is willing to run for President of the United States.  Most people, I think, believe that if elected, he would do an excellent job of the duties of that office.  They believe this even if they personally prefer a woman in the office, or an activist such as Sanders.  However, Biden has obstacles to overcome other than the prolific number of candidates competing in the Democratic primary.  One of these is that because he has entered the race (should he enter) later than other candidates, he faces distinct difficulty in raising the massive amount of funding necessary to conduct a campaign within the current structures.  His rivals have the edge in raising grassroots funding; many already have a substantial amount sequestered away and have already gained pledged followers to support them.  That leaves for Biden the support of the privileged wealthy.  That is not a small amount of money, but it is a distinct disadvantage to a campaign.  That source of funding gives the impression that Biden will be beholden to the wealthy and likely to act in their favor, rather than the favor of the common man.  In fact, Biden has always been a champion of justice for ordinary folk.  He is not against the wealthy; he is a moderate who is also for working people.

This is not so much a comment about Biden as it is about the system under which we run our elections.   A few days ago, an article on Yahoo predicted that the upcoming election would be the most expensive ever.   That is not really news.  The cost of elections has kept increasing with each election for a long time.  This advantages the rich, who can pay for much of their own campaigns, and generates endless solicitations for money from ordinary folk, many who do not have much to spare.  That is a de facto way of disenfranchising the poor and financially lower-middle class.  Never mind that our country was set up so that only wealthy white men could vote; we have progressed beyond that, extending the vote to all adult citizens.  That is null and void, though, if our elections are to be controlled by the amount of money available for campaigns.  That turns the vote as we understand it into meaningless talk, and the real vote into the money that can be raised for each candidate.  Is that turning the clock backwards, or have we never really progressed?   Perhaps it does not really matter, because the effect is the same. 

Most of the funds generated go towards advertisement via various media, especially television.  Most of those advertisements are geared not towards rational discussion of policy or to the strengths various candidates propose to bring to the office and the service of the people.  Most of the advertisements are geared to showing how awful a candidate’s rival(s) are.  Digging up mistakes from the far past and emphasizing the human failings we all have are a major focus.  Yes, we deserve to know a candidate’s weaknesses as well as strengths, but in balance.  Campaigning via paid ads, with their paucity of facts and their abundance of innuendo, relies on negativity to the extent that the positive aspects are difficult to discern.  We are asked not to vote for a particular candidate, but to vote against the others.     The media and the muckrakers are those who profit from such a system – a system for which we pay, directly or indirectly.

Towards the end of its ancient republic, Rome had such a system.  Those who aspired to the office of consul or praetor needed to be wealthy, as the candidates finally selected were those who could provide the best circuses (games in the arena) and the most largesse for the often-underfed poor.  Their elections were, in effect, bought.   It is often said that when people do not learn from history, it is in effect repeated -perhaps until we ‘get’ the lesson.   Yes, we often hear reports of bribery and corruption in the elections of other countries.   Our issue is our elections.  Do we want to be in the position of ancient Rome, before its republic finally collapsed?

There are political movements underway to limit the amount of funds any campaign can apply, to make all campaign funding transparent to the general public, and to allow for limited public (taxpayer-funded) financial support only for election campaigns.  They are laudable, but whether they will succeed or whether they are movements of words to appease the concerned remains to be seen.  So much depends on so-called “ordinary” people.  (There is really no such thing; each of us is special, individual and extraordinary, if we would only look and see.)

It is easy to assume that the system of our elections cannot change, that it is the way it has been and will always be.  I am not convinced, though, that it is now the way it has always been.  I do think the influence of wealth has always been there, but that it had a much smaller influence until the advent of transmitted communication, especially television.  Candidates at one time would travel, giving speeches in many locations, and people were interested enough to inconvenience themselves to travel to hear the speeches.  It is not now as it was, and it does not need to be the way it is now.  It is also easy to assume that nothing can be done because the powers that be hold the money, and unless the general populace can donate enough to outspend them, the candidates the wealthy prefer will prevail.

