Michael Hirsch of "Newsweek" on The Young Turks continued the meme that in a fractionalized nation, we need a centrist; someone who can appeal to both sides. Cowpies! We need a stark bold choice so that the choice is simple.
Are we to choose life or death for humankind? Are we to continue with empire or turn or swing, if you will, back to democracy? Are we to choose a dominator model or a partnership model? Are we going to grow up and elect grown ups or are we going to stay caught in a "socialized consciousness" which concerns our own tribe and keep electing leaders with "moral autism", a phrase used by Catholic theologian, Daniel Maquire.
David Korten’s latest book (He wrote the best seller "When Corporations Rule the World") is called "The Great Turning; From Empire to Earth Community." He says we are at a Great Turning and we can choose to be connected to each other or at war with each other.
This is no touchy feely book. It is not a self-help book. It’s a selfless book. It’s a book about how we all together can swing things around. It is ground in history. And it is watered with possibility.
I’m going to concentrate on the Chapter 2 where Korten talks about how we can change the story of the earth by exploring our psychology. He uses a 5 stage model of consciousness gleamed from a variety of authors. I found where he places our swing voter to be a great way of looking at "centrism" and what the heck is the matter with those swing voter and independents.
The "moral autism" that David Korten talks about in "The Great Turning" characterizes the corporate scandals of Enron, Tyco, World Com, etc. It’s a term for adults who act from "the purely self-referential perspective common to young children." Coined by Catholic theologian Maguire, it meant that ethically challenged corporate officers acted like children who know that you can easily steal from "those who trust you." The consequences are that the behavior will then destroy the relationship. But children don’t think that far ahead. And neither did those executives.
But Korten also believes that there were not just a few bad apples. There were many of them and they all seemed to be in power. This struck me years ago when I started paying attention after the 2000 election. Imperial or moral autism seemed to be more contagious than congenital since there appeared to be so many expressionless, emotionless faces like George Bush, Condaleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney talking to us each week from Washington, D.C. Add to that the faces on Fox News and you wondered if there was anybody left in the halls (or bathrooms) of power with the ability to get in other people’s shoes without stealing them. A few stone faces and concrete thinkers are fine. But where was the balance? Where were the people who could actually feel your pain and then want to help you? Where’d they go?
The Psychology of Empire:
In Korten’s book the pathway to maturity of a society mimics the pathway to maturity in individuals; from what he calls "Magical Consciousness to Imperial to Socialized to Cultural to Spiritual Consciousness. Those who do not evolve or don’t grow get stuck in what Korten calls "the Magical Consciousness" of the small child and the "Imperial Consciousness" of the six or seven year old. Korten notes that when the Imperial Consciousness exhibits itself in adults in the lower economic classes, they are declared sociopaths and the persons are put in jail. When it happens in the high economic strata, the same behavior is more than not heralded as belonging to cool customers who head our large corporations and infest the highest levels of power in Washington D.C. They can endure ruthless competition and enjoy the role of servants to "institutions of power. Birds of a feather they come to the halls of government like the scavengers they are.
Socialized Concsciousness:
However most of us move on to the Socialized Consciousness stage where you identify "through a primary reference group as defined by gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, class, political party, occupation, employer, and perhaps a favored sports team." But unlike the Magical Consciousness, the Socialized Consciousness
"is capable of empathy, the ability to feel and care sufficiently about what another person is experiencing emotionally to subordinate one’s own needs and desires to theirs. It also brings recognition of group interests that transcend immediate self interests."
Interestingly, Korten says that most American adults reside in Social Consciousness and are what constitutes the Swing Voter. In other words, if the culture of Empire prevails, they swing that way. If the culture of community prevails, they swing that way.
Cultural Consciousness:
Now if and when you begin to mature and become an adult, if you are :
sufficiently secure in your own identity and realize that laws should not be just to advance your own purposes or even your own group’s purposes, but should be equal for everyone, then you’ve reached "cultural consciousness... A Cultural Consciousness is rarely achieved before age thirty, and the majority of those who live in modern imperial societies never achieve it, party because most corporations, political parties, churches, labor unions, and even educational institutions actively discourage it."
