The Authentic Hope of Robert Jensen

Digging in and digging deep

(http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/%7Erjensen/freelance/lastsunday1.htm)

Robert Jensen is a Texan, but probably about as far removed as you can get from the conservative cowboy that springs to mind. And that’s about as much of a compliment as you can get.

This article is a gem. Robert recounts his change from pessimism to optimism about the world, breaking up conceptions we might hold about how optimistic or pessimistic people are said to view the world.

In his younger years, he looked for answers about the state of the world, which he saw could be improved. At that time, all he found was a mish-mash idea of an immutably negative ‘human nature’ somethign that at once justified and explained-away both the evils of the world and his own “smug” place in it.

This kind of passive acceptance of the world, he says, is actually pessimistic, because it needs as a basis a negative human nature. It avoids any responsibility for our world and its future.

But something started to shift in me in 1988, when I went to graduate school and had a chance to learn more about how the world works. I started to study and realized that the world was far worse off than I had ever imagined, that the suffering was deeper, and that the problems were rooted in powerful institutions not easily dislodged.

That’s when I stopped being cynical and began to feel hopeful.
Now, that may seem counterintuitive. How did a deepening sense of the scale and scope of injustice and suffering make me hopeful? Because I started to understand that the problems of the world were not simply the product of an inherently evil and stupid human nature, though we can all be evil and stupid at times. Instead, I started to think about how systems and structures of power shape us and channel our behavior. I came to realize that the authority structures that so bend our lives are powerful and deeply entrenched. I also realized that most of the channels that the dominant culture offers us for working to make the world a better place are themselves deeply embedded in those authority structures, so that often the solutions become part of the problem. I realized that the analysis and action that could save us has to be more radical than I ever could have imagined, at a time when the culture is more depoliticized and right-wing than ever.

In a world where activists and hopeful people are often labelled as overly critical and pessimistic, Robert’s insights ought to be highly valued – and least by some they are. Best of luck to him.

Inayatullah on “Transforming Capitalism”

Moving Through the Circle: Transforming Capitalism

(http://www.ru.org/91inaya.htm)

Sohail Inayatullah has written an excellent article summarising what many forward thinkers will be the fate of our system and what metamorphosis or replacement awaits it and why.

In this short article we glimpse many futures and are led to think about what trends, developments and changes might lead us there. Good food for thought and life-changing ideas.

The President of Slovenia on Spirit and Politics

In looking at the politics, I don’t expect that change will be initiated from the politicians, from above. The pressure and the change must come from the foundation, from the people’s consciousness. And then the behavior of the politicians and of business leaders will start to change and we can create a better world. – Dr. Janez Drnovsek

Supreme Master Television, the international satellite/internetTV station dedicated to all things positive and humane, interviewed the remarkable President of the Republic of Slovenia, Dr. Janez Drnovsek. Slovenia’s president is a compassionate man who lives the contradictions between economics and such issues as social welfare and animal rights. We could say that he blances the past with the future – an arduous but necessary task.

Being a man openly concerned with the spiritual aspect of life, his success in politics is an anomaly, though increasingly less so as time goes on and people identify more with their spiritual rather than material being. Nevertheless his views on the interaction between the spirituality of the people and how they choose to govern themselves will be valid for a long time yet. He has played a role in both ’socialist’ and ‘liberal’ political parties, demonstrating his allegiance to a higher ideology- one that is more fundamental and essential to human life.

The thought of President Drnovsek extends beyond Slovenia to the people of the world. In establishing the Movement for Justice and Devlopment he aim is broad: “to raise the consciousness of people… around the world.”

Broadly, Slovenia’s president represents the neohumanist movement. He identifies issues of the day with percision based on real understanding of the divine nature of each human being. The workings of the world today are often in contradiction with this latent property. The very nature of our system, being divided into materialistically identified groups precludes our very divinity!

Sometimes I say that politics ideally defend the interests of humanity as a whole. But they are always about the interests of some groups of people or of nations with economic interests. We can speak about geopolitical interests, but who defends the humanity as a whole? Who defends the earth? No one!

Talking about the challenges of the day, the president is aware that they will continue as long as the meta-ideological trends and materialistic paradigms, that give rise to tribalism and individualism, continue.

And just imagine what the people, perhaps living thirty, forty years from now, will think about the generation that could have stopped these developments, but didn’t. What will they think about us if we don’t act, if we don’t move, if we don’t change these patterns of behavior, of politics, of big business, sometimes also big media and so on; that we will just allow this to go on, all because of benefit and profit and greed, because of selfishness, of eternal struggle between some groups of people or individuals or nations.

Patriarchy, Politics and the Future

(this article is in progress)

What we have in our society is a kind of fanatical rationality. So much material progress has been made under the doctrine of rationality that it reigns spureme, unchecked. The result is that many aspects of our lives, our societies and our world are intellectualised when in fact they require emotional inquiry as well as intellectual. For example, according to the rational realist, economic progress is sometimes more important than the wellbeing of those whom the progress is supposed to be serving. This type of ‘rationality’, cold intellecualism, is not rational at all. Our reliance on it comes of our misunderstandings about ourserlves and what ‘makes us tick’.

Emotion is sometimes needed to contribute to a more humanistically favourable rationality. It is well known that unchecked by rational thought emotion can lead to unfavourable outcomes and outbursts. Children often provide plent of examples of this but so do many adults who have not trained the capacity to think things through. Nevertheless Emotion itself is not less rational than intellect. It is another tool for us to use in this world, alongside intellect. Rationality would be a balanced use of each, governed by a higher faculty: wisdom. It is the latency of this higher faculty that causes our undervaluing emoition and partaking in fanatical rationality.