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Welcome!

Welcome to my thoughtstream on the topic of creative change. I appreciate your visit and hope you’ll stay a while.

Tracts of Revolution explores the dynamics of human creativity as it swirls in our cells, pulses through our bodies, connects us to each other, and constructs the magnificent panoply of world cultures. You will find two distinct currents to this thoughtstream that may interest you.

“Conversations” are blog posts reflecting on the creative works of authors and artists of our present day and recent past. These creators communicated their visions of reality and the human future through words and other art-forms, partly to share them with the rest of us, but also because they finally couldn’t resist the force that seized and inspired them. I name that force “the creative spirit,” and am convinced that it inhabits all of us – while only a relatively few of us are courageous (or foolhardy) enough to “go with the flow.”

I have a lot to say about spirituality and religion, but this shouldn’t lead to the conclusion that I consider the creative spirit especially religious or “spiritual” in a more narrowly religious sense. The authors I bring into conversation are both religious and nonreligious, believers and atheists, metaphysically-minded psychonauts and down-to-earth humanists. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter what ideological camp you inhabit, what country you call home, what language you speak, which way you’re oriented, or whether you are charming or abrasive. You and I are creators, and it’s time we take responsibility for this incredible power with which the universe has endowed our species.

For a more practical and therapeutic approach to creativity, check out my blog Braintracts. Over the past 30+ years I have developed a life-change program that helps individuals take creative control of their lives and step more intentionally into the worlds they really want to inhabit. This approach is brain-based and solution-focused, pulling from the current research of neuroscience and the best practices in human empowerment (counseling and coaching).

The Medieval art/science of metallurgy investigated the molecular secrets of changing natural ores into metals and other alloys. The process was mysterious and the research traditions of those early scientists often took on the shroud of an almost gnostic mysticism. Mentallurgy is my attempt to remove the shroud of secrecy from the question of how the power of attention is transformed into the attitudes, beliefs, moods and drives behind human behavior. If you don’t particularly like the world you presently inhabit, then create a different one! Mentallurgy can show you how. Click over to www.braintracts.wordpress.com

Our Human Adventure

I can absolutely guarantee that after a short orientation, you will be able to find yourself on the map illustrated above. Now, whether you build on that discovery and successfully find your way to the fulfilment of your human journey, also known as self-actualization, salvation, and the liberated life, is entirely your choice. You might decide that staying put and settling in where you currently happen to be is preferable to taking the risk of following the star of what’s possible.

Indeed, many of us have gotten into a habit of sacrificing fulfillment on the altar of security.

My map is designed to enable quick associations among its terms, as it charts the path from the primal depths of our animal nature to the communal heights of the human spirit. Terms of a shared class are displayed in similar font types and glow colors, so as to prevent them from melting into confusion.

A dynamic zig-zagging arrow through the middle marks our progress on this adventure of becoming more fully human. The present post will take us through this progression, interpreting its major dimensions according to their thematic clusters of terms. We will begin at the bottom and zig-zag our way to the top, where fulfillment awaits.

In a previous post, I designated as human “force fields” the primal, tribal, personal and communal dimensions of experience. The primal dimension is identified with the animal nature of our body and its primitive instincts. Experience here is centered in the lifeforce, generated and sustained through a syndrome of autonomic urgencies, metabolic activity, and compulsive drives. At this level of animal biology, humans have the same basic needs as all other vertebrate species of life on Earth: Survival, health, growth and reproduction are cardinal imperatives of life in the primal dimension.

The human adventure very soon involves our introduction to the tribal force field, where the complicated project of social engineering will go to work on those drives and impulses of animal instinct, gradually shaping our psychology and behavior to the values and expectations of our taller powers – parents, teachers, coaches, and other adults.

These values and expectations are focused, more or less, on the accepted standards and shared beliefs of our tribe regarding what constitutes “right action” (i.e., obedience) and what it means to be a “good person.” This shared understanding of what is right and good is what I call, objectively, the moral frame, and what we all experience, subjectively, as the (socially installed) inner voice of conscience.

Early stages of identity formation, referring to the formation of a relatively unique center of self-conscious personality (i.e., ego), are therefore under the influence of our tribe’s moral frame, as it trains our animal nature into a compliant, well-behaved member of civil society. On the map, however, ego appears to be leaving the force field of tribal morality for something more – more exciting, more alluring, tempting us away from the (comparatively) stale values and oppressive expectations of our elders.

This is the hero journey that, in world mythology, begins with what Joseph Campbell named the Call to Adventure. The urgent concern is no longer with following rules, but now fastens on the goal of finding the magic sword, eternal torch, secret treasure, or gold chalice containing the elixir of immortal life.

This growing tension and inevitable conflict between the conservative constraints of conscience and the progressive, even defiant, compulsions of ambition makes the hero journey such a fascinating – and restless – phase in our longer human adventure.

We desire success and fear failure, we desire love and fear rejection, we desire freedom and fear the exposure it brings – only to find ourselves pinned between these two opposing motives of desire and fear, trapped in a whirlpool of craving, anxiety, frustration, exhaustion, depression, and fresh expectancy.

While an authoritarian tribe will apply every trick and tool for inducing guilt, amplifying our confusion, and confirming the self-doubt we may feel within ourselves in negotiating the trials, perils, and monsters of the hero journey – all with the aim of retrieving us back into the fold, a healthier and more stable society will encourage our quest for the One Thing That Matters.

The purpose in such encouragement is to improve our chances of suffering a necessary disillusionment, which must precede the realization that there is in fact no ‘One Thing’ – out there, up there, over there; no object, possession, person, idol, or deity – that can save us and make us whole.

The other side of this disillusionment, of this clearing-away of illusion, is therefore a revelation known as spiritual awakening. Here our human adventure ascends to the fourth dimension and highest force field of communal wisdom.

At last, the butterfly of our human spirit emerges from its cocoon of personal identity, for an experience of transpersonal unity with others and all things. The wisdom we find here wasn’t exactly waiting for us, like a dusty library of ancient proverbs; rather, it is the higher consciousness of spiritual community itself.

The paradox of community, and also the core principle of its wisdom, lies in the complementarity of freedom and love. Our freedom as individuals is a function of occupying distinct centers of experience, out of which we can connect in bonds of love that in turn protect and nurture our individual freedom. Obviously, this isn’t the neurotic attachment and emotional codependency that too often get confused for authentic love in a ‘pre-awakened’ society.

Genuine community, where the human spirit flourishes, holds freedom and love in dynamic balance. Its higher wholeness is energized by their creative tension.

Having reached the climax of our human adventure in the liberated life (freedom) with others in community (love), it might seem as if the story is complete. But not yet, for our critical contribution as individuals to the longer course of human evolution involves serving now as agents of cultural enlightenment.

