Saturday, March 20, 2021

REFLECTIONS AND RESOURCES CONNECTING THE DOTS WHICH EMPOWER US TO TRANSFORM OURSELVES AND OUR WORLD

This is for Brian and Kevin and Matthew and Alli, Marita and Arlyne and Rubi and Kane, Oliver and Eleanor and Ethan and Carsten and Audrey ― our children and grandchildren. And for all the children of all the species everywhere. Bless us all. 🙏― Molly

 This is a post that I hope readers and viewers will 
sit with, absorb, learn from, and act out of... 
again and again.
 
An old friend from my teenage years recently expressed thoughts and questions related to a variety of subjects issues which today I know are not distinctly separate from one another but are rather intimately woven together. Ultimately, I came to realize that the depth, complexity, and importance of what he was expressing and inquiring about needed much more than a quickie surface response which would only mirror our corporate soundbite culture while completely evading the depth required to explore deeper truths. 
 
It has only been over the many years of my own deep research and through the resulting opening and deepening of my heart that I've come to recognize how important it is for us all to work together to connect the vital linking layers that take us to the roots of what has brought us to the precipice where we humans, other species, and the Earth are at today.

As always, when I write I am also writing to myself. This is one of the ways that I am engaged in the ongoing process of absorbing and integrating what I have been learning since I first set about healing, embracing, and transforming both the strengths and the harm of the ancestral and cultural legacies which I had been handed. This is the journey of peeling back layer after layer of ignorance and illusions and gradually awakening to truth, to love, to what truly matters, to what is yearning for justice, and to what must be done now to give our children and grandchildren of today and the future the potential for a just and caring world and a livable planet.

More than anything, I am an elder woman, a warrior for love, a passionate seeker of truth and justice, and a mama and grandmama bear standing on her haunches in fierce loving protection, not just of my children and grandchildren, but of everything that we all love and cherish. We are all related, all connected, all family. We all matter. And we are all endangered.

* * * * *


What is at stake? Where are we
and how did we get here?

There can be no solutions without first coming to see and absorb into our awareness the enormity of the problem. Without growing in consciousness and strengthening our hearts to hold the truth of our peril, we will not be motivated to unite and act together to address, fight for, and implement the radical systemic changes which have for so very long been urgently needed. 

And this is where courage and connecting with community to help us to know, hold, and act upon the truth is, to me, an imperative. Isolated and alone, we will simply not go there. We will not see that the roots of our suffering are perpetuated by narratives that divide us, such as that the only problem is that other political party (fill in Democrat or Republican). These narratives are a pervasive distraction from going deeper and connecting the dots of much, much larger pictures. And staying on the surface is what makes us vulnerable to complicity with the status quo and the poisonous politics of polarization and neoliberal capitalism.

So, first, we must know that we are literally destroying our nation and the planet. Without knowing this in our deepest being, we will not be moved to take the radical actions needed to save ourselves. Dr. Mike Ryan gives us a glimpse of what is at stake:


* * * * *


What is neoliberalism?

It wasn't that long ago that I had never heard of the word neoliberal and certainly had no idea what it meant. And none of us will learn about neoliberalism if we confine ourselves to corporate funded rather than independent resources of information. Yet, as George Monbiot accurately states, "Living in the United States, the United Kingdom, or virtually any other country on Earth without knowing what neoliberalism is is akin to living in the Soviet Union without ever having heard of communism."

The main points of neo-liberalism described here https://corpwatch.org/article/what-neoliberalism include:
  1. THE RULE OF THE MARKET. Liberating "free" enterprise or private enterprise from any bonds imposed by the government (the state) no matter how much social damage this causes. Greater openness to international trade and investment, as in NAFTA. Reduce wages by de-unionizing workers and eliminating workers' rights that had been won over many years of struggle. No more price controls. All in all, total freedom of movement for capital, goods and services. To convince us this is good for us, they say "an unregulated market is the best way to increase economic growth, which will ultimately benefit everyone." It's like Reagan's "supply-side" and "trickle-down" economics -- but somehow the wealth didn't trickle down very much.
  2. CUTTING PUBLIC EXPENDITURE FOR SOCIAL SERVICES like education and health care. REDUCING THE SAFETY-NET FOR THE POOR, and even maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply -- again in the name of reducing government's role. Of course, they don't oppose government subsidies and tax benefits for business.
  3. DEREGULATION. Reduce government regulation of everything that could diminsh profits, including protecting the environmentand safety on the job.
  4. PRIVATIZATION. Sell state-owned enterprises, goods and services to private investors. This includes banks, key industries, railroads, toll highways, electricity, schools, hospitals and even fresh water. Although usually done in the name of greater efficiency, which is often needed, privatization has mainly had the effect of concentrating wealth even more in a few hands and making the public pay even more for its needs.
  5. ELIMINATING THE CONCEPT OF "THE PUBLIC GOOD" or "COMMUNITY" and replacing it with "individual responsibility." Pressuring the poorest people in a society to find solutions to their lack of health care, education and social security all by themselves -- then blaming them, if they fail, as "lazy."

