Shephard-Fairey, Barack Obama
It is an awfully big moment. In a certain respect, race has the least to do with it, since, although one is keenly aware of the historical and cultural importance of having Barack Obama take the oath of office as our first black president, race can also be seen as the most superficial division between people. It was Martin Luther King's wish, after all, that there would be a day when people were judged "not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." What makes the moment even bigger than an important first in American politics is not only that we will now have a president that, in the current ethnocentric division of race in this country to whites on the one hand and people of color on the other, we will have a president that for the first time resembles the majority of the world more than any other. That would not be so important in and of itself if we didn't also sense this changing of the guard as a change from an administration that has in many though not all respects been informed by a kind of small-minded provincialism, arrogance in world affairs, and greed. I saw a t-shirt in the window the other day that had a picture of Barack Obama with a list of goals that included something like: 1) win democratic nomination, 2) Jan. 20th-take the oath of office, and 3) Jan. 21-world domination. In the context of the rest of the t-shirts, domination taken literally was not what was meant but rather expressed something hopeful about the new president's ability to actually address the pressing problems of the world, to reposition America as a part of rather than a unilateral actor in the world, to be seen again as a benevolent force in the world. As a representative of the administration, Hillary Clinton's opening statement in her confirmation hearing as Secretary of State was certainly heartening. She mentioned interdependence several times, emphasized peace and diplomacy, the importance of the threat of climate change, and made it clear that we had a role in the world to reduce conflict, disease, and global poverty. We may be, almost surely are, moving into a new era of global concern and cooperation that is sorely needed.
In my last article I wrote about mindfulness as an important capacity to have in the conflict stage of relationships and cited two long quotes from Jon Kabat-Zinn's book Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World through Mindfulness (Hyperion, 2005). By chance I began reading the section on healing the world and the body politic as I was thinking of what to write for this occasion. What he has to say on the subject seems to me to be especially appropriate as a reflection for this moment of change and our possibilities for the future. I will again quote from it at length below and let the words speak for themselves.
ON MORE THAN ONE POSSIBILITY: "We only need to hark back to the old lady/young lady figure, or the Kanizsa tringle [images that present two possibilities of interpretation depending on how the viewer attends to them] to remind us that we can easily see certain aspects of things and not others, or believe strongly in the reality of something tht may be more an illusion than actuality. And those are simple examples compared to the fluxing complexity of issues and situations we face in our lives every day, to say nothing of those that are faced by our leaders in interpreting events and making decisions about establishing priorities and directing our energies. All of us, especially if we do not accord attention to how we see and how we know, wind up all too often mis-perceiving complex situations and getting attached to an incomplete or partial view, only to suffer for it ourselves and also often create a good deal of suffering in others as a consequence if we are adamantly attached to an interpretation of events or possibilities which may be true only to a degree. Might not our institutions and our politics become healthier and wiser if we all engaged even a little bit in expanding the field of our awareness inwardly and outwardly to entertain the possible validity, at least to a degree, of ways of knowing, seeing, and being that may be profoundly different from our own?"
The World Wants Obama campaign poster
DESTRUCTIVE TENDENCIES/CREATIVE ENERGIES: "Now, more than ever before, virtually on all fronts, we have a priceless opportunity and the wherewithal, both individually and collectively, not to get caught up and blinded by our destructive emotions, but rather to come to our senses. In doing so, perhaps we will wake up to and recognize the dis-ease that has become increasingly a chronic condition of our world and species over the past ten thousand years of human history, and take practical steps to envision and nurture new possibilities for balance and harmony in how we conduct our lives as individuals and our diplomacy among nations, ways that minimize our destructive tendencies, which only feed dis-ease and alienation, inwardly and outwardly, and maximize our capacity for mobilizing and embodying wisdom and compassion in the choices we make from moment to moment about how we need to be living, and what we might be doing with our creative energies to heal the body politic."
INTERCONNECTEDNESS: "Perhaps it may have also dawned on us that we cannot be completely healthy or at peace in our own private lives, inhabiting a world that itself is diseased and so much not at peace, in which so much of the suffering is inflicted by human beings upon one another, directly and indirectly, and upon the Earth, primarily as a consequence of our lack of understanding of interconnectedness and often, it seems, a lack of caring even when we 'know better.' Of course, this is endemically human behavior, but it too can be worked with if we are willing to do a certain kind of inner work as individuals and as a society. Even endemic small-mindedness is amenable to change if we come to see the potential value in learning to live differently, with a greater awareness of interdependency and interembededness of self and other, and of the true nature of both self and other, in other words, if we can learn to recognize the distorting lenses of our own greed, fear, hatred, and unawareness when they arise, and not let them obscure deeper and healthier elements of who and what we are. All this comes from being willing to visit and hold our own pain and suffering as a nation and as a species with awareness, compassion, and some degree of non-reactivity, letting them speak to us and reveal new dimensions of interconnectedness that increase our understanding of the roots of suffering, and extend our empathy out beyond only those people we aare closest to. It does mean that people everywhere ultimately have to have their basic needs met, and be free from exploitation, injustice, and degradation at the hands of others. In other words, iy means that all people everywhere have to have their basic human rights protected. As we know, this is sadly not the case for the majority of human beings on the planet at this time."
Barack Obama
A HIGHER LEVEL OF CONSCIOUSNESS: "It [mindfulness] is also an invitation to begin imagining new metaphors for understanding ourselves and our place in the world, and for honoring the very real complexities of the 'real world' without losing sight of the fact that the minds of human beings have in large measure created, you could say fabricated and proliferated, many of the problems we now face as a country and as a species, and that, like everything else, they are not as permanent, enduring, or as real as our minds make them out to be. This insight alone may afford us new and imaginative ways of dealing with what often seem like intractable situations and enmities. It may be worth reminding ourselves here of those two comments we cited earlier from Albert Einstein. In the first he said, 'Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.' In the second he said, "The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.' Both of these observations are worth keeping in mind as we cultivate mindfulness in full face of the human condition."
WHOLENESS AND HEALING: "Of course, not everyone is going to take up the practice of mindfulness, either in the near term or the long term. But bit by bit, as has been happening for years... those who are choosing this path to greater sanity and wisdom are growing, both in number and in potential influence. In the next few generations, say in the next several hundred years, as well as, for us, in this very moment, we have a remarkable opportunity--to realize the full potential of our creativity and our ability to ee clearly, and put them to work in the service of wholeness and healing, and of what we all claim we most desire and would give us the greatest chance for feeling secure and happy: justice, compassion, fairness, freedom from oppression, equal opportunities for living fully and well, peace, goodwill, and love, and not just for ourselves or those we identify with, but for all human beings, and for all sentient beings, with whom we are inextricably linked in so many life-giving ways."
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