A dashed arrow, angling downward in my map from the communal force field to the tribal, traces a potential for societal transformation, frequently felt by the individual as a calling – not to some heroic achievement this time, but to courageous service in the interest of human liberation, wellbeing, and fulfillment. The arrow is dashed and not solid to leave open the option of refusing the call, or maybe of just getting caught up in other things.

“I have come,” said Jesus, “that they might have life, and more abundantly.”

The Three Stages of Spiritual Power

One theory of meditation sees it as a portal to peak experience and enlightenment, providing access to transcendental dimensions of being and consciousness.

People spend decades perfecting the mindset and techniques that facilitate these breakthroughs, dedicating great amounts of time to the discipline of meditation.

Another theory sees meditation as a conditioning routine for meeting the challenges of daily life and the longer project of becoming a more liberated, self-aware human being in the world.

It’s not about gaining transcendental access to other dimensions as much as learning how to cultivate wellbeing in this one.

It may sound as if I’m setting up an either-or debate between these two general theories of meditation – one as rising above and episodically escaping the traps and doldrums of ordinary life, and the other living more intentionally in the stream of everyday events.

As is the case with everything else that our mind splits and sets in opposition by its binary logic, the truth is probably a paradoxical (both-and) insight, farther upstream and somewhere in the middle.

Even at that, however, my personal preference is more for the second than the first.

What we’re dealing with in any case is the Human Spirit – human psychology, the psychodynamics of consciousness, or what I will name in this post “spiritual power.”

I don’t mean by this term some metaphysical entity which is alien to our body and will some day continue on without it, like a transmigrating soul from another realm, skipping from one lifetime to the next on its way home.

Rising from the depths of our human biology, emerging through and reaching beyond our personal ego, the Human Spirit is the mystery of our existence circulating in us like breath (Latin spiritus), grounding us in Being, connecting us to the greater web of Life, waking us to our true potential.

Insofar as these two theories of meditation play out a dichotomy of values, we should further point out that while the first might regard one’s community life as structured around our exercises in solitude, the second acknowledges community life as the crucial work zone where meditation has its greatest salutary effect.

I offer the illustration above as a guide in our exploration of spiritual power – this mystery of the Human Spirit, filling and flowing through each of us. A meditator is sitting in the “lotus position” at the center, whether in the focused effort of breaking through to a higher dimension or building a centered strength for the challenges of everyday life, is left for my reader to decide.

Using the full cycle of rhythmic breathing as our template, we will explore the three stages of spiritual power: (breathing in) Grace, (holding the breath) Gratitude, and (breathing out) Generosity.

Rather than considering these stages of spiritual power from a position of objective detachment, I will invite you to recall a situation, recent or farther back, when you felt stressed and triggered by things happening to you or around you – a time when a familiar neurotic style snapped into play and threatened to take you over. Or maybe it did take over and you found yourself in that familiar spiral of anxiety, frustration, exhaustion and regret.

Such moments can be frequent during the course of ordinary experience, which is where I have argued the real salutary effect of meditation is demonstrated.

Does our practice help us, by making it more likely that we can respond rather than merely react to triggering conditions and events? Regardless of the ease with which we might detach and take flight to other dimensions of being and consciousness, the distractions and annoyances (i.e., the “triggers”) of everyday life call on our ability to respond – on our response-ability.

With that situation fresh in your memory, and recalling the fast-moving sequence of stimulus-reaction-fallout, find your center and take in a full breath. Notice the difference in your nervous state and how you feel now from how you felt then. As the first stage of spiritual power, Grace involves centering and grounding yourself in the Now.

You are no longer a mere reactor, but have established yourself in the position of creator – as one with the capacity, equanimity, intention, and freedom to act.

What would Grace have looked and felt like in that situational replay?

Across the religions and world cultures, Grace is universally associated with authority, majesty, and divinity. Beyond being a synonym for elegance and dignity, however, Grace is acknowledged and revered as the individual’s (human or god) self-possession, of their being anchored inwardly to an infinite power supply. Their actions are not compulsive reactions to circumstances, but arise from deep within themselves as creative initiatives and freely chosen (intentional) responses.

Having drawn that breath from the Ground of your inner depths, now pause and hold it softly for several seconds. The second stage of spiritual power, Gratitude, invites you to consider a different way of regarding this situation – not in hostile or defensive reaction, but instead welcoming and receiving it as a guest into your presence. What opportunity is here? What discovery or revelation awaits? What lesson is offered? What is being made possible through your intention to be open and inviting to what is here now – to whatever comes?

In some cases, it may simply be a feeling of Gratitude for another opportunity to learn patience, to practice forgiveness, or take a different perspective.

Maybe you are just grateful to be here, to be alive and given another chance to show up and do the right or better thing, this time around.

Upon reflection, holding Gratitude for this moment and what it brings, spiritual power can now breathe out in Generosity. One part of Generosity is releasing or letting go, for nothing can be given if you are not willing to release it. By now, however, there is no holding back. You are grounded in Grace and filled with Gratitude, surrendering fully to the outflow of Generosity.

Had you been in this centered and resourceful state for the situation you are now recalling to mind, how might you have responded?

Spiritual power is generative, restorative, or transformative, depending on the situation. Transformation necessarily includes a phase where the existing form or arrangement is broken or dissolved in preparation for the emergence of New Being (cf. Paul Tillich). In breathing out, you direct your creative intention into fostering conditions and contributing to the process of communal (i.e., mutual, transpersonal, organizational, planetary) harmony and wellbeing.

The impact of your Generosity is likely to provoke various reactions from others involved, some of whom may be deeply invested in (or “attached to”) keeping things the way they are. The consequence in such cases may well be resistance and blowback, which will tempt you to modulate or restrain your Generosity so as not to upset expectations and the status quo.

The Human Spirit has no stock in the status quo, however, but seeks instead greater freedom, authenticity, health, wholeness and joy.

Breathing in (Grace) draws spiritual power from the Ground within you. Holding the breath (Gratitude) provides the opportunity to reflect and reframe your perspective on what this moment offers. Breathing out (Generosity) is your devoted practice to cultivating favorable conditions and giving of yourself for the salvation – i.e., the healing, wholeness, liberation and fulfillment – of all sentient beings.

Meditation is the portal to peak experience and enlightenment, enabling you to serve as a clear channel of spiritual power into the challenges and opportunities of everyday life.

Go get ready for the next time. We all need you to practice.

Save the Baby!

Just as we can think of the lifeforce, which remains a mystery to science, as something that animates the myriad living forms in existence, we might also regard the countless forms of religion throughout human history as so many expressions of another mystery, called spirituality or spiritual life.

And just as when the lifeforce “goes out” of an organism – leaving aside the question of whether it really goes anywhere or just goes out like a candle – something analogous happens when religion loses the spiritual life that once filled its form with vibrant energy. Its creativity drains away, its relevance to the concerns and possibilities of existence is lost, and the once-living thing becomes a dead shell of its former self.

