After reading George Packer’s The Four Americas, it occurred to me that this alternative analysis of mine might be something for The Atlantic:
Where To From Here?
We need something new. God bless all the eloquent analyzing of what got us to where we are and the compelling pleas about how we should be, but it’s all rehash. It’s different ways to say the same thing. However, something that’s not being talked about needs to rise to the ascendency. In a burning house you wouldn’t sit around writing a treatise. How to escape the fire? That’s all that would matter. Well, not all, but the first thing to do. And humanity is threatened with going up in flames. Get our escape to the next level of consciousness right and we’ll have moved into a new house where everything will be fresh material to work with to create a new home base.
One thing to talk about that I don’t see us being honest about and would be vital to have in our awareness is how evil we have been. Really evil. No USA as the great shining beacon but as slaughterers of Indians, as owners of human beings who we didn’t recognize as human, as minimizers of women compared to men, as passive people who let Jews be exterminated, as jailers of Japanese Americans we interred, and what most personally affected me in the Christian country I live in was that in my childhood if the ad for a hotel said “churches nearby,” that was code for Jews not being allowed to come. We have been barbaric. We don’t admit that. It’s not even “admit” that we should do, as if it’s a secret we’ve been caught out on, but it’s that we should acknowledge prior states of consciousness that gripped us that we have been working our way out of. That is the truth. We could cite parallel tracks outside of the US, but this graphic map of where the USA has come from is what is firsthand to me. We can be ashamed and sorry, but that’s not the point. The point is to let it be that we were savages because we were. One quintessential glimpse is Jefferson, a great statesman with great wisdom who didn’t know that Africans were human. Unbelievable when you reflect on it, but true true true. He wasn’t a monster. He was a southerner. We as humanity were only as far along as we were. This gives us an understanding about what’s up-to-the-minute today. How could there have been a presidency like the one we just experienced, that was beyond unspeakable and yet was well-supported? It’s because a lot of humanity hasn’t caught up with the frontrunners. They will. It’s happening. In my lifetime, I went from being Mrs. Him to being Ms. Me. I am different now. Massive change can happen virtually overnight.
Here’s one of my favorite songs (the one that automatically comes next is worth sticking around for).
OK, so here’s my up-to-date story. I do heed the alarm that we don’t have time to wait for evolution to work things out because humanity has taken over and humans could blow up the game. That’s true and a spur to me to think radical thoughts. But in addition to thinking things would work out in the natural evolutionary process, and happy as I am, for the sake of eternity, at that prospect, there’s something else driving me. This little heart wants to beat to a different rhythm now, with humanity coming through in my lifetime as a winning team. THAT is what needs something very very new. What have we not thought of that would capture the fancy of so many people that it would get us to where we care about each other as much as we care about ourselves? Then, we’d be a beautiful species on a blessed planet working together to make life wonderful for all. What could that new thing, that changes everything, be?