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Can the United States be Transformed? Hopeful Answers from Barack Obama and Riane Eisler: 1 |
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Can the United States be Transformed? Hopeful Answers from Barack Obama and Riane EislerHoward Richards “Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” --St. Paul the Apostle, quoted by Martin Luther King Jr. (King 1981, p. 21) Part One
Since it is a premise of my title that the United States needs to be transformed, I will have to explain what sort of transformation I have in mind and why I think one is needed. “Transformation” is in any case a relative matter; there can be more or less of it and more and less need for it. While I do not deny that the nation might continue to exist without transforming itself, I believe that none of its principal problems will be solved unless there is a sea-change, or culture-shift (to use two terms I take to be equivalent to “transformation.”) To employ yet a third equivalent: more than new policies we need new “paradigms.” I call the paradigms we need “ethical” and sometimes “posteconomic.” Neither rebates for taxpayers, stricter auto emission standards, government backing for new green industries, crackdowns on tax loopholes and havens, aid to save homeowners from foreclosure, withdrawal from Iraq, nor any number of other separate measures will turn the tide. The “tide” (another term I will explain) can only be turned with guidance from more comprehensive and open-minded thinking, from thinking at a higher stage of collective moral development (Habermas 1995) (to use fourth and fifth equivalents to “transformed”). To say what I take to be the same thing in yet a sixth way: The basic problems of the United States and the world are structural. They can only be solved by transforming the basic structure to produce a more functional structure.
These are heavy words, freighted with long and controversial histories, capable of many uses and abuses, and even though I will try as hard as I can to make myself understood, I am not confident as I combine words to make sentences and paragraphs that I will succeed in making my ideas clear. I wish it were the case that as an American I were a member of a linguistic community which shares a set of meanings empowering us to communicate with one another, and through communication to cooperate with one another to solve our common problems, and to sympathize with each other to help solve each other’s problems; as our distant ancestors the first humans communicated, cooperated, and sympathized even before there were properly articulated languages, using sounds to signal each other in hunts and flights, and thereby winning through culture an ecological niche in which we could survive as a species among other animals physically stronger than ourselves. Unfortunately, it is not the case. Language has long been a battleground in which words, and truth itself as well as all other ideals, have been weapons used to conquer, humiliate, deceive, confuse, and divide. (Barthes 1971, Foucault 1971) We are a fragmented nation in a fragmented world, and most of us, to some extent all of us, are fragmented personalities. I do not expect to be understood. On the other hand, Barack Obama´s successful campaign for the Democratic nomination, and probably successful campaign for the presidency; and Riane Eisler´s best-selling new book The Real Wealth of Nations following earlier successful books including The Chalice and the Blade show that they are being understood. I find myself asking myself whether I can contribute to a transformation that is already underway, taking place in many minds in many cities and towns and rural districts, finding evidence for believing there might be a transformation under way not just in the fact that these two inspiring individuals give speeches and write books, but in the fact that they are reaching audiences apparently ready and eager to hear them.
This is an exercise in discernment. Clearly Barack has attracted votes and donations, while Riane has written books people read. It is unfortunately also all to clear that one of them can be regarded not as a thinker with important ideas but as just another smooth-talking politician who has already sold out to the Israel lobby and who will over time break all his promises one by one: while the other of them can be written off as a naïve idealist. I propose first to specify at considerable length what exactly the “tide” is that needs to be turned before examining the thinking of Barack and Riane. I am encouraged by Barack´s campaign and Riane´s book because they are evidence that certain transformative ideas may now be mainstream or capable of becoming mainstream, including ideas that might eventually change the dynamics that drive American militarism. I am aware that Barack is advocating expanding the war in Afghanistan, and I do not want to make excuses for that stand or any other, nor do I want to convince anybody to vote for him, nor do I deny that there are good reasons not to vote for him. I am interested in his campaign as evidence that some of the ideas the American public is ready to hear are growth points. If transformation is possible at all, it will be made possible by finding positive ideas and practices to build on. It will not be accomplished simply by electing Barack, if indeed electing Barack is desirable at all, and (if I may engage in a small fantasy) by Barack naming Riane as his White House chief of staff. It will require the best efforts of all of us. (See Richards and Swanger forthcoming) I single out Barack and Riane as two cultural creatives I know or know about, among hundreds of others I also know or know about, and among thousands which surely exist unknown to me, also for another reason: because they are sponsoring conversations anybody can easily join. (www.barackobama.com and www.partnershipway.org)
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