One important measure of “truth” in religion has nothing to do with how a symbol system compares to the many others we can find around the world, or the degree in which its symbols attach to metaphysically real or objectively supernatural things.

Rather, a religion’s truth is a matter of fluency, which is to say how clear and bright is the flow of spiritual life it facilitates, and how minimally its own structure impedes that flow.

The familiar caution against “throwing out the baby with the bathwater” applies to this relationship of religion (the bathwater) and spiritual life (the baby). With the rise of modernity hitching its hopes for a more enlightened civilization to the new Bethlehem Star of science and technology, religion has had a harder time justifying its rightful corner on the market of relevant concerns.

Many have advocated for dumping out the bathwater and finally being done with religion. In their defense, much of the religion these “dumpers” want to get rid of has been dead for generations, even centuries. When the passions of believers are devoted to the project of defending the literal reading of their myths, the objective existence of their god, and their orthodox beliefs as the “one and only way” to Real Life somewhere else, chances are their bathtub no longer has a baby in it!

It isn’t possible to somehow extract and isolate what we’re calling spiritual life (or spirituality) from the religion that channels, supports, and facilitates its dynamism, just as the lifeforce cannot be extracted, isolated, and laid out on the laboratory table for direct examination.

Whether a particular form of religion is historical and global in reach, such as the name-brand world religions, or instead happens to be the home-grown, cross-pollinated variety so plentiful in the backyards of private religion these days, its principal function is in the service of spirituality.

The popular self-designation “spiritual but not religious” is, therefore, an untenable arrangement in reality, for the straightforward reason that religion of some kind is necessary for human spirituality to flourish. While religion can (and does!) exist without spirituality – Jesus’ metaphor was of a “whitewashed tomb” – the reverse is not possible.

What might such religion, one that is intimately aligned and in sync with the dynamism of spirituality, look like? Setting aside for now the mythologies, symbol systems, ritual practices, moral values and beliefs represented across the diverse field of human religions, is it possible to identify the nodes and channels in religion where the flow of spiritual life is facilitated?

Our word “religion,” from the Latin religare, refers to this function of tying back and linking together certain elements, principals, and dimensions of a presumed lost, or perhaps merely hidden, wholeness.

My own experience and research answers this question in the affirmative, identifying four such “nodes and channels” that qualify true religion from its dead and counterfeit alternatives. I call these nodes and channels spiritual practices. Rather than reducing them to specific methods and techniques, however, we shall leave the description more open, focusing instead on the intention of each spiritual practice.

The four spiritual practices of true religion are Centering, Grounding, Connecting, and Belonging.

It’s important to keep in mind that a spiritual practice is what somebody does – “somebody” meaning an embodied self-conscious (or egoic) human personality. This individual vantage point is pivotal to the perspectivist, phenomenological, and constructivist approach taken here. To help us hold this focus, the diagram above visualizes ego (Latin for “I”) in the middle, with the four spiritual practices arranged around it on the horizontal and vertical axes.

The Spiritual Practice of Centering

As our node of self-conscious identity, ego is (by definition) not what is sometimes called the true Self. Indeed, our first spiritual practice of Centering arises on this recognition of an infinite qualitative difference between ego and true Self, between the part of me that is conscious of myself as somebody unique and special, and the full reality of what I am as a human being – body and soul, as we used to say.

Centering is the spiritual practice that helps us drop off the costumes and concerns of personal identity, in order to regain our balance and refresh the natural integrity of heart, mind, and will.

The Spiritual Practice of Grounding

From this recovered center of true Self, the spiritual practice of Grounding takes awareness deeper still, into the grounding mystery of body-and-soul and the ineffable oneness of Being within. If Centering involves dropping off the costumes and concerns of personal identity, Grounding requires a surrender of ego itself, releasing consciousness from its tether to identity and even from the sense that “I” am doing this.

Within the grounding mystery of body-and-soul, an experience of inner peace and wellbeing awaits.

Together, the spiritual practices of Centering and Grounding form the channel of religion’s mystical path – farther in and deeper down to what is Really Real.

The Spiritual Practice of Connecting

In addition to looking inward to the Self, ego also looks outward to the Other – to “another” (an other) like me, as well as to others of all kinds and types. As a self-conscious person, I am anchored, however dimly, to my true Self. And as a self-conscious person, I “speak through” (Latin persona) my mask of identity to others who share the world stage with me. Developmentally, there can be no ego without an other to encounter, recognize, and respond to my performance of identity.

The spiritual practice of Connecting involves beholding, welcoming, and honoring the otherness in another – a mystery that stands beyond my concepts and opinions about it – and certainly beyond my control!

The Spiritual Practice of Belonging

From the performance stage of my interactions with others, the spiritual practice of Belonging represents a jump in consciousness from interpersonal to transpersonal dynamics. Despite the fact that the concept of belonging is commonly understood as something the ego more passively perceives than actively co-creates, as a spiritual practice the intention is on ways I can actively contribute to the higher wholeness of our life together in community. Thus it is proper and fitting to regard Belonging as a genuinely creative practice.

Such disciplines as fidelity and forgiveness, dialogue and inclusion, sacrifice and service can be understood as distinct contributions that individual egos make for the sake of bringing about “a more perfect union.”

The spiritual practices of Connecting and Belonging together form the channel of religion’s ethical path – farther out and higher up into the mystery of community.

Of course, the question remains whether a given religion – a global brand or our own private invention – incorporates the four spiritual practices in its sacred economy of stories, symbols, rituals, values and beliefs.

A good rule of thumb is to regularly check the temperature and clarity of your bathwater, and if you need to change it for some reason – for goodness sake, don’t throw the baby out!

The Recession of Compassion

Just last week, a guest in the Oval Office fainted during a White House announcement on the topic of weight-loss drugs, requiring the event to be cut short. President Donald Trump looked over at the fallen man with a small group gathered around to help him, and then turned to stare straight ahead, without even a hint of concern or sympathy on his face.

Indeed, the look on Trump’s face (see photo above) was one of utter indifference. The man could have been dying (thankfully, he did recover), but the President couldn’t be bothered. Trump almost looks immobilized in that picture, frozen in place and disengaged from the situation transpiring just a few feet away.

The event prompted me to once again explore not just the social influence of human compassion, as individuals are motivated to assist and support others in distress or need, but also its psychodynamic origins.

Where does compassion come from? What is it that “turns on” our compassion for another, and why was it apparently missing in Donald Trump that day?

I’ve written on this subject before, but the recent incident offers a fresh stage for our consideration. Of course, we shouldn’t expect moral perfection of any leader, but a president does have a certain obligation of representing to the people how someone with wisdom, integrity, understanding, and compassion carries and conducts himself, or herself, in the world.

The people not only look to their leaders for vision and strength; they also look up to them for inspiration, profiles in humility and courage, and for moral clarity in uncertain times.

