Well, here it is, folks, the morning after, and many of us are mourning. Election results are in, and it looks like we can expect a sea change in the direction of repealing health care, moving backward on environmental protection, and increasing the gap between rich and poor, just for starters. At a time when the future of the biosphere is hanging by a thread, good ol’ America has chosen to be duped by money and propaganda leading us in the wrong direction. Lack of vision and backbone on the part of the Democrats has brought their demise.
I can only look at everything in its evolutionary context. The political system is outdated – a system set up when we were just 13 colonies and Senators rode to Washington on horseback—a very different world than today. Perhaps it is meant to be broken. This system fails to take care of the true needs of the people: social justice, economic equality, environmental protection, the preservation of peace, democracy, and the furthering of science, healing, and consciousness.
This failure of authority systems to do what is right is actually giving rise to what Paul Hawken calls the largest social movement on the planet: the movement of citizens into NGO’s (non-governmental organizations) which are designed to address the issues listed above. There are now millions of these organizations world-wide.
In short, this is part of our growing up—the failure of parental authority is part of the adolescent emergence into young adulthood that realizes we must take things into our own hands. It is part of the shift from the top-down authority systems organized through the love of power to more peer to peer networks organized around serving and saving what we love. The power grab of the authority systems may be part of the process, showing us what is truly broken, so we can put our energy elsewhere and build something new.
That doesn’t mean we don’t have cause for concern. What it means is that we have to try even harder to support these organizations. We have to take our emphasis away from the political system, which can’t get much done no matter who is elected, and realize that change is not going to come from that sector.
Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see.” It is time for all of us to step up and grow up, to wise up and rise up, to come out of our narcissistic cocoons and work together for a guiding evolutionary vision of a world we know in our hearts is possible.