It is Monday, October 21, 2024

We believe the following:

Our liberal democratic republic is a spiritual good because it makes it possible to be both publicly virtuous and to be safe and happy and successful and able to provide for one’s family. Contrast this with a top-down crime-state like Putin’s Russia, where standing up for honesty, fair play, competency, and goodwill in government can get you killed — even if you’re not longer living in the country.

On the whole, a healthy liberal democratic republic selects for honesty, fair play, and competency; whereas a tyranny generally selects for dishonesty, cheating, thieving, cruelty, and incompetence. Why? Because by protecting individual rights within a system of equality under the law, checks and balances on individual powers, temporary and ballots-checked power (which allows the majority to serve as a final check on madness and corruption in government); liberal democratic republics focus on the fun, rather than the horror, of government.

It’s fun to play a game where in the end everyone goes home friends and to a safe home where they are loved and where they can look after those they love. That’s fun. Sometimes somebody goes a little far and somebody’s feelings are hurt, but in the end, no one is trying to destroy anyone else or the game that keeps everyone safe by keeping power struggles in the realm of ideas rather than letting them descend into violence and the winner-take-all logic of criminal states. Why not? It’s the same logic that keeps most rich people from bothering to break into other people’s houses to steal their jewelry: It’s not worth it; all things being equal, people would rather live in an environment where they don’t have to steal, cheat, and commit acts of violence against others in order to succeed.

The great thing about a liberal democratic republic is that it’s core values are compatible with the universal values without which none of our worldviews can be meaningful to any of us (aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving-kind, joyfully-sharing); and the interplay between protections for basic rights like freedom of speech and freedom reprisal, and checks and balances on individual powers, and the people’s right to vote their representatives out at regular intervals in fair elections — all this works together to help keep the system from being co-opted by would-be tyrants.

The terrible thing about tyranny is that it’s core values are not compatible with the universal values without which none of our worldviews can be meaningful to any of us (aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving-kind, joyfully-sharing); and the top-down crime of a government dedicated not first and foremost to serving the people, but rather dedicated to maintaining power at the expense of the people’s freedoms, makes it difficult to either change the system, or even to be publicly virtuous without risking the safety and security of yourself and your loved ones.

That was the great miracle of 1776. No, it wasn’t perfect. It didn’t include everyone. But the idea has grown. And the joy has spread, and by spreading to more people, it has deepened in everyone. Liberal democratic republics don’t silence disagreement or oppress dissent; and so people can stand up for honesty, fair play, and competency in government and still have nice, normal lives with loved ones they can look after and care for. And this, plus majority rule and the possible evolution of popular sentiment, means that the governments and the people within in liberal democratic republics can evolve together, can grow together, can together be better shepherds of the universal values without which no one’s worldview is meaningful to anyone (aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving-kind, joyfully-sharing).

How lucky we’ve been.
Let’s not pretend away the joy we’ve been given.
Let’s not pretend we’ve not been blessed.
Let’s admit we’ve had a nice run.
But let’s also note that this shouldn’t be rare, this should be normal, this should be public life.

This form of government allows the citizens to serve as a final check on madness, corruption, and political evil in government, while also together influencing their shared local and national conversations and governments — all without fear of government reprisal or government acceptance of political violence, and thus safely in the realm of ideas –.

And by creating a political landscape where politicians know they serve a short time and only at the pleasure of their constituents, and bureaucrats are shielded from political tests and are thus free to be professionals rather than political animals; this form of government allows the citizens and the government to together learn from and correct their mistakes, and (since people who fight for honesty, accuracy, competency and good will in government are protected from government and personal reprisals; and since on the whole, all things being equal, most people prefer their leadership be faithful stewards of the power entrusted to it) it selects for honesty, accuracy, competency, and good will in public life.

We all have different beliefs. But we all know that our own feeling, thinking, and acting can only be meaningful to us to the degree that we feel, think, and act aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving-kind, and joyfully-sharing. Why? Because to the degree we fail to feel/think/act this way, we cannot understand, believe in, or care about our own feelings, thoughts, and actions — we cannot meaningfully travel with our own considerations to our own conclusions because we are attempting to make decisions without following our own inborn, indelible rules for feeling, thinking, and acting.