To understand what I am calling the psychodynamics of compassion, an enlightening deep-dive into word etymology is in order. Compassion is from Latin, meaning “to suffer with” another, or more accurately, to stand with and share someone’s experience of pain, hardship, or loss, with a desire to alleviate their suffering in some way.

A desire to help is what motivates the behavior that demonstrates compassion in action. In ancient Greek, the word is sympathy (sympátheia), which has essentially the same meaning picked up in the later Latin term.

But the deeper Greek history of the concept holds an additional surprise. Another word, empathy (empátheia), attaches the prefix em- (in or within) to reveal something more going on. Today, empathy and compassion are used almost interchangeably, with empathy adding the idea of cognitive discernment to the feeling of compassion and its caring outreach.

Psychotherapy teaches that counselors can develop empathy through reflection on their clients’ upbringing and early life, circumstances and worldview, current beliefs and other factors that may be contributing to and amplifying their suffering. With this broader framework in mind, treatment plans can be designed with strategies for adjusting beliefs, setting goals, and taking action in a healthier direction.

Empathy doesn’t merely add therapeutic reflection and cognitive discernment to the more visceral-emotional response of compassion (or sympathy), however.

The suffering within ourselves because of what we perceive happening to someone else is not so much caused as awakened by it, coming about by a process of inner knowing – more gnostic than epistemic, more “I’ve been there and know how it feels” than “I can see you’re having a hard time.” In other words, empathy is our inner resonance with the human experience.

Without empathy, our sympathy (or compassion) easily gets stalled in pity: “Poor thing. I feel terrible for you.”

Our empathic understanding of what chronic pain feels like, what going hungry feels like, what being lost or confused feels like, what losing something or someone precious to us feels like – in short, our deep acquaintance with the human condition – activates our sympathetic response to someone else who is suffering a similar experience.

Knowing what that feels like, we are unsettled and want to help them through it, or at least come alongside and fortify (literally comfort) them with our non-anxious presence and emotional support.

How we show up for another is called compassion (or sympathy), but the precursor of compassion is empathy.

In that photo, the deadpan look and blank stare on Trump’s face are the telltale signs of a critical absence of empathy. He didn’t rush over to check on the man or lend a hand, motivated by a desire to do something helpful.

It’s possible that Trump didn’t even feel compassion for the man, an apathy (‘no feeling’) which might be traced deeper inside Trump himself, to a lack of empathy because he has no point of reference from his own experience for what it feels like to falter and lose your legs in a public forum.

Or maybe he did have the experience once, but subsequently suppressed his embarrassment, “forgot” the episode, and now saw in this man’s struggle an annoying weakness holding up his photo-op.

Trump’s more general lack of compassion, showing up in his attitudes toward and remarks about people whose experience is entirely foreign to him – immigrants, the poor, women, and minorities – is rooted in his deficient acquaintance with what it’s like to be without a home, without resources, without respect, or without a voice. Indeed, his treatment of such people seems motivated out of an irrational fear that their mere proximity threatens to pull him into a darkness he cannot understand and may not escape.

Perhaps our contemporary “recession of compassion” is a social liability that individuals of great wealth and privilege bring with them into the shared human experience, like a virus destined to cut the bonds of sympathy that hold a community together.

For their political acumen, business success, or television celebrity, we rush them up the ballot to higher positions of power and authority, only to discover that they lack the wisdom, integrity, understanding and compassion – now in a word, the empathy – to serve for the good of all.

We should be more careful from now on.

The American Slide

Back during Donald Trump’s first run for the White House, I pointed out something that no one else seemed to notice – at least I didn’t hear them talking about it. My observation was that, while Trump was running as the Republican candidate, he wasn’t (and still isn’t) a Republican. I predicted, in fact, that if Trump won the presidency and took control, the Republican party would soon lose its soul.

And I was right.

How did I know? Simple. Donald Trump has never really cared much for politics. As a businessman, he always preferred to bend the political frame around his financial ambitions – or break it, if necessary. His interest in becoming president was also more financial than political. He would run as a Republican, but only ostensibly, or In Name Only.

Trump’s true “party” was Capitalist. His rise from inherited wealth, through bankruptcy, and into borrowed wealth again made him something of an avatar of American capitalism.

I dedicated a few posts during that period to exploring what I saw as the inherent contradiction in American democracy, between its democratic political model and its capitalist economic model.

Although these two had co-evolved in American history, their relationship was conflicted from the beginning. Whereas democracy gives priority to “the people” and their commonwealth, capitalism favors the individual over community – civil liberties, self-reliance, private property, and the pursuit of happiness through material prosperity. Tax-funded social welfare versus low taxes and everybody-for-himself.

The archetypal contest of American history has been cooperation versus competition, a “more perfect union” versus the American Dream.

Democratic values centered in equality and justice for all argue for a big-enough government and a sufficiently large safety net. Capitalist values centered in individual freedom prefer a small government that pretty much leaves its people alone and stays out of their way.

So it happened. Upon being elected president, Donald Trump proceeded to neuter the Republican party and crush its soul. Following his nearly successful attempt to overthrow the American government on January 6, 2021, Trump went back underground to revise his strategy and gather a new cadre of stooges and sycophants who would swear their undying loyalty to him and his cause.

Re-elected, astonishingly, in 2024, Trump and his wrecking crew went to work demolishing long-standing traditions, sacred customs, and historical institutions undergirding American democracy. At this writing, the U.S. economy is stressed and faltering, as Trump and his club of oligarchs rake in millions.

As President Trump maneuvers the Court to grant him supreme power and near-absolute immunity, he is ever more quickly pulling American democracy toward autocracy.

If Trump’s professional resume is any guide, those oligarchs gathered around him now will eventually be thwarted and thrown aside on his way to monarchy. As his minions, they have been recruited for their lack of morals and specialized ignorance, to carry out his commands without hesitation or moral afterthought.

His end-game vision is an American dynasty, with a gilded ballroom and the “Trump” brand perched on the Capitol dome in place of the Statue of Freedom.

Very recently, however, with the election of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, something in the American body politic seems to be shifting. Maybe it’s the American Spirit waking up after many decades of denying the contradiction in its fusion of democracy and capitalism. Mamdani aligns with democratic socialism, which true-believing capitalists like Trump try to spin as communism – or they genuinely just don’t understand the difference.

For Mamdani and others who lean democratic socialist (or identify as Social Democrats), an economic model that focuses on social equality and communal wellbeing is the Yang to democracy’s Yin.

Instead of elevating the individual pursuit of happiness above our shared life in community, socialist values seek to steer personal ambition into commitments of service and social investment. It doesn’t view the nation as a collective of individuals, ala the lens of capitalism, but instead regards the individual as an incarnation of the community.