What, then, can people do?  The first thing is to realize their combined power.  A good example of this can be found in a movie that has been around awhile, though not necessarily at the top of theater listings.  In A Bug’s Life, a colony of ants is completely dominated by a small group of powerful grasshoppers until they realize that united, they have more power than the grasshoppers.  If we connect with each other and act together at the ballot box, we can surpass the money of the wealthy few.  In addition, we need to quit playing the game.  We must not be drawn into responding to fundraising tactics.   How so? may be the response.  If grassroots donations for ads are not forthcoming, then the wealthy will simply dominate the airwaves and win the elections.   True, but that is only part of the game.  We still have more potential votes than they.  If each of us refuses to vote for any candidate who runs an attack ad, or any candidate who spends more than an agreed-upon limit on any ads at all, the stimulus to actually incur these expenses will amount to little.  By that alone, the playing field will be partly leveled.  Subsequently, we need to demand more time to hear candidates debate and more time to hear candidates speaking for themselves.  Our donations can be not just for our favorite candidates, but for expenses to convene debates, bring candidates to them, and make sure they are publicized.  We also need to commit to spending our own time evaluating candidates who speak and debate.  What do we think (it can be inconvenient to think deeply) about the endeavors they present?  How do we read their body language?   Do they seem trustworthy? Poised? Diplomatic?     If we are deeply in favor of a particular candidate, we can volunteer our time to talk with our neighbors, write letters to the editor, and, in ways requiring our time or even inconvenience, provide support to that candidate. And, most importantly, we need to vote.  We need to take the time needed and incur the inconveniences we must to line up at the polls and cast our votes.  Yes, voter fraud is another issue tossed around in the ring of politics, and it, too needs to be addressed.  However, if the vast majority of us steadfastly refuse to fund the exorbitant spending, much of which goes for attack ads, and if we refuse to listen to or be influenced by negative advertising and open ourselves to being reached only for debates and speeches, especially in person, and if we also vote, we will have made a major advance in reclaiming our elections.

Let us consider these things.  In the end, each person’s decision will be a personal one.  Together, these decisions can be powerful.  Let us realize our unity and connections with each other and act so as to recover what is rightfully ours.

Peace, Diane

Continuity

I have encountered a challenge.  For many, it is a minor challenge, easily met.  For me, it is somewhat more imposing.  I am being asked to do part of my teaching on Google docs.  As I am not very computer savvy, I do not know Google docs.  I have watched it being operated, and it is quite sophisticated.  Apparently, both kids and their parents can understand something written on a screen better than the same information written on a paper; the format of the screen is familiar to them. Apparently, kids will read something that is on a screen, but not as often something that is written on a paper.  Schools are teaching almost exclusively via computer, on blackboards and other applications.  Never mind that digital teaching is minus the personal touch of direct interaction.  The screen is preferred.  I am informed that we must keep with the times and do things the modern way because that is the way the world is going.  The explanation is considerate and tactful.  I will probably learn Google docs.

I have heard similar viewpoints elsewhere, but less kindly.  I have heard
that what one knows or thinks is no longer relevant, or even valid, unless it can be done in Cyberspace.  (And yes, perhaps it is ironic that I am communicating here digitally, in Cyberspace.) Whatever is not facilitated by technology is outmoded, old-fashioned, practically useless. Whoever is not on the bandwagon, using the latest mode of communication, will be left behind, perhaps alone, unheard.  The implication is “Keep up or bow out”; it doesn’t seem to matter where the “keep up” is going.   I can learn a new computer program.  What bothers me is the assumption that what I have learned, what I have done, and what I can currently do and contribute is of less value, if not valueless, if not presented digitally.  It does not fit the issues of the present. That is simply not true.  That is not true of me, and it is not true of others who use digital technology minimally or under protest.  In fact, those of us who have mastered what came before are one step ahead of those whose mastery is only of what is now.

Why do we need all those skills of the past?   We have computers, devices, programs, applications and machines to do all these things.  Why shouldn’t we simply go for that?  Technologies are the way of the future; they are to be valued and skill at them extolled.

Those who have not lived without computers, devices, applications, and mechanical conveniences, either in time or in environments in which those things are not included, are dependent on what they have experienced in the present.  This causes panic when there is not a phone, tablet, computer, or device instantaneously available.  One becomes accustomed to learning from video, rather than from reading, conversation or personal interaction.  It is easy to be lost when asked to do something without those technological conveniences.  An electric grid failure could be disastrous.  For those who are familiar with skills that came before Cyberspace, it would be easier to navigate without electricity, albeit more inconvenient.

Global warming, a.k.a. climate change, is a modern issue.   It is addressed not by conquering nature via technology or brute strength.  It is dealt with by skills of observing, understanding and cooperating with nature.  Nonprofit organizations routinely promote, especially for kids, time spent in nature, away from devices.  One cannot relate to or care much about nature if one has not known it. 

In addition, if most of one’s communication is Internet-facilitated, the art of personal conversation, with no device available, can be lost.  How often do we slow down long enough to communicate with each other without technology; for example, to sit down to a dinner and converse while enjoying a home-cooked meal?    How often do we even slow down to a more human pace, inconsistent with the ever-more-rapidly moving technology?

