Sunday Sermon [The Argument, pt. I]

¡Hola! Everybody...
A good friend and I have been having an ongoing discussion that has lasted for years. We call it “The Argument.” What follows here isn’t the gist of The Argument. Parts of The Argument would piss you off, make you very uncomfortable, or otherwise challenge your basic assumptions about the meaning of reality, freedom , or free will. I will try to present The Argument next Sunday. For now, I’ll leave you with insights glommed from The Argument. LOL

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-=[ Setting the Table ]=-

When people stop and withdraw from the everyday busy-ness of making a living, they realize they’ve been caught up in something that they not only don’t believe in but deem reprehensible.

Today’s world is no longer controlled by emperors, dictators, or even democratically elected governments. We live in a world controlled by multinational corporations. Most of us work for them, we certainly eat and drink what they produce, are exposed to their scientifically crafted and persuasive marketing strategies, and we live on a planet that provides the raw materials for their products and is the toilet bowl for their endless refuse.

Corporations have become much more powerful than the governments we depend on to regulate them. In fact, they pay for the mechanisms by which a government can afford to be elected. Most troubling, at least here in United States of Amnesia, corporations are legal fictions -- a warped superhuman with the same rights as the rest of us.

These corporate demi-gods -- whether Big Media, Big Finance, Big Corporations, or Big Armies -- are sociopathic entities. Even totalitarian governments start out with some measure of intention to serve the well-being of a population, but corporations have an essentially anti-human worldview. Corporations are primarily responsible to their shareholders. The margin of profit possesses a higher value than environmental integrity or social empowerment. Creating and satisfying short-term desire eclipses long-term sustainability and sanity. And they are so pervasive they colonize most of our culture.

The fruits of the earth, plants, animals, water, and even the human genome are all being patented and made into commercial products, including even drugs to create new feelings. This trend has increased to the point that some municipal drinking water systems contain alarming traces of anti-depressants. Nevertheless, there is a limit to how much one can possess and we are running out of anything new to patent and own.

Oppressive political regimes that exploit their people can be and have been rejected by social movements and revolutions, or by the intervention outside forces. The power of commercial interests presents a more insidious problem -- it is something entirely different. Corporate rule is more like the relationship between a drug dealer and an addict. The power of the corporations run on the immediate addictions of a population, without necessarily serving their basic, essentially human, well-being. This collective conditioning, what I see as a psychological enslavement, and the global economy it creates, works in large part because it thrives on our sense that something is missing, that something is wrong with your life and with you: It’s quite simple, you need to buy our product. Drink this soda to quench your thirst, take this pill to give you an erection, or stop your leg from shaking, this house, this car, fly to this great place for a vacation and you’ll feel better. Look at this happy couple smiling. They feel better. See?

The global economy as it is being sold to us would not work with an inherently contented people. You would have a hard time selling the latest gadget to people who feel connected to themselves and to one another; who feel whole, generous, grateful, and compassionate, and who know they have enough. This collective conditioning or psychological enslavement recreates itself; it will never make you content. It is meant to keep you stuck in the Wheel of Suffering -- the insanity of committing the same acts and expecting different results.

Next Sunday... The Argument

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon [The Global Trance]

¡Hola! Everybody...
Well, it seems our goober cousins from Texas have done it again. In case you haven’t heard, the good people of the Texas school board have banned Thomas Jefferson, evolution, Latino/as, and anything resembling reason from their curriculum. I know, I know: this is Texas we’re talking about and you can’t squeeze blood out of stone (nor intelligence), but the Texas decision will affect your school-aged children no matter where you live. More on this later...

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-=[ Awakening from the Trance ]=-

The planetary crisis we’re facing is an awakening signal. If we don’t shift our consciousness... we can destroy ourselves.

-- Barbara Marx Hubbard

I am a radical, but I understand that the only revolution that’s going to make a real difference is one that transforms us into human beings more capable of intelligent responses to the many crises we face.

Though we have confronted major problems throughout our shared history, the challenges we face today are unique in one important aspect -- they now affect the entire globe as a whole system. Never before has humanity been on the cusp of wiping out the earth’s biosphere and crippling its ecological foundations for countless generations to come. Never before have we been faced with the very real prospect of being the first known species to make itself extinct. Never before has the entire human family been called to work together to build a sustainable and meaningful future. Never before have so many been called to make sweeping changes in so little time.

Today monarchs, dictators, or even elected governments no longer control the world. We live in a world controlled by multinational corporations. Most of us work for them, we eat and drink their products, we are exposed to their pervasive assault on our senses via their advertising campaigns, and we live on an earth that provides the raw materials for their endless “production” and the storage for their endless garbage. Corporations have become more powerful than the governments that are supposed to regulate them, and in fact, they pay for the process by which a government can afford to be elected.

Throughout the world McDonalds, Coca Cola, Nike, and corporate marketing are invading local cultures. The danger of this encroaching corporate presence lies in its basic motivation. Corporations are primarily responsible to their shareholders. Profitability has more value than the health or well-being of a population. Creating and satisfying short-term goals and profits are more important than environmental sustainability or social justice.

In this way, the gifts of the earth are all being patented and made into commercial products.