The principal attractor of wealth and work, according to a socialist vision, is altruism rather than egoism – What’s good for all of us? versus What’s in it for me? It offers a complementary economic ideal to democracy’s political aspirations, toward a nation where everyone belongs and we are, together, the tide that lifts all boats.

Socialism has been associated with communism in the American mind for so long that its hard not to fear the one hiding behind the other. But they are not the same. Trump hoped that by playing the “communist” card on Mamdani he could trigger a Red Scare and get him disqualified in the minds of voters. But it didn’t work. Mamdani’s democratic socialist message rings true for them and they gave him their trust.

Oligarchs, the super-rich, and aspiring kings have a vested interest in stoking the steam engine of American capitalism.

In a sense, Trump has done us all the favor of exposing where it’s headed, if something isn’t done – and soon. Global warming is not a “hoax.” Earth is reeling from the hard blow of unconstrained consumerism and its growing toxic cloud. Sprawling golf resorts and palatial ballrooms do not represent the future of America, but are rather signposts on the path to apocalypse; symptoms of a cancer infecting democracy.

“Two cheers for democracy” (E.M. Forster) and “a republic, if you can keep it” (Benjamin Franklin) are well-known examples of cautionary jabs in the ribs of American democracy through the years. It’s not a perfect system. The Greek philosopher Plato held a very low opinion of democracy, believing that giving power to the people only allows their baser human impulses, ignorance, and blinkered convictions to seep up into the enterprise of governance. Plato’s preference was for a philosopher-king who would guide the state with nobility and wisdom.

Our human foibles and fickle interests notwithstanding, democracy is a beautiful idea in principle.

Its ideal of a community where the needs, aspirations, and general will of the people serve to shape their shared political life has inspired episodic ethical awakenings through the centuries. The challenge for American democracy lies in its being yoked with capitalism, which tends to prioritize competition over cooperation, private wealth over common wealth, success over sacrifice, greed over charity, profit over service, an insatiable want for more over contentment with enough.

American democracy deserves only “two cheers,” perhaps, in view of the challenges and obstacles rooted in human nature. But those divergent and egocentric values of capitalism have made the political project exponentially more difficult. Some, like Mamdani, would say that the arranged marriage of democracy and capitalism is no longer sustainable – if it ever was.

Deeper still, the conflicting values of democracy and capitalism are enervating the American Spirit, making us as a nation increasingly susceptible to autocracy.

If we’re not paying attention and can’t clearly see where Trump is taking the country, we may not be able to keep our republic for much longer.

A World Worth Imagining

That little plant in the illustration to the left is rooted in a Mystery of deeper oneness named Being. It is also connected inside a Web of higher wholeness named Universe.

If our plant knows any of this, it is not at some epistemic level of knowing, using logic and rational thought to construct a mythological or mathematical model of its existence. It wouldn’t be gnostic, either, but that gets us closer to what’s going on.

Epistemic knowledge is constructed knowledge, based on sense perception, objective observation, inferential and logical theory-building. Gnostic knowledge is more intuitive and embodied: what it feels like to be a plant, or a bat, a dog, or a human.

Gnostic knowledge isn’t knowledge-about but knowledge-of, referring to an inner knowing that is essentially ineffable, or beyond the reach of words.

Humans evolved with both knowledge pathways, and between them the gnostic (intuitive and embodied knowledge) is deeper and older – by far.

In the first days and months of life – corresponding to the dawn of evolution for the human species – we are gathering a nonrational sense of our existence.

With a provident grounding in the charge of taller powers who care about us, a deep interior state of calm is fostered, known outside neuroscience as inner Peace.

Peace is gnostic knowledge. Sometimes named faith or trusting surrender, it is the in-sight that we are held in a present, gracious, and supportive Mystery.

Our path to Peace is inward and leads into the depths of Being. Underneath our self-conscious center of security, identity, and self-esteem is Something that is no-thing, a Mystery we can feel but can’t name, except metaphorically. The mystical traditions of Sophia Perennis name it the Ground of Being.

This intuitive feeling of present support from deep within allows a center of self-conscious experience, which goes by the Latin name ego (meaning “I”), to bring balance to our developing personality.

The human personality occupies a threshold between biological factors of temperament (in the body) and social traits of identity (in the world), called character. Of course, character is also a figure of story, referring to the identity (or identities) we play on the social performance stage.

Freedom in this context is freedom from the impulses and urgencies of the body, as well as freedom for the roles we play in society. Ego is where our freedom in both senses is centered.

As our centered (and increasingly free) self-conscious experience continues to develop, the intention in our behavior finds greater clarity of Purpose. Assuming we are free to choose and act the way we do, what is our intended aim and goal?

Purpose can be easily misunderstood when it is confused with a plan, mission, or assignment originating outside us. In contrast, what might be named human purpose refers to our focus of intention – doing something “on purpose” and “with purpose.”

It isn’t necessary for purpose to be extraverted and active, in doing things of outer value. Sitting quietly in meditation and directing our intention to the Present Mystery of Being provides freedom with a sacred focus, but without a practical or strategic outcome.

Humans invest the focus and energy of our intention in the project of making Meaning. We make meaning in giving names to things, connecting thoughts and words, composing stories and theories, and constructing enveloping ideologies and worldviews that orient our existence in time and place.

Victor Frankl’s popular book title Man’s Search for Meaning is based on the assumption that meaning is out there to be found – waiting for us like a vein of gold in the rock. This assumption is mistaken.

Meaning is made, not found. It isn’t an embedded fact in Reality, but rather an artifact of our mind. We conceive meaning and give it birth in words, symbols, stories, and beliefs.

A reassuring belief for thousands around the world conceives of the Universe as god’s intentional Creation, which implies a god-given meaning inherent to the very nature of existence. This is the likely background of Frankl’s understanding of meaning and the human “search” for it.

Still, and nevertheless, god and god’s Creation are themselves human constructs of meaning. (This realization marks the transition from theism to post-theism in the evolution of religion.)

The meaningful worlds we create are not merely for our private amusement, however. Given our definition of world as a logically coherent construct of value and significance inside of which humans live, cohabit, and interact, its proper context is cultural in scope.

Again, we are speaking here not of the so-called “real world” (or Reality), but of the mind-made shelters of meaning that humans share together – and frequently fight over. Our world carries and reflects back to us the meaning of our existence.

From the Greek word ex(s)istere, existence is conceived as all things standing out of a deeper oneness (Being, or the Ground of Being) and standing together in a higher wholeness (the Universe: “turning as one”).

Another word with similar meaning is community – “together as one.” Here, personal egos stand out as individuals from a nonpersonal human nature, connecting and contributing to their transpersonal life together in community.

True community represents the apogee (high point) and apotheosis (full actualization) of our human potential. The Christian-existentialist theologian Paul Tillich named it spiritual community, to acknowledge its deep taproot in the grounding mystery of being-itself. It is in cultural contexts of social existence that humans connect, share meaning, build trust, take care of one another, and nurture the fruits of their Love.