There is a wealth of skills, much of which has been lost, from indigenous cultures and from our agricultural forbears.  A few of them I know, and I wish to learn the others which have not disappeared – how to grow healthy, organic food, how to use herbs and foods for medicine, how to navigate naturally, and the like.   When we lose a skill forever, we are the poorer for it.  It is another kind of extinction.

We need these skills-from-before-technology because without them we are poorer, not richer.  We richly use technology when we can do without it, to live, work, create, and enjoy without dependency on nonhuman help to do that.  When we value that which is new, modern, and which provides less effort on our part, and at the same time discount the heritage which came before and is less convenient, we impoverish ourselves.  We become, in fact, less resilient and competent than we were before the new inventions.   We need in our present to carry the past into the future, to honor the continuity.

Let us then, take the time to learn and incorporate skills familiar to our parents, grandparents and ancestors.  Let us honor them while simultaneously exploring new ways.  Let us advance our knowledge consciously, recognizing the value in the beaten paths, noting where new paths might lead, and assessing the directions in which we choose to go.  The latest shining development might light our way into further completing our potential, or it might be a distraction that lures us into regressing, becoming less.  We will not know unless we keep the root of the knowledge that came before.

Peace, Diane

The Avocado Seed

I have been trying to grow an avocado seed.  There is no particular reason for doing that; I am not intending to grow an avocado tree, though it would be nice if that were to occur.  I simply happened to remember a preschool/kindergarten project, and suspended the seed over water, under a fluorescent light in the kitchen, just because I felt like it.  So far, no roots. It may or may not grow.  Either way, the seed will die as it blooms forth into a plant, or as it returns to its component parts.  It is not a matter of great significance, except as all life and creation are significant.

So why put the effort into trying to grow the seed?  I may never know the answer to that question.  I simply wanted to do it.  Perhaps it is simply practice, not for doing something small but nevertheless important, but in listening to intuition in the form of doing something potentially positive, only because I want to.  The point may be the process, not the result.  Process is something we seem to be forgetting in the current chaos of attention on competing results.

An enticement that comes to many of us is the desire to do something great, something obviously effective to make a difference in the world.  We may wish to lead a movement, write a bestseller, rise in politics, create and head a successful corporation, invent a new solution, discover a new theory – something of stature which is also in accord with what we think needs to be accomplished.  Rarely do we dream of gently wiping small noses or cleaning the bathroom or shoveling the snow – tasks which do need doing.  The activities we value most are those which garner for us attention, which provide for our egos their daily ration of importance.

Perhaps after all, it is the repeated small daily actions which over time create the results we wish to see.   The Grand Canyon was not created by grand bursts of excavation; rather, it came to be from small bits of erosion, maintained continually over thousands of years.  The leaders who strive to save our wild lands and wildlife need the continued accumulation of small activities and advocacy from a multitude of ordinary people with ordinary jobs and ordinary lives, who also love the planet and its life.  Those who provide succor to the outcasts, the disadvantaged and the poverty-stricken cannot do that work without the ongoing support of thousands of people whose mundane lives do not look a bit unusual.  Politicians, despite compelling oratory and political networks, are dependent upon the backing of the people, and go to great lengths to court that.  And, what will happen to corporations when, despite heroic advertising, the common people no longer have the funds to purchase their goods?  Truly, it is the small, almost invisible actions which sustain results.

I started to grow an avocado seed simply because I wanted to.  I cannot be attached to the outcome.  It may or may not grow.  It will probably have no great impact.  It was an impulse consistent in a small way with what I would like to see happen on a grander scale.  Most likely, its effect, if any, will be mostly on me, as a lesson that it’s OK to put effort into something small simply because I want to.  I think if we pay attention, each of us will find that a fountain of such impulses bubbles forth from our hearts and minds, waiting for us to act on them.  Most are dismissed with the logic that they are too small, and will amount to nothing, and are a waste of time.  Often, though, these small ideas may bring us joy.   Is it nothing, a waste of time, to spend a small part of our lives doing something small that brings joy?  That in itself has value.   In addition, one of those small things just may, sometime, be the seed of a larger result.  I am reminded of a poster I once saw; it was a picture of a large redwood tree, with a tiny redwood seed beside it.  The caption read, “The starting points of destiny are little things.”