This is an excellent short film which reveals in-depth the neoliberalism which has plagued us for the past four decades: 


 
George Monbiot also wrote this excellent illuminating article on neoliberalism: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot

It is my belief that it is essential for all of us to immerse ourselves in learning about and coming to understand how neoliberalism has deeply impacted ourselves and our nation, other nations, and the very sustainability of life on Earth.

Following these threads will take us deeper and deeper and will ultimately reveal the interwoven roots of our planetary suffering and peril. And the curtain will be lifted and we'll come to get it in our bones how it is all connected ― neoliberalism and capitalism, consumerism and corporatism, fascism and authoritarianism, imperialism and colonialism, nationalism and militarism, patriarchy and misogyny, racism and white supremacy.

The fascism, racism, inequality, dehumanization, and violence of the Trump era did not begin with our former president. He is but a symptom of a disease that remains. We must stop treating the symptoms of this disease as isolated crises rather than embody the truth, wisdom, vision, and united commitment to treat the entirety of the disease. The symptoms of what plagues us are everywhere. Again and again we are experiencing a mirroring which is reflective of an American Empire in steep decline and which threatens to destroy the lives of all of our planetary sisters and brothers.... if we don't wake up and radically transform ourselves. Now.

We truly and deeply need a New Story to live by. 

* * * * *

Connecting the dots between capitalism, 
consumerism, and neoliberalism
 
This is a powerful and spot on short video by George Monbiot again making the connections between neoliberalism, capitalism, and the vital need for a new political story: 

 
This is another excellent talk by George Monbiot which empowers us to recognize the toxic waters in which we've all long been swimming in and the vital need to cultivate new stories to live by ones which heal and nourish, connect and protect, transform and sustain, and provide meaning and purpose to our lives:


 
* * * * *


Question: 
Is it okay for a few people to possess
billions of dollars while billions of human
beings are hungry, homeless, and dying
of preventable poverty-related causes?
Is this the America and the 
world that we want?

Part of the capitalist mantra is the normalization of extreme wealth. The part of that equation which I believe most cling to is the American dream of someday somehow joining them. The other part is abject denial that this kind of late state greed and vast accumulation of more material wealth than anyone could ever possibly use in a lifetime is the lack of awareness of the price paid by everyone else and especially by the most vulnerable, by species which are going extinct each and every day, and by our finite planet which this rate of greed, growth, and accumulation is utterly destroying.
 
It is my hope that this video will be viewed and shared widely and that each of us will ask ourselves Is this is the America we want:
 
Bernie Sanders illuminates here the hard, chilling, and deadly facts of our insane predatory economic system that has made this possible:
  • Two people, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, own more wealth than the bottom half of our country.
  • 50 people own more wealth than the bottom half of our country, that's more than 160 million people
  • .01% own more wealth than 90% of the people.
  • Jeff Bezos alone is worth $182 billion ― yet he fights fiercely to stop anyone who works for him from unionizing or having a livable wage. 
This is pure madness! Just insanity. These are monstrous, monstrous policies and systems which have made the extreme redistribution of wealth upwards possible. The material wealth of each billionaire on the planet is absolutely and horrifyingly commensurate with the suffering, poverty, sickness, and death of billions of human beings. This is beyond totally unacceptable!

And consequently, my husband and I never use Amazon. We never set foot into a Walmart. And it's not just our horror over the catastrophic harm caused by Jeff Bezos and the Walton family and others like them that we're aware of and refusing to be complicit with. 
 
We also realize that the philanthropy of Bill Gates and other less obviously sociopathic but sociopathic just the same billionaires will not save us. Just research the connection between Gates and Monsanto. Horrifying. Just research the devastating cost to the planet of the Gates of the world. And now Bill Gates has come out with a new book on the pretense of telling us how to save the planet when in reality he's promoting the same capitalist free market system that preserves and protects his wealth while continuing to destroy the Earth. More insanity. 
 
Ron and I join countless others who get it that there would be no need for the philanthropy of billionaires if billionaires did not exist. Think about it: these billionaires are the problem, NOT the solution. Their billions come at the expense of billions of human beings and the very sustainability of our planet. This is what we need to understand, absorb, and act together to radically change.
 