Furthermore, we all know that except to the degree our feeling, thinking, and acting is centered on an infinite, eternal, spiritual Love that chooses everyone 100% (and thus — in that absolute completeness — equally); we cannot understand, believe in, and care about our own feeling, thinking, and acting. Why? I don’t know. That is the nature of who we are deep inside. We cannot be meaningful to ourselves except to the degree that we abide by the universal values (aware, clear, honest, … joyfully-sharing) because these are the values that help us remain grounded in and flow meaningfully out of the kind of Godly Love that we need to be grounded in and meaningfully interpret into words and deeds in order to understand, believe in, care about, or even stand our own feeling, thinking, and acting.

Finally, since we cannot meaningfully participate in life unless that life is self-awaredly grounded in a Reality of a Love that chooses everyone without fail and, being infinitely greater than our own little notions, cannot fail to carry everyone safely back into Itself; we cannot meaningfully believe that others are not essentially like ourselves. In short: Except to the degree we are able to live the commandment to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength and our *neighbor as ourselves, we cannot understand, believe in, care about, or stand our own feelings, thoughts, words, and deeds.

*[i.e. everyone, since the metaphysical Reality we require to be meaningful to ourselves is one in which an infinite spiritual Love shines through our every conscious moment, as well as through everything and everyone else.]

This is all psychology, not metaphysics. As such, it is self-evident — and does not require philosophical, theological, and/or scientific support. Search yourself.

Do we live in a Reality of Love? Is all there really is an infinite eternal joyful giving? Is this life just sketches upon a spiritual Love that creates, sustains, shines through, and ultimately is all things? Do we all together don this interwoven daydream that the Love might create, sustain, love-lift, and ultimately explode-through overcome dissolve and resolve back into Itself all possible configurations?

Or something along those lines?

Who can say? Human minds and hearts are finite, and the Love we seek to relate to and to interpret into feeling, thinking, and acting would have to be infinite for It to be what we seek. Furthermore, humans are NOTORIOUS for confusing their own feelings/ideas for great and eternal Truths.

You see this all the time: Even people who claim they know of no Truth, generally clench either (irony of ironies!) that very notion, or other combinations of feelings and ideas as if they were great and eternal Truths.

Granted: We do have the case of some ancient skeptics who reported finding — without looking for it, and quite unexpectedly — a wonderful calm and freedom after they successfully suspended all judgements (which, again, they did not at all in pursuit of inner bliss, but merely procedurally — as the only way to reliably avoid emotional/intellectual errors). But that doesn’t prove that skepticism is True, it merely points to what the mystics have long claimed: The Truth is wider and deeper than, is prior to our ideas and feelings — including our ideas and feelings about the Truth.

What can we say? Only that to be meaningful to ourselves we should seek a spiritual Love that chooses everyone shining through everything (including each conscious moment), and we should try to organize our ideas and feelings around such a Love, and we should work to poetically translate that Love into feeling, thinking, and acting (we cannot literally/directly/1:1 translate what is wider and deeper than our f/t/a into our f/t/a, and pretending we can creates no end of trouble). And we can further say that the universal values, and the universal spiritual practices (prayer, meditation, study, reflection, fellowship — all centered around the practice of humility, loving-kindness, faith in Love, and seeing things as they really are) can help keep us within the bounds as we attempt to follow the path required for us to be meaningful-to-ourselves, the path of Love.

And so as individuals we seek to organize ourselves better and better around the Love that chooses everyone. And why not? We can — through more awareness, clarity, honesty, accuracy, competency, compassion, and generosity of spirit — get better and better at translating our own feelings (which are wider, deeper, and vaguer than ideas) into ideas (which are wider, vaguer, and deeper than words) and words. Why couldn’t we — assuming It exists — use a similar procedure to get better and better at translating the Love that chooses everyone into feeling, thinking, and acting? Obviously, the translations can never be literal, direct, 1:1, or final; but must instead be an ongoing poetic work, requiring constant self-awareness, -analysis, -critique, and -adjustment.

Anyway, worth a shot.

And more than that: We all do this already to some degree. To some degree we all know that, if we are to be meaningful to ourselves, we need to discover and meaningfully relate to a Reality that is a True Love. And to some degree, we all feel ourselves working on that project, sometimes with more or less self-awareness, sometimes with more or less discipline, sometimes with more or less inspiration, sometimes with more or less interest, sometimes with more or less success. But still, we can never fully avoid the only game that means anything to any of us. Although, we can sometimes pervert the quest to a worrisome degree.

Anyway, so much for individual human psychologies. What about groups of humans? How can they relate meaningfully to each other?