"Love . .. is what makes people stand back up after being beaten. It’s what keeps a citizen human when the system begs him to become a subject."
Mike, this image, a deep insight, took my breath away. It is true. Love is the force that enabled the British in 1940 to take blows from authoritarians demanding fealty, without being extinguished by the brutality.
I began reading this essay in 1933. I finished it in 1930. Thank you.
I have written 4 responses each one inadequate. So suffice to say you are and I know will continue to be one of the important voices of this time. You have assigned yourself a task and accomplish it admirably, dissecting the players and situations, warning and inspiring, pointing out pathways, and encouraging movement forward. Keep going you make a huge contribution — accept that fact and keep writing because you are needed. Leaders use a pen and a voice and their will to work long into the night to find the truth, and fight the good fight. You are doing that Mike and I am so glad you are here.
The canaries are singing! This is an indication that the world is ripe for this, and we should be encouraged that if we can persist and not flag, taking our wins, consolidating over time, the new civilization will emerge to replace "modernism" with a more truly democratic and multi-cultural one. The lessons are hard, and rebuilding is exhausting, but the will is there, and maybe more importantly, the possibility. What a wonderful recognition! The world -- the planet -- is so hungry for it; we should be encouraged to build our strength, persistence, and endurance. Another great piece, Mike!
Against their psychological dysfunction, what measures may we take to enhance psychological function? The scope of No Kings helps assure us we're not so crazy -- playfully. What more can we do in this dimension?
In the 60s it seemed certain drugs were useful; whatever Silicon Valley and Musk are dosing themselves with counts against that claim. And the old hippie wellness movement has been largely seduced into following Kennedy down his rabbit hole.
There's ample evidence we're also echoing psychological conditions of about a century ago, when Freud spoke of the whole of society entering a phase of neurotic incapacitation. Trumpism is -- beyond mere dominance -- a celebration of crazy. The whirlpool of it tugs at us all. Resistance cannot be enough. From what font flows a renewal of sanity?
I think the answer is simpler and harder than we want it to be: sustained attention to what's actually present.
Not what the algorithm shows you. Not what the outrage cycle demands you feel. Not what the performance requires you to signal. What's actually here, now, in the room where you're sitting, in the relationships you can touch, in the work your hands can do.
It flows from the font of compassion: for myself first, my beloved, then all of my loved ones friends and family, my circle, community, region, country, planet and all sentient beings including my enemies. May we be free from suffering and the causes of suffering now and for beginning less time.
Chris, I'm all for compassion, and its increase. On the other hand, pain and suffering are an essential part of life. If the last bit of suffering were to leave the universe, the last bit of compassion would leave with it. And the child who places a hand in a flame would feel no pain.
(The Buddhist term 'dukkha' is commonly mistranslated as 'suffering'. Its meaning is of having a wheel off center or out of round -- basically being out of tune. This mistranslation gets Western Buddhists confused.)
Likewise, the wisdom teachings demonstrate that the term ‘emptiness’, is indeed emptiness of every suffering as well as perception/conception of suffering along with every other perception/conception/existence, indicating what is indescribable and unknowable by all worldly beings, so, by inference, IMO and that of my teachers, the wisdom of emptiness is actually everythingness, universal one-ness, freedom for all beings and something to consider.
Yes, that's the standard presentation. Me, I like individuality. And it does appear, if we are all expressions of the whole, that the whole very much likes individuality too. I believe the spiritual is real, and that the tendency of those who respect the spiritual to withdraw from the world, seeking to dissolve their selves into oneness, is precisely the distraction which takes too many of us away from right livelihood and effective political action.
I'm all for having some blissed-out hermits in caves, sages wandering the mountains, and monastic communities spending days chanting. But freedom for all beings means freedom to act, to live full lives in complex and involved societies, not just withdrawal from the wheel of life -- except for those few who are drawn to reclusion and self-surrender.
Putin, Trump and Musk fail spectacularly because they have an exaggerated sense of their own efficacy. Just because they managed to get into positions of authority, they think those skills will serve them as leaders. But real leadership requires collaboration, humility, flexibility, and integrity which they obviously lack being greatly impressed with their own brilliance and strategic acumen. Inevitably they generate opposition with their insufferable arrogance and incompetence. Loaded down with bravado and resentments, none can sustain meaningful relationships. To compensate they strut onstage and deploy the tools at hand, cruelty and violence to keep everyone in line. The day of reckoning is coming for all three when history will pass them by and their peers will bid them good riddance.
I truly and totally like what you say above. But you speak of "real" leadership, "genuine" humility, and the bottom line of what human life, all biotic life, and abiotic life is about ⇢ INTEGRITY. Every dictator, murderer, fascist head of state fails in the above.