Oppressive regimes such as the British in India or Nazi Germany exploit a population and can be eventually rejected by revolution or the intervention of an outside force. The power of commercial interests, however, is more insidious. It’s a power similar to the relationship between a drug pusher and an addict, a power that runs on the addictions of a population, without necessarily serving their deeper well-being. This is the collective trance of a consumer society and the global economy it creates. It works only because our collective feeling of lack. It thrives on the inner sense that something is missing, that there is something wrong with you and your life.

It’s quite simple, you’re compelled to believe that you need to buy their product. Drink this soda, this machine or pill that will make you less fat, this car, this house, this grill; fly to this great place for a vacation and you will feel better. Look at all the happy people smiling in this photo here. They feel better. See?

The global economy as we know it would not work with a contented population. You would have a hard time selling endless plastic gizmos to people who feel connected to themselves, to their environment, and who feel whole, who feel generous and grateful, and who know they have enough. This trance of lack recreates itself endlessly; it never reaches a level of contentment. You want more, and more, and more... and it does not bode well for our future. We live in this trance from birth to death.

It will take only a very small percentage of the world’s population to wake up for there to be a global awakening. This isn’t some pie in the sky optimism. There is evidence that one man’s stand against gang violence, for example, was directly responsible for the decrease of overall violent crime in New York City. The more people raise their consciousness and wake up, the more those people will be affected by a collective awakening. And the more they are open to that, the more it will facilitate their own awakening, and that of others. So it becomes a positive feedback loop. It is like a snowball gaining momentum as it rolls down a hill.

If you awaken from the trance, then one of two around you will resonate with your awakening. They in turn will affect one of two around them, and that’s how real change happens. It’s always been like that and it is the only thing that will save us.

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon [Imperfectly Perfect]

¡Hola! Everybody...
Catastrophes kill, social policies decimate...

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-=[ Standing on the Verge ]=-

Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better... and the catastrophe towards which the world is headed -- the ecological, social, demographic, or general breakdown of civilization -- will be unavoidable.

-- Vaclav Havel, joint session of the U.S. Congress, 1990

Truly, we don’t really live in the world, we live in the conversation we have about the world. Only we limit the shape and tenor of this conversation -- it is completely malleable. The world may or may not be a changeable place, but we have complete power over the conversation we engage about it. This is where genuine change happens, where health, safety, and love come about. This is the wellspring of compassion and forgiveness. This is where the future lives, where possibility and reality converge.

We live at a pivotal time in human history. On the one hand, we’re caught in a global thrall of an ego-centered paradigm, or what I call the Mini Me. The mini me is a state of mind marked by a painful sense of separation from others, a sense of lack, and an overwhelming experience of limitation, fear, and desire. We engage in all manner of activity in order to numb ourselves. We rush to consume in order to avoid our feelings. This is the trance of problem-based living, and though regarded as normal, it fuels a never-ending struggle. It seeps through the cracks of our armor and manifests itself as disease, conflict, and failure. From a global/ collective perspective, the Mini Me is expressed as war and economic and environmental madness.

This is no hell and damnation rant. Certainly there has been greater cruelty, inequality, and imperialism in our history, but up until now, it has always been localized to a tyrant here, a despot there. Hitler and Stalin may have yearned for global dominance and caused much destruction and suffering as a consequence, but ultimately their insanity was isolated. Today the cancer has become systemic rather than local. The dominant neoliberal paradigm of today affects everyone, everywhere.

We are all in this together, for better or worse.

On the other hand, there is an opposing, countervailing “emerging paradigm,” or force. We’re on the cusp of a major evolutionary quantum leap. If you look closely, there’s a movement afoot, a small movement, but a movement nonetheless. The head of a new human being is being pushed through, and its first faint cries can be heard. Yes, it is a dangerous time, but childbirth is dangerous and we are experiencing the birth of a new consciousness on earth. These dangers are part of the birthing process. We are riding the crest of a wave whose consequences are unimaginable, and which contains the only true basis for optimism for our planet and its inhabitants. On this edge we can already sense the possibility of a quality of life that has been seldom been dreamed of. But as with all evolutionary leaps, there is an inherent danger. If we fail to take advantage of this opportunity, we will become the first species to make ourselves extinct.

As I look with a broken heart at the consequences reverberating in Haiti today (and Katrina before), I realize that natural disasters kill, but social policies act as fate. Today, as in the past, poverty, corruption, apathy are doing more to kill than any earthquake or natural disaster ever could. Haiti should stand as a reminder that the threat to our world’s stability comes from a collective expression of greed, most sharply embodied by global corporations, which put the bottom line before integrity, profits before people.

Those opposing the current paradigm are quite possibly outnumbered or at least much less powerful, but we are increasingly motivated to act for social change. Will we see life as we know it mutilated beyond repair by corporate greed and fundamentalists bent on proving themselves right and the (made up) enemy-of-the-month wrong? Or have we finally arrived at the dawn of a collective shift into sanity? Here’s the kicker: there’s nothing to be gained twiddling your thumbs awaiting the ending of this Bond movie gone mad. The final pages of this script are still being written, and you and I have been handed the job of writing the last act...

Love,

Eddie