What would the institutions of daily life look like if they were not self-centered, superficial, and transient? What if they were founded on the expression of our whole selves and the deepest realization of our potential?
The humble must unite, because greed is merciless. When the power-hungry achieve power, gentler personalities retreat. Isolated, humility and integrity cannot survive. But working actively and jointly in the public realm they have an insuperable efficacy.
Let’s envision a Society of Care, founded on humility, understanding, and love – not narrow love, not institutional wisdom, and not bureaucratic peace. Let’s create a Culture of Understanding, in which aggression is contained, not through force, law, or custom, but naturally and spontaneously because we are in the process of living into being a world that is the expression of our integrated personalities.
existing social relations
Is there hope that we can achieve such a reformulation of society? History
is not promising. Brilliant results are achieved only by individuals
or small groups. In society, the dross floats to the top, and violently
destructive personalities gain control.
Ours is a society of aggression. This subtle, insidious principle lies
at the root of our institutions and daily interactions. Hard-heartedness
and narrow love is the animating principle. Capitalism and socialism
both are founded on this principle, but the root is much deeper than
politics or economics. It is also the origin of institutional religion,
and any and every organization which preys on and feeds self-aggrandizement.
There are a thousand forms of manipulation, propaganda, and oppression.
These produce cultures of brutality, mediocrity and superficiality.
‘The capitalist extracts from the worker, as if by a surgical
operation, a surplus value.’ This hard point of relation does
not arise by chance: generation after generation it spontaneously re-forms
itself. Similarly, in relationships between men and women, we spontaneously
reproduce attitudes of dominance and submission. There is a similar
process in every primary social and political relationship.
Global systems manage, tame, and neutralize opposing interests. In this
arena of competition and stratification, billions reach for prosperity,
and billions fall into despair. But happiness is elusive even for the
lucky, because of the founding principles of society depress the spirit.
Our choices are limited by the cultural background. The jobs, products,
entertainment, and news that is available to us cannot develop or nourish
the only qualities that could actually make us happy. The result is
a slow and steady dulling of the mind. The pursuit of happiness is an
effective means to achieve stability and wealth, but not happiness.
the foundation of social relations
We are stomping in a morass of stumps and ruts. Ancient and flawed institutions
lay underfoot. Back and forth we go, again and again. How can we get
out of this bog? What can supercede the narrow focus, the divisive self-seeking,
which defines human nature and animates history?
Examine the core social relation: fathom the opposite. If the fundamental
motive is self-interest, look into the heart of other beings. If daily
life is mediocre, refuse complicity. If the foundation of social relations
is hard-heartedness, rekindle the spark of simplicity which survives.
There must be a liberation of human potential. It's not any fragment
of self that makes change, but one’s whole being. The formation
of the whole self is transformative action. We plant the transcendent
into the temporal. Something new and beautiful will flourish.
the state of change
Utopian philosophies are dangerous: they are frequently used to justify
vast scales of violence. We cannot hope to produce fundamental change
through ideas or politics. And we should not seek to change human nature,
which fully contains the capacity for destruction. Our point of focus
must be elsewhere: in standing up for the full expression of the anti-aggressive
qualities, which we also all contain.
How can we create a culture which appeals to, nourishes, and sustains
the full range and depth of human functions? The human personality must
achieve its underdeveloped capacity to perceive truth, beauty, love,
the good and the sacred.
Elemental society is the active component of understanding: broad, deep,
total understanding of inconsistencies and paradoxes. It is the result
of the perception of the sacred, in which the self reaches a point of
actual purity. It is the meandering paths of physicality, flowing from
the sources of ultimate beauty, culminating in places and spaces that
pulse with cosmic power. It is the discovery of disjoined counterparts,
the bringing together of innumerable pairs whose interactions re-make
contemporary life. And it is the product of the single choices of moral
autonomy.
The good has an insuperable force: it shames the petty and the cruel,
which fold in when the power of love unfolds. This tremendous power
comes into existence at those moments only when it is active.
This is the state of mind which would spontaneously live into existence
elemental, visionary society. It is the culmination and the result of
each human function fully achieved. It is the spontaneous, courageous,
and present existence of the underappreciated senses of the human personality.
creating new institutions
Since the communities which we envision do not now exist, we must invent
them – not intellectually, and not as leaders, but by living them
into being together with all who will join in this task. The challenge
and opportunity are immense. Our vision, held passionately in these
fragile containers of jellies and bones, depends for its continued existence
on each beat of our heart. The infinite is set against the existent.
Unless we know where we want to go, we cannot take even one step forward.
All we can do is fight the forces which degrade society. But if we do
know, we can accomplish miracles by simply acting according to our true
nature, and creating the spaces which express this.
We don’t have to re-invent each institution, but we must reformulate
the orientation: from coercion to cooperation, from specialization to
participation, and from bureaucracy to humanity.
humanity
We must make an effort to join together with any existing groups that
are engaged in positive, creative action. Separately we are doomed.
Together in a creative partnership we will have an inexorable power—because
our action (if it’s based on understanding) actually creates the
new relationships and institutions as we work.
We cannot avoid our humanity: we carry it with us at all times. However
satisfying our private life, we are intrinsically joined to each other,
and enjoy or suffer the fate of those we may ignore or renounce. Happiness
is not attainable in private havens. Society is simply humanity writ
large: it reveals our secret truths. Elemental society is our great
potential: the visible expression of our authentic self.