These institutions demand loyalty. And they actively reject challenges to their identity groups. But our hope lies in those who do challenge the status quo. Those who are looking for big bold transformational change. Society needs these folks who are inclusive rather than exclusive. Folks who seek to widen the circle of knowledge, prosperity, and opportunity. It’s the democrats versus the anti-democrats (as Francis Moore Lappe would say) that are badly needed to shift us away from Empire and form the Earth Community.
Spiritualized Consciousness:
The next step, Spiritual Consciousness, is rarely achieved in this empire driven world. Sufficient to say that these are rare birds and wise elders and when you run into one, it’s a very cool experience. Al Gore has attained this elder statesman sage level.
"The Socialized Consciousness is prone to characterize persons who have achieved a Spiritual Consciousness as lone contemplators disaffiliated from society, because they disavow special loyalty to any group or identity,. That, however, is a misinterpretation. The Spiritual Consciousness simply transcends the exclusiveness of conventional group loyalties to embrace an identity that is inclusive of the whole and all its many elements."
As frustrating as it may be for people who want Gore to jump into the mess we are in now, "the satisfaction of living in creative service to the whole is its own reward." His sense of duty and loyalty necessarily goes beyond party and even country. His duty is to the planet. My guess is he’d be miserable having to deal with tribal party politics right now in its fractious and confused state. The times don't deserve him. We don't deserve him. We have a lot of growing up to do. If we make it fast, we will deserve people like Al Gore.
Korten's conclusions help us to choose how and who we elect to join us in turning from Empire. It helps us to understand what our place in this Great Turning will be.
"There is a culture war in America, but it is not between liberals and conservatives, who in fact share a great many core values--including a commitment to children, family, community, personal responsibility, and democracy. It is between the lower and higher orders of our human nature. It is between an imperial politics of individual greed and power and a democratic politics based on principle and the common good. It is between the Power Seekers at the extreme political fringes who remain imprisoned in an Imperial Consciousness and the realists of the political mainstream who truly want to solve the problems that beset us all."
In other words, its the grown ups we want to be and who we want to lead us where the earth's and humankind’s salvation lies. It reminds me of Carl Jung ‘s theory of individuation. As we grow older, if we are healthy and if we want to grow up, we start to work on aspects of ourselves that are less familiar than other aspects. We work on our less preferred functions. For example those of us who use the "thinking " process to make decisions try to work on our "feeling" process to aid in decisions. We literally try to get into other people’s shoes and try to take other people into consideration when making a decision. We go beyond what is just for society at large and try to focus on how this will effect the individuals involved. If we are extraverts who get our batteries charged by contact with people, we work on our introverted or our neglected spiritual side. We stop and smell the roses, or the alfalfa in my case.
We must not be "deceived by the divide-and-conquer tactics of imperial politics." We must link arms together and focus on ending the war on children, families and communities. Humans are not loners and self seekers. Humans are cooperative. The time has come to embrace that idea. We should not leave our future, our children's future and the planet's future to those who have not progressed from Imperial Consciousness.
We must reject the concept of Imperial Consciousness and its self-referential view of the world. We need to become more balanced because Earth hangs in the balance. If we cannot do it ourselves, we must surround ourselves with people who do have a different perspective. We must surround ourselves, not like Bush and Company do, with rigid and non-reflective folks, but with folks who have the capacity to be both creative and humble. It’s up to us to prepare the way for someone of this kind of consciousness to achieve a leadership position without being vilified for having both sense and sensibility.
Al Gore is our prophet leading the way. It is not incremental change or clinging to the status quo that is needed now. In order for a swing voter to choose, there must be a clear profound bold choice. Earth or Empire? Balanced or Unbalanced. You decide.
UPDATE: I've changed the title. I had toyed with many titles and have been working on this diary for a long time. I think it's an important topic that we need balance in our government and in our lives, so if changing the title will help to have more people read it, great. I kept running into articles like Tom Englehardt's "The Petraeus Moment: Imperial Autism" and Chris Hayes telling about French economics majors who objected to being taught "Economic autism", that I was curious about why this word was popping up.