There are so many excellent resources illuminating the dark underbelly and the devastation of extreme wealth. This is yet another one: 


 
* * * * *
Connecting the dots between the filibuster 
and the perpetuation of power in the hands 
of the few rather than We the People
 
There are countless reasons why the filibuster has long needed to be ended. As Bernie Sanders and others affirm, we MUST end the filibuster to pass a $15 minimum wage. We MUST end the filibuster to pass the For the People Act to expand voting rights and put a check on outside spending by dark money groups. And we MUST end the filibuster to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act to ensure EVERY eligible voter can cast their ballot without any obstructions or intimidation practices. And the list goes on and on.

There are many interconnected facets as to why dramatic and vitally needed systemic changes have not occurred year after year and decade after decade, and regardless of which political party currently holds the greater power. Certainly ensuring healthcare as a human right, acting on the climate emergency, ending endless wars, enacting vital gun control legislation, addressing the roots of racism and poverty, and on and on have not occurred for many reasons and even though so many of these changes are wanted by ever growing numbers of Americans. And the filibuster is among them. The filibuster is one aspect of what maintains the toxic status quo of power held by wealthy people and corporate interests rather than We the People.

There are many wise voices and articles out there which shine bright light on the need to abolish the filibuster. These are just a few:
As accurately stated in one of these resources, "We are facing a moment of peril almost unparalleled in modern history: hundreds of thousands have died from COVID-19, unemployment is at record levels, and urgent action is needed on racial justice, immigration, climate change, inequality and other long-simmering crises." Ending the filibuster is just one more deep change which will make truly addressing these critical issues possible.
 
* * * * *
 

 Look at what the realists have 
done for us. Really look
And then choose love.
 
We've been on a long slide into fascism which again certainly didn't begin with Trump. The oligarchy, corporatocracy, kleptocracy, or whatever you want to call our reality did not arise overnight. The roots of our peril and our great suffering here in America and across the planet have existed since the earliest days of slavery, the genocide of Indigenous Peoples, and the colonization and rule by white male land owners... and beyond. 
 
Riane Eisler writes brilliantly and in breathtaking depth about this about the roots of human violence and also our great human capacity for generosity, caring, and love in The Chalice and the Blade (https://rianeeisler.com/the-chalice-the-blade-highlights-of-international-impact/) and her other prolific and life changing work.

And the quote above by the wise Satish Kumar is absolutely spot on. Here we are on a suicidal trajectory that far too many of us continue to believe cannot be changed. We've been acculturated into the normalization of cruelty, greed, and the turning away from our own suffering and that of others. Our tolerance for violence is all too often sky high. And alongside this tolerance has been the deadening of our wisdom, our great capacity for generosity and love, and the visionary consciousness of how to heal and transform ourselves and unite to bring a radically different world into being.

First, what I have learned, is that there can be no solution for what we do not see. 
 
I grew up, for instance, with alcoholic parents, was surrounded by friends who were addicted, and was alcoholic myself but I did not think I knew anyone who was alcoholic when I went to my first Al-Anon meeting in February of 1983. And I only went because a close friend told me she believed that my first husband was an alcoholic. But I didn't see it. I didn't see what had been right in front of me and within me throughout my life. That is how blind we humans can be. Truly and deeply blind. I say this with the deepest humility and compassion.

Many years ago I was told about this continuum that we humans are all on with ignorance on the one end and consciousness on the other. This awareness has really helped me to heal and transform my inner critic who used to mercilessly judge myself and others. And judging and shaming are not helpful. 
 
What I have instead found to be empowering is to recognize that being human in our culture is to be impacted by trauma the trauma of losing our deep connections with ourselves, with our planetary sisters and brothers, and with the Earth herself. So many of us have lost ourselves, our deepest human values, our great needs to be generous, to care, and to love.
 
It is a strange thing indeed to live in a country and a world where to hold deeply our most cherished and deeply loving values and to act out of them is somehow deviant. Instead we are supposed to be "realists" and settle for a normal that asks us to separate ourselves from our hearts and the sacred threads which connect all living beings heart-to-heart.

And that is what all of this is really about: connecting the dots of awareness of what has led us astray and healing and transforming that. It continues to very much be my belief that the ripples of the strong and sacred heart energy in us all is what will awaken and heal our world. First we need to engage in the great cleansing of the debris that stands between us and all that we are capable of.

It is time for our evolution, our awakening, our growing into the wholeness of who we most holy and wholly are. This is my great prayer. May we all be inspired to be the "deviants" our world so deeply hungers for and ultimately to turn on its head and deeply transform the stories that we live by and what it is to be truly human.

With deepest blessings,
💗
Molly
 

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