But it is our duty, each one of us, to take the helm. It's not like the song Jesus Take the Wheel, we are each instruments of integrity, cogs of a giant uni-versal gear, the John Donne clogs of a continent.
When we fail to live up to our individual responsibilities, we become the accomplices to the ego, envy, avarice and ambition of megalomaniacs like Trump, Putin, Kim Jong-un, and egomaniacs driven by greed like Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg and others who could use their surplus billions to begin the repairs needed to Earth and to peoples.
And the purported freedom-loving nations of the world, especially those in Europe and Africa, should be especially ashamed of allowing genocide after genocide to occur as we have seen in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, and repeatedly in the African continent where people are slaughtered.
Yes, in the grand scheme of life, the Putins will be reckoned with. But like Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Kim Jong-un, why do we Americans, as a Nation, as individuals, bury our heads in the sand when so much is at stake. Look at what Trump hath wrought.
I'm sorry! I'm writing full-time to cover this moment in history from a moral worldview. Don't worry, there are no exams at the end of any semester. Skipping some pieces is always fair move in a world with competing priorities.
Thank you for this. In a moment of deep pessimism and despair, you have framed our situation in an almost poetic way and reminded us that “it” isn’t over yet. We can still save ourselves from the tyranny.
AIL (Apathy, Ignorance, Laziness). Perfectly put. I threw the towel in. We’re in this mess/nightmare for the long haul. I will continue to protest, speak my mind and call out the depravity…if only to keep myself from becoming depraved myself. But sadly, the people have “spoken.”
The authoritarians have strength. Democracies have resilience. That made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Resilience beats strength ten out of ten, over the long arc.
It’s not 1930. The stock market presaging the beginning of the Great Depression had ocurred by 1930. Presently we remain in the period just before the crash, early 1929. 2024 was 1928, as I argue in my UPSIDE OF THE DOWNSIDE PART I (See: https://davidlsmith.substack.com). We are presently in the calm just before the October 1929 stock market crash.
"Love . .. is what makes people stand back up after being beaten. It’s what keeps a citizen human when the system begs him to become a subject."
Mike, this image, a deep insight, took my breath away. It is true. Love is the force that enabled the British in 1940 to take blows from authoritarians demanding fealty, without being extinguished by the brutality.
I began reading this essay in 1933. I finished it in 1930. Thank you.
❤️
I have written 4 responses each one inadequate. So suffice to say you are and I know will continue to be one of the important voices of this time. You have assigned yourself a task and accomplish it admirably, dissecting the players and situations, warning and inspiring, pointing out pathways, and encouraging movement forward. Keep going you make a huge contribution — accept that fact and keep writing because you are needed. Leaders use a pen and a voice and their will to work long into the night to find the truth, and fight the good fight. You are doing that Mike and I am so glad you are here.
These are very kind words. Thank you.
I cannot forget a world of beauty can seem ugly in the human realm, love transcends both. What appears destructive is still part of the process.
By the by, love your work.
Beautifully put.
The canaries are singing! This is an indication that the world is ripe for this, and we should be encouraged that if we can persist and not flag, taking our wins, consolidating over time, the new civilization will emerge to replace "modernism" with a more truly democratic and multi-cultural one. The lessons are hard, and rebuilding is exhausting, but the will is there, and maybe more importantly, the possibility. What a wonderful recognition! The world -- the planet -- is so hungry for it; we should be encouraged to build our strength, persistence, and endurance. Another great piece, Mike!
Against their psychological dysfunction, what measures may we take to enhance psychological function? The scope of No Kings helps assure us we're not so crazy -- playfully. What more can we do in this dimension?
In the 60s it seemed certain drugs were useful; whatever Silicon Valley and Musk are dosing themselves with counts against that claim. And the old hippie wellness movement has been largely seduced into following Kennedy down his rabbit hole.
There's ample evidence we're also echoing psychological conditions of about a century ago, when Freud spoke of the whole of society entering a phase of neurotic incapacitation. Trumpism is -- beyond mere dominance -- a celebration of crazy. The whirlpool of it tugs at us all. Resistance cannot be enough. From what font flows a renewal of sanity?
I think the answer is simpler and harder than we want it to be: sustained attention to what's actually present.
Not what the algorithm shows you. Not what the outrage cycle demands you feel. Not what the performance requires you to signal. What's actually here, now, in the room where you're sitting, in the relationships you can touch, in the work your hands can do.
It flows from the font of compassion: for myself first, my beloved, then all of my loved ones friends and family, my circle, community, region, country, planet and all sentient beings including my enemies. May we be free from suffering and the causes of suffering now and for beginning less time.
