Here is the common progressive wisdom on why our governmental system sucks:

1. It sucks because we need real leaders and there are none to be found.
2. It sucks because people are apathetic and don’t vote.
3. It sucks because the system is corrupt (money buys power).

What I see is that at some point we will have a paradigm shift in government. The apathy of voters is an important indicator of the core problem.

Our entire paradigm of government is based on a “Government as Parent” model. We protect people from themselves, punish people who are bad, take care of the weak, etc.

One problem is that it’s a bad parenting model. Good parenting is about setting boundaries, but functional ones. Having consequences, but ones that help the kid grow and learn, not be randomly punished.

But a more fundamental problem is that adults don’t need parenting. What we really have is a failure of our culture and society as a whole to support people to develop into mature adults. Government is part of this problem, but not the whole of it. All of our institutional systems encourage and enable dependency, most notably to me, our education system. We are not encouraged and supported to grow and develop into autonomous beings capable of critical thinking and self-government.

Now don’t start thinking I’m a Libertarian. I think there are many solutions, but kicking people to the curb isn’t one of them.

I don’t believe that the government can solve this problem, or any other institution. They come out of a paradigm that is flawed. The #1 flawed assumption is that people are unable to govern themselves. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you treat people as incapable, many of them will start to believe it and act it out.

I also don’t think a single Savior-type leader is the solution. We don’t need a leader, we all need to become leaders - our own leaders. No government or forced education system is going to get us there, because growth and development is by definition a self-directed process. The good news is that it is a natural and organic process, so it’s just a matter of learning how to allow and support it for everyone.

This isn’t something that makes sense in the context of a political process as we know it because our current political and governmental processes are fundamentally dis-empowering. There is a reason nobody votes, and the answer is not more voter drives. It’s a problem that can’t be solved at the level of development that created our government. It has to be solved by the next level of evolution. that next level will envision “government as facilitator of the creative human endeavor”, not “government as parent punishing errant children, run by other children who aren’t mature enough for the job anyway”.

I agree somewhat with the idea of “The system is broken and it’s not worth fixing”. I do think at some point we will have a critical mass of folks who are operating from the next paradigm and we can start using the infrastructure of the government and industrial complex to facilitate creative self-empowerment and social evolution. There are a lot of resources there which would be dumb to ignore. But until that point, I think it makes more sense to focus energy on developing our understanding of how to evolve and liberate ourselves and support others to do the same, until that critical mass is reached.

Tags: big ideas by emma
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My NVC teacher once said that we feel good when our needs are met, and also when we anticipate that our needs are about to be met.

For much of my life, I’ve used this (without realizing it) to take refuge in the future. My main means of surviving my childhood was to believe that someday, things would be better. This wasn’t an abstract conviction–I would literally imagine my needs being met in a future scenario. Over and over. Until I began to live more in the future than in the present. And that habit is still with me. It’s been a source of strength and it’s trained me to be creative, imaginative, strategic, and determined. It has also kept me from feeling satisfied, because I’m always looking ahead, and desperately searching for a better moment in time.

So I’ve been looking for ways back into the present. They go something like this:

• Forget expectations. Expectations are when I compare the present to an idea I had about the present, before it happened. It’s an attachment to a different version of events that isn’t real. Release the fantasy and then see what is in front of me.
• Forget the needs I thought I would have in the situation I imagined would happen. Learn to feel the real needs and feelings I have right now in this moment.
• Forget the idea that time can be stopped. In my future fantasies, it was generally one moment replayed over and over. In that one moment, I was ecstatically happy. So I’ve been looking for that moment I can stop in. But those moments have come and gone, leaving me disillusioned with whatever the circumstances were in which they arose. But it’s natural for intense happiness to come and go. In grasping to keep it, I prevent it from happening again by getting trapped in a state of disgruntled animosity toward the present.
• See time as a river that I happen to be swimming in. Stop trying to influence the current and let it carry me. That means, day to day, not worrying so much about what the next day will bring, and attending to the day in front of me.
• See my emotions as a river that I’m swimming in. Instead of looking for grand plans that will change my entire emotional landscape, attend to the moment in front of me.
• Forget the idea that I can always change my current mood to one of happiness. Sometimes I will be unhappy, and I won’t know why, and it won’t matter that much because the happiness will come back again.
• If unhappiness persists I can ask myself, “What am I telling myself right now?” to look at the contents of my thoughts.
• I can also ask myself, “What was I imagining this moment would feel like?”. That lets me see what my hidden expectations are so I can let them go.
• Sometimes I just need to curl up on the couch for a bit and feel sad.
• Remember that some days will be fast days and other days will be slow days. Some days will be happy days and other days will be sad days. Some days I’ll make brilliant art and some days I’ll make nothing at all, or nothing that comes together. Some days I will feel close to people and some days I will want to be alone. Equanimity in the face of everyday change creates a habit of peace and contentment.
• I can soothe myself by being at peace with the present moment. I don’t need anybody else to be different, and I don’t need the present to be different. This is empowerment.

Tags: enlightenment by emma
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