Our little plant in the illustration has at last reached maturity. From its roots deep in the Ground of Peace, centered in Freedom and focused in Purpose, it carries out the important work of making Meaning, creating a world big enough to include many others and even future generations. A world where all belong and Love can flourish.

Is the Christian Right Really Christian?

  • If he stands in front of a church holding a Bible in his hand, that doesn’t mean he’s a Christian.
  • If she wears a gold-plated cross necklace, that doesn’t mean she’s a Christian.
  • If he advocates for a bill requiring schools to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms, that doesn’t mean he’s a Christian.
  • When she turns her eyes upward to heaven at her husband’s memorial rally, that doesn’t mean she’s a Christian.

Lots of people do and say things that have the sound and appearance of being Christian. But holding (even reading and quoting) a Bible, wearing cross jewelry, pushing religious legislation, or saying a prayer with tears in your eyes doesn’t make you a Christian.

Back in the day, Jesus himself criticized and condemned all of it as perfunctory, hypocritical behavior. Indeed, he was especially scathing in his remarks about and against leaders who play at piety for the public image and social influence it garners. Snakes, he called them. Whitewashed tombs. Wolves in sheep’s clothing. He didn’t like them, and he called them out every chance he got.

I wonder what Jesus would say today to those among us who pose, parade, and profess their Christian identity at press podiums and photo ops.

Of course, holding Bibles, wearing gold-plated crosses, displaying rules of conduct, and saying prayers in public isn’t anti-Christian or necessarily hypocritical. It is hypocritical, however, and blatantly anti-Christian, when the one engaged in such performance is actively promoting racism, bigotry, retribution, and political exclusion.

And why is that? Because none of those attitudes and actions align with the person, message, and ethic of Jesus himself.

To be a Christian involves living as Jesus lived. He hung out with disreputable and socially marginalized individuals, even inviting them to break bread with him and share his cup of wine. He called all of us “children of god,” making us siblings of one family. Family members automatically belong, and if they happen to not get along all that well, violence and excommunication should not be an option.

Treat others as you want to be treated, Jesus taught. Love your enemies.

This, what is the clear core of Jesus’ teaching, is something the so-called Christian Right cannot get behind. Treating others as we want to be treated means that our kindness must be preemptive and unconditional, not based on how other people treat us. Much of the behavior on the Christian Right is grievance-driven, resentful and reactive. They’ve taken the American traditional attitude of “I don’t owe you anything” and turned it into “You don’t deserve my kindness.”

Jesus called his followers to be kind to others regardless.

And what about that doozy, “Love your enemies” – which, given its radical uniqueness among the religious and moral traditions of the world, is the one thing that gets us closest to the First Voice of Jesus himself? Is love for the enemy a priority of the Christian Right? It seems they are more invested in campaigns for getting rid of their enemies, not loving them – which, for Jesus again, also means including them, inviting them in, and going out to where they live.

Higher border walls, and shorter serving tables with just enough room to seat those who deserve to be there, are popular Christian-Right solutions to the enemy problem.

To cut the Christian Right some slack, the world after Jesus has had an impossible time being Christian. Already in the early decades of the movement following his death. Jesus was being made-over into a liege lord, the apocalyptic champion of the righteous, and vicarious sacrifice whose agony on the cross had “paid the price” and satisfied the conditions restraining god’s ability to forgive sin.

Ironically, the prophet who exhorted his followers to forgive an enemy that hasn’t confessed, repented, or made amends – because such is how God is towards them – was himself later transfigured by the Church into a substitutionary victim of that same god’s offended holiness and righteous wrath. Apparently not even god can forgive unconditionally; but Jesus expected more of his followers.

In other words, Christians have been doing their best from the beginning not to follow in the way Jesus taught and lived, preferring to turn him into an object of worship and doctrine rather than turn down his invitation or put him on a cross of their own.

Nevertheless, for millions of Christians through the centuries, this revolutionary ethic and radical teaching of Jesus on indiscriminate kindness and unconditional love have at least been acknowledged as representing a worthy standard none of us can fully or even consistently attain.

It is common to hear Christians say things like, “Jesus could do it because he was god,” or “Jesus knew that our inevitable failure to fulfill his mandate on love would ultimately drive us to surrender in faith” – and similar doctrine-infused excuses.

It may well be true that none of us can live up to Jesus’ ideal of kindness and love. Perhaps there were times when he himself struggled to realize the vision he professed. If he did struggle at times to practice what he preached, his call for followers might have not only been in the interest of transforming the human experience, but as recognition that they would also find encouragement in each other along the way.

The Christian Right, on the other hand, doesn’t just ignore the revolutionary life and teachings of Jesus. They turn his name against the people he cared about most. They call themselves “Christian,” rail against their perceived enemies, and suspend from gold chains the cross he went to in his love for the very same.

Trumped-Up

“Trumped-up” (adjective): spuriously charged; fraudulent; fabricated.

What happens to the moral fabric of society when members make misleading claims or lay false charges against one another? What becomes of social trust when leaders intentionally misrepresent the reality of what’s going on, so as to exploit the fear, uncertainty, or idealism of the people they have been elected to serve?

Humans have long relied on their ‘common sense’ – our sensory grasp on Reality as mediated by the five senses we have in common – to navigate the situations of life. We’ve also depended on our shared agreements regarding what’s going on. We’re not always accurate in our assessment, and errors have frequently coalesced in broader agreements that are not just mistaken but outright delusional.

Historically there have always been individuals, or classes of individuals like sages, philosophers, and scientists, who call us back to our senses, back to the evidence before us.

Particularly malicious actors who stand to gain much by separating the rest of us from our common sense and moral compass are now going to extremes. They have discovered our naive gullibility for stories that are outlandish and fantastic (i.e., based in fantasy). If they are successful in tapping open our suppressed anxieties, resentments, and magical thinking, a storyline can arc from spy satellites in outer space to dungeons in basements of pizza parlors where sex-trafficking pedophiles devour innocent children.

And some of us believe it. Why not? It could happen, given the crazy ideas and perverse lifestyles of those who are – even now in this very moment – prying into our private lives and stalking our children.

So-called conspiracy theories get their energy from our limited individual perspective on Reality, a naturally wild imagination, and emotional insecurities we try to keep locked away – decidedly not from factual evidence or logical reasoning. When we feel unsafe and helpless, and we just know that somebody somewhere is hatching a plot against us, a story – any story – can provide some needed therapy by drawing a context of meaning around us like a security blanket.

We might compare a present-day conspiracy hack to an ancient storyteller. How are they different? Both make things up. We know for a fact that satellites and pizza parlors exist, and the universe (which a god purportedly created) is obvious and all around us. It’s the idea of hidden agencies and their hidden intentions, that conspiracy theories and religious myths have in common. Things are going on, or once went on, that involve invisible actors with inscrutable motives.