Let us open our hearts to value the small, humble actions that surround us, practical or not, knowing that these are the bedrock for the sometimes inspiring, sometimes powerful and creative movements that shape our lives and the interrelated life of our planet.  Our small, collective thoughts and actions are the true creators of change.  Let us practice integrity in doing them, keeping each thought and action consistent with what we value at our deepest level.  Let us be the meek who inherit the earth.

Peace, Diane

Ambient Anxiety

“I can’t sleep,” my friend confided.  “My mind keeps swirling around with all the things that need to be done or could go wrong.  I’m not even sure what I’m anxious about.”

I could sympathize.  My mind does the same thing, more often than I would like.   I’m not sure, though, whether my mind is responding to circumstance, or generating the condition.

There are certainly many reasons to be anxious.   The chaos in the political world is one; climate change is another. Accounts of warfare and cyber warfare contribute.  Included are the state of the economy and one’s own income, issues of social justice, and the plight of refugees – these also augment anxiety. Granted that changes in diet and lifestyle do lead to better health, the lists of polluted water, unhealthy foods, ways to lose weight, supplements vs pharmaceuticals, and what to do about these (opinions vary) tend to be attached to as much anxiety as they do healing.  Our fast-paced, machine-oriented world can make us wonder if we are ourselves sufficient, doing enough, being enough, or healthy enough to exist and contribute.  Add the farther-out warnings, such as asteroid collision, the super volcano under Yellowstone or pole shifts, and it’s no wonder that many people are anxious.

Advanced anxiety is also called worry, the state where the mind will not let go of pondering what might go wrong and what needs to be done in preparation in case it does go wrong.  Most of us have been told to let go of worry, and that worry not only does not help, but can make things worse.    Less attention has been given to anxiety, and even less to how to let go of either.

 We think we know why we are anxious.   Either we know that right away and can respond quickly to a query, “I am anxious because……” or we come up with a reason after thinking for awhile.  Always, there is a reason given.  Yet, if those reasons are solved, often the anxiety remains.  For example, if one is anxious because his or her income is insufficient, and that person wins the lottery, the anxiety remains.  It does not vanish when the given reason vanishes.  Often, another reason then pops up for the persistent anxiety.  This is repeatable, if one wants to play the game of resolving reasons.   I am suspecting that in many cases, there are no reasons for the anxiety; there are only reasons we attribute to it, so that our minds are less traumatized by the condition.  “It must be normal,” we conclude, “because there are reasons.”

I think that most – perhaps all – anxiety is simply ambient.  It is a vibration in the energy matrix that surrounds us; we absorb that vibration unconsciously and carry it with us.  Then, in order to “understand”, we come up with a reason to attach to it.   There is no reason for anxiety, even the reason that we are anxious because it is present in the matrix; thus, it follows that to “cure” ourselves, we must fix the matrix so that the vibration is not there.   All our efforts to fix things simply add to more anxiety as we discover that it is not fixable.  If we have come that far, we begin to realize that it is necessary to look within, not outward, for causes. 

Anxiety is an energy vibration.  We are composed of many energy vibrations, including those which form our physicality.  Anxiety is an energy vibration of emotion.  It is not logical or reasonable, but it is mutable, as we learn to consciously move the energy within ourselves, including the energy of emotion.  I believe that as humans, we are in the process of learning that.  Not all of us are at the same level.  I, certainly, am not yet a master of it.  I have much to learn.  Yet, looking around, I can notice people – from different walks of life – who somehow are oases of calm in the midst of chaos that may be going on.  It seems to be natural for them, a gift or talent, or maybe a higher level of development.   They usually have no words to say how.  Yet, how can they be so calm, and I so anxious?

We can, I am sure, learn to consciously move the energy within us.  It is easy enough to do negatively, such as changing anxiety to anger.  It is harder to move to a state of peaceful energy flow, or a state of joy, or a state of loving acceptance.  Yet, is that not what most religions in their depths, and most spiritual practices tell us to do?  If we resent, we should forgive.  We should reconcile ourselves to the brother or sister with whom we are angry.  If we are worried, we should reach out to the peaceful flow of energy which exists both in the matrix and within us.  Sorrow can turn to gratitude and joy; the underlying energy vibration we seek is love.    We can transmute negativity within us to its positive counterpart.   I know that this is so, even if I have not yet mastered it.  I also know that it is mastered by practice, be it meditations, affirmations, course corrections in the moment, or any other consistent practice one finds useful.  It is derailed by being distracted from that practice.

May we each find the bit of hope that, if we cling to it, will enable us to practice moving our energy in positive ways.  May we each find ways to mutate anxiety, anger or fear to gratitude, peace, joy and love.

Peace, Diane