If you want to play the game of politics, here’s step one: Reduce everything to a linear political viewpoint: “right” or “left.” No matter how deep and large and complex that viewpoint is, politicize it, turn it into something that’s either right or wrong. It’s all about winning or losing.
Did U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris lean too far left? Oh gosh. Neither Liz Cheney nor Taylor Swift could save her.
I’m still immersed in my own recovery process—recovery from the election, of course. And yes, I’m feeling pain because “my side” lost, but my emotions are complicated by the fact that I didn’t really have a side in the election. It wasn’t simply that I was frustrated with the campaigns and claims of both major parties (the only ones that mattered, right?). I’ve apparently reached a point in my life where the entire political game feels problematic; it minimizes our world in a way I can no longer tolerate.
I feel the need to embrace and transcend this paradox: the reduction of our deepest values to a “cause,” which then frees us from actually having to honor those values and reduces the process to winning vs. losing.
How do we transcend our collective awareness beyond the artificial borders we’ve created? I ask this question not from some higher state of awareness, but from the middle of it all. How do we reach a collective state that isn’t competitive? How do we actually live our values rather than simply attempt to impose them—and in the process of doing so, oh so often, completely disregard and violate those values?
Suddenly I’m thinking about the good old Crusades, summarized thus by History.com: “The Crusades were a series of religious wars between Christians and Muslims started primarily to secure control of holy sites considered sacred by both groups. In all, eight major Crusade expeditions—varying in size, strength, and degree of success—occurred between 1096 and 1291. The costly, violent, and often ruthless conflicts enhanced the status of European Christians, making them major players in the fight for land in the Middle East.”
Now it’s all just history, which is the story we tell about ourselves from one war to the next. But, come on: “violent and often ruthless” battles to reclaim, good God, holy sites? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you? Actually, that biblical quote sums up the cost of war pretty precisely. But the paradox sits there like an open wound. Love thy neighbor, love thy enemy—but first you’re going to have to kill him. And his children. Charge!
I’m not saying all this simply to point a moral finger at the political leaders of the world. Rather, I feel the need to embrace and transcend this paradox: the reduction of our deepest values to a “cause,” which then frees us from actually having to honor those values and reduces the process to winning vs. losing.........