A major difference, generally speaking, is that while religious myths came about as an answer to our human need for security, belonging, and orientation, conspiracy theories are designed to sow distrust, stoke suspicion, and drive us apart.

Leaders (both political and religious) and other social influencers trump up “alternative facts” and conspiracy theories with the goal of breaking the bonds of mutual trust and fellow-feeling that have held human societies together for millions of years.

Leaders know that if this web of sympathy can be weakened and the common folk disconnected from Reality and each other, such an unraveling of the human spirit into isolated threads will make their campaign for autocratic oppression and control as easy as taking food stamps from a baby.

How can we not only resist the lure of trumped-up misinformation and baseless conspiracies, but also bolster our social immune system for the production of freedom, compassion, responsibility, and hope? The following five principles from the worldwide spiritual wisdom traditions offer a time-tested framework.

  1. Cultivating inner peace is key to making peace with others. Healthy and happy relationships are not engineered, but grow from the inside-out.
  2. Living for the wellbeing of the greater Whole promotes health and happiness for oneself. This includes our families, neighborhoods, nations, and the systems of life on Earth.
  3. Opening a larger frame with a longer view on life leads to better choices and fewer frustrations. It’s easier to find our way when we can see more and farther ahead.
  4. Letting go of vengeance and practicing kindness instead provides space for damaged relationships to heal and community to arise. The power of unconditional forgiveness was central to the teachings of Jesus. It distinguishes his true followers today from those who merely call themselves Christian (and wear gold-plated cross pendants).
  5. Living only for oneself leads to loneliness, hypertension, and an early death. If the four positive principles aren’t motivating enough, then let’s start with some things we’d rather avoid!

Leaders and influencers who trump up fallacies, lies, and misinformation are more successful when their intended victims feel anxious, isolated, disoriented and unmoored from Reality. Besides holding them accountable for their terrorism through the processes of justice after the fact, we can strengthen our immunity and diminish their damaging effects from the start by practicing these principles of wisdom in our daily lives.

We might wish for different leaders, for leaders with humility, integrity, honesty, goodwill, wisdom, and creative vision. We might believe that the current state of things is entirely the fault of incompetent and self-interested officials who trump up lies to grab more wealth and power for themselves.

But we have to be duped for the game to go on. We have to take the poison, abandon our better angels, and step off the cliff for their schemes to work. Or maybe we just look away, stay silent, and pretend it’s not happening.

The revolution begins inside us.

All and Nothing

It took a couple of centuries into the first Axial Age of the higher cultures (800-200 BCE) for the shocking realization to set in. In sixth-century Persia it came together in Zarathushtra’s idea of apocalypse, which regarded the world as a richly embroidered veil of illusion that must be pulled aside in our quest to behold the full radiance of Reality.

Cataclysmic world-ending events were edited into the more ancient Iranian myths, registering this radical insight as well as surfacing for the first time a conscious acknowledgement of the world as a narrative construction of the human mythopoetic imagination.

Have you ever wondered who the first mythmakers were, and how aware they must have been of creating worlds in the stories they told?

Much later and into our own day, the idea of apocalypse would be mistaken for a future event that believers needed to prepare for, in order to ensure the safe deliverance of their immortal souls to a heavenly paradise. In the meantime, religion discovered that the anxious fantasies of believers over their everlasting destiny could be stoked and manipulated in the interest of securing membership and enforcing obedience to its laws and doctrines.

Around the same time as the idea of apocalypse was dawning in the middle east, still farther east in present-day India a disillusioned prince named Siddhartha Gautama discovered a portal within himself to deeper oneness. Entering the portal was facilitated by a meditative discipline that effectively extinguished the flame of his ego consciousness – of the “I” at the center of his personal desires and fears, of his hopes, ambitions, and beliefs – in a spontaneous moment of boundless present awareness he named nirvana.

Ancient Hindu religion had evolved with India’s caste system, where lower social classes clung to the hope of ascending to higher ranks with each reincarnation depending on how diligent they could be in the duties attaching to their roles in society.

Religion, that is to say, effectively kept things as they were.

Just as happened with the notion of apocalypse, so too would Siddhartha’s (the Buddha: “awakened one”) metaphor of nirvana later get misinterpreted as referring to a metaphysical realm separate and apart from the self. Elaborate methods would be devised and elite communities of monks dedicated to the work of accessing and cultivating the virtues of Buddhahood.

What Zarathushtra and Siddhartha had discovered – Zarathushtra by pulling aside the veil of a world that only seems real; Siddhartha by his realization of self as nothing (no thing) but a transient wave on an infinite ocean of no-thingness – can be compared by analogy to something you and I experience every day … though without being aware of it.

Approximately fifteen degrees outward from the midline of vision for each eye there is a hole in our visual field, a ‘blind spot’ that registers the point on each retina where the optic nerve to our brain ties in to gather data. At that exact retinal point there are no light receptors, which gets recorded as a gap (actually two gaps, one from each eye) in the sense-data that our brain constructs into its perceptual representation.

This representation is what we actually see, not what’s really out there. Furthermore, we don’t see our blind spots because our brain papers over the holes with data of its own.

In the diagram above, Siddhartha and Zarathushstra are back-to-back at the center: Siddhartha is facing inward to the self, as Zarathushtra faces outward to the world. My returning reader knows that the color orange, as in the aura surrounding the two figures, represents ego consciousness and the self-conscious center of personal identity, which looks in to the self and out at the world.

Recalling our analogy, Siddhartha has become aware of a point in the self where there are no “light receptors,” an emptiness in the self that drops into a deeper oneness and inner peace. The flame of personal identity – ego insecurities, attachments, ambitions, and convictions – has blown out (nir-vana) and nothing but a boundless presence remains.

This Ground is nothing (no thing) but the ineffable source and support in all things, the grounding mystery of being-itself.

With his back to Siddhartha and facing outward to the world, Zarathushtra has detected a blind spot in our world-picture, exposing its construction as an neuro-artifact of the mind. What we see isn’t what’s out there and separate from us, but merely a mental representation made of a patchwork of stories – the mythology of our people and the myth of our own personal identity.

All of it serves as a sacred canopy of significance, and yet it is still only a veil against the radiance of Reality. To behold the Truth of What Is, the veil must be pulled aside, our cover of security, identity, and meaning taken away (apo-kalýptein), and our world ‘destroyed’.

Reality is everything (every thing) existing together in a harmony of higher wholeness – not a mere assembly or random collection, but all of it together as One.

Both Zarathushtra and Siddhartha were early proponents in the breakthrough of spirituality beyond the conventional limits of religion. Whereas conventional religion – back then and still today – is centered on the egos of deities and devotees in protected memberships of shared allegiance, the thrust of spiritual awakening eventually seeks to transcend ego altogether.