Chris, I'm all for compassion, and its increase. On the other hand, pain and suffering are an essential part of life. If the last bit of suffering were to leave the universe, the last bit of compassion would leave with it. And the child who places a hand in a flame would feel no pain.
(The Buddhist term 'dukkha' is commonly mistranslated as 'suffering'. Its meaning is of having a wheel off center or out of round -- basically being out of tune. This mistranslation gets Western Buddhists confused.)
Likewise, the wisdom teachings demonstrate that the term ‘emptiness’, is indeed emptiness of every suffering as well as perception/conception of suffering along with every other perception/conception/existence, indicating what is indescribable and unknowable by all worldly beings, so, by inference, IMO and that of my teachers, the wisdom of emptiness is actually everythingness, universal one-ness, freedom for all beings and something to consider.
Yes, that's the standard presentation. Me, I like individuality. And it does appear, if we are all expressions of the whole, that the whole very much likes individuality too. I believe the spiritual is real, and that the tendency of those who respect the spiritual to withdraw from the world, seeking to dissolve their selves into oneness, is precisely the distraction which takes too many of us away from right livelihood and effective political action.
I'm all for having some blissed-out hermits in caves, sages wandering the mountains, and monastic communities spending days chanting. But freedom for all beings means freedom to act, to live full lives in complex and involved societies, not just withdrawal from the wheel of life -- except for those few who are drawn to reclusion and self-surrender.
Putin, Trump and Musk fail spectacularly because they have an exaggerated sense of their own efficacy. Just because they managed to get into positions of authority, they think those skills will serve them as leaders. But real leadership requires collaboration, humility, flexibility, and integrity which they obviously lack being greatly impressed with their own brilliance and strategic acumen. Inevitably they generate opposition with their insufferable arrogance and incompetence. Loaded down with bravado and resentments, none can sustain meaningful relationships. To compensate they strut onstage and deploy the tools at hand, cruelty and violence to keep everyone in line. The day of reckoning is coming for all three when history will pass them by and their peers will bid them good riddance.
I truly and totally like what you say above. But you speak of "real" leadership, "genuine" humility, and the bottom line of what human life, all biotic life, and abiotic life is about ⇢ INTEGRITY. Every dictator, murderer, fascist head of state fails in the above.
But it is our duty, each one of us, to take the helm. It's not like the song Jesus Take the Wheel, we are each instruments of integrity, cogs of a giant uni-versal gear, the John Donne clogs of a continent.
When we fail to live up to our individual responsibilities, we become the accomplices to the ego, envy, avarice and ambition of megalomaniacs like Trump, Putin, Kim Jong-un, and egomaniacs driven by greed like Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg and others who could use their surplus billions to begin the repairs needed to Earth and to peoples.
And the purported freedom-loving nations of the world, especially those in Europe and Africa, should be especially ashamed of allowing genocide after genocide to occur as we have seen in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, and repeatedly in the African continent where people are slaughtered.
Yes, in the grand scheme of life, the Putins will be reckoned with. But like Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Kim Jong-un, why do we Americans, as a Nation, as individuals, bury our heads in the sand when so much is at stake. Look at what Trump hath wrought.
A reality check with inspiration at the end! I’m inspired Mike. Keep writing and evolving this grand thesis.
Three long articles in one day. I won’t be able to keep up.
I'm sorry! I'm writing full-time to cover this moment in history from a moral worldview. Don't worry, there are no exams at the end of any semester. Skipping some pieces is always fair move in a world with competing priorities.
I am skipping absolutely none of them, since retired with time, but I admit I do not know how you do it.
Thank you for this. In a moment of deep pessimism and despair, you have framed our situation in an almost poetic way and reminded us that “it” isn’t over yet. We can still save ourselves from the tyranny.
AIL (Apathy, Ignorance, Laziness). Perfectly put. I threw the towel in. We’re in this mess/nightmare for the long haul. I will continue to protest, speak my mind and call out the depravity…if only to keep myself from becoming depraved myself. But sadly, the people have “spoken.”
Defiance is a tool, but it needs to be wielded by a leader with a plan. I’m still waiting for one.
The authoritarians have strength. Democracies have resilience. That made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Resilience beats strength ten out of ten, over the long arc.
It’s not 1930. The stock market presaging the beginning of the Great Depression had ocurred by 1930. Presently we remain in the period just before the crash, early 1929. 2024 was 1928, as I argue in my UPSIDE OF THE DOWNSIDE PART I (See: https://davidlsmith.substack.com). We are presently in the calm just before the October 1929 stock market crash.
Fantastic piece 🙏🏽