Whether it is Zarathushtra pointing out the difference between meaning (world) and Truth (Reality), or Siddhartha exposing the gap between identity (self) and essence (Ground), the result is that religion’s ordained illusion is broken and the human spirit is finally set free.

Descending the self and transcending the world are not thereby to become charters of new religions, replacing the traditional practices and beliefs of conventional religion. Ideally, Zarathushtra and Siddhartha are welcomed in and invited to share what they have learned, however odd and confounding it may sound to believers at first (and for a while).

The insights they offer might be instrumental in fertilizing the spiritual awakening and transformation in whomever has “ears to hear” – that is to say, for whom the moment of liberation is at hand.

Sadly though, the usual reaction to someone who questions the reality of our world and challenges us to drop the charade of identity is to push them out the door and get back to reciting our creeds.

What Made America Great

The recent assassination of conversative activist and influencer Charlie Kirk has once again stoked the fires of opposition in American society.

Some who stood with Kirk on the same moral, religious, and political issues, believe that his murder was an attack on the truths they hold dear.

Others, who regard him as a right-wing extremist that energized the fumbling 2024 campaign of Donald Trump by bringing him the youth vote, in turn blame him for the state-sponsored bigotry and hostility against Democrats, immigrants, people of color, and transgender individuals.

We might feel challenged in such a tense political atmosphere to declare ourselves on one side or the other. After all, identity is a function of identifying with something – a party, a sect, an ideology, or a movement.

An all-in fanatical identification can quickly provide us with motivation to eliminate anyone who doesn’t share our allegiance.

In our desperation, we may feel that the only way forward is by violence.

At this moment, the Trump administration is vowing to “hunt down” all radical liberals who oppose the current government and its ambition to Make America Great Again. Trump’s early reflex of blaming the radical Left for Kirk’s murder has not been verified under investigation.

In this post, I will not take a side for or against what Charlie Kirk believed and professed. It’s not that I don’t hold different beliefs from his – I surely do, on many topics, from Christian nationalism, sexuality and the Bible, the nature and meaning of God, gun rights, reproductive rights, civil rights; the list goes on.

It’s easy to take Kirk as an advocate and agitator for a certain set of beliefs and then put ourselves on either side of the line, for him or against him.

When we do this – when we make this moment about sides and who is right, about who has the right to define God, control the government, and determine how others should live – it’s only a matter of time before someone uses violence in an attempt to shift the balance of power.

We fundamentally misunderstand what Charlie Kirk represented in American life if we try to pull him to one side or the other of this conflict zone. What then? What was it that Kirk represented, if something more (or other) than his personal convictions and stance on polarizing issues?

I call it a social commitment to civil debate, and it’s what originally made America great and kept it great. Recently, however, the practiced skills of argumentation and a commitment to the rules of civil engagement have been usurped by sloganized convictions and a readiness to close down and bring violence upon those who don’t agree with us.

Convictions are beliefs so ironclad and inflexible that their algorithm (the logical chain or ‘script’) holds the mind hostage, like a convict. Any belief will eventually become rigid and absolute when it’s not given the light, free range, and fresh air to stretch itself against Reality and the opinions of others.

A mind that cannot think outside its box of beliefs has lost contact with Reality and is susceptible to baseless conspiracy theories and getting lured into extremist thinking.

American democracy began in the social commitment to civil debate. The much-invoked but frequently misinterpreted First Amendment Right to free speech was not originally about speaking our minds and telling others what we think, but rather joining others in public forums of civil debate where ideas and opinions can compete for agreement based on the rational virtues of sound logic, valid reasoning, factual transparency, common sense, ethical integrity, and pragmatic value.

The 18th-century British monarchy allowed for little public debate, where subjects might assemble to speak against its oppressive regime and articulate their aspirations for a new order, the “more perfect union” of a (future) constitutional republic.

Autocracies cannot afford to let ordinary people (i.e., their ‘subjects’) sharpen and clarify personal belief in the thoughtful public exchange of ideas.

America’s founders and framers made this Right the First Amendment because everything else would turn on the social commitment of its leaders and citizenry to civil debate. Partly an expression of the Enlightenment culture but also rooted in Renaissance humanism, they shared a deep confidence in the human spirit, along with high hopes that when individuals feel respected and included in the forum of disciplined debate – not having to fear ridicule, rejection, or persecution for their beliefs – every opinion will be lifted a little nearer to the light of Truth.

Still, for the founders and framers America was destined to be more than a robust culture of enlightened debate. The transcendent ideal on which their hearts and minds were oriented – the apotheosis of the American Experiment itself – is the shared wisdom, mutual devotion, covenantal fidelity, and harmony of wills named community.

For us to get there, it is imperative that we conceive (or reconceive) the ultimate aim and purpose of public debate as not winning, but understanding one another.

To “stand under” another – an ideological opponent, say, or just someone who sees things differently from us – requires that we engage in deep listening, reaching past our separate positions and opinions, to the common ground we share as human beings. Whereas beliefs logically degrade into polarized extremes, particularly given how we construct our personal and tribal identities around them, human needs and aspirations are universal.

As earthlings and children of the universe (or God if you like, although our concepts of God – our gods – too often divide us), we are all possessed of a longing for wholeness, harmony, kinship, and belonging – in a word, community.

The American founders and framers knew that American destiny as a vibrant community of different backgrounds, beliefs, values, and voices would only be possible insofar as its citizens were not just free to debate their differences, but also challenged to listen more deeply and look more closely at their common human denominator.

Only then could their differences be embraced and lifted into a higher wholeness. This social commitment is what made America uniquely great.

What was just described – this way of engagement involving deep listening, mutual respect, and a relentless pursuit to understand the human needs and aspirations beneath and informing our personal (political, moral, religious) beliefs – represents a significant, transformational, step beyond debate.

Called dialogue, its intentional method is at the heart of genuine community.

Today, violence once again threatens to pull us even further apart. Charlie Kirk’s call to civil debate is in danger of getting drowned out by war cries and threats of vengeance. Our differences are being artificially amplified in an effort to polarize American society into violent extremes.

Perhaps at some level it was Kirk’s more principled method of using words to articulate his beliefs rather than a gun to eliminate his opponent, that desperate and thoughtless individuals find so intolerable – because for them it is inconceivable.

Donald Trump’s own tactics of attacking his opponents, calling them “evil” and vowing to destroy them, is likely the major force on his supporters in foreclosing on debate and opting for violence instead. They exercise their Second Amendment Right to delete our First Amendment Right.

It’s easier to pull a trigger than make a coherent case for what you believe and have to defend it.

Ultimately, we as a nation need to renew our social commitment to civil debate. In accepting the challenge to voice our beliefs in the public forum – giving our reasons, refining our logic, and breaking open our convictions for the light we need to think clearly – we have a chance of becoming the community our founders and framers envisioned.