Saved this for a couple years and pull it out occasionally. DU post by JOHNONERLLSMEMORY in respones to this article:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/29/1548259I hope you find it pertinent and JOM doesn't mind.
JohnOneillsMemory (1000+ posts) Tue Mar-30-04 01:24 AM
1. Tony Benn is amazing. I heard that interview from the March 20 protests.
Besides having a long history of progressive activism, Benn is fabulously articulate in the way that an 80-something Englishman can be.
Regarding hope, here is my take on the biological necessity of what I call the 'Optimism Imperative' which evolution has imbued us with to promote survival of our species:
"In another thread about inventing a progressive and humane 'authority' structure for the future, I offered this blending of evolution science, psychology, and theology:
Recent news headlines tend to give one the impression that the Scopes 'Monkey Trial' of 1925 has been reopened for arguments as part of the culture war to win the hearts and minds of Americans for the 2004 presidential election. The Georgia public school system just went through yet another battle over the use of the word 'evolution' in textbooks. How can a country that seems to still be fighting the Civil War find a uniting common ground that isn't just jingoism and fear of the Islamic world?
The physical reality of living in a body and in a brain seems to be the boat that we humans are literally all in.
This idea has been held at intellectual arm's length by many people who want to believe that humans are different from other animals in some way that elevates them to a status of god-like nobility. Many have argued that the theory of evolution threatens a moral society because emphasis on our mind's physical shell emphasizes 'worldliness over spirituality' and the barbarism inherent in the implementation of 'might makes right.' How to embody the strength of a protective father without being violent and abusive? How to embody the courage of a tolerant nurturing mother without being a sheep to life's wolves? The battle between multicultural diversity and monotheism is on the field again.
But what if the San Francisco Pagans and Alabama Baptists are really on the same team?
What if there is spirituality in worldliness? That is, what if the physical stuff we're made of is...'good stuff'?
Science has recently revealed that we all really do feel other people's pain, not just Bill Clinton.
Brain scans have revealed that there is stress in our brain upon viewing another person's stress. This indicates an innate empathy for other humans when we can see them. Perhaps now Darwinism and evolution doesn't look as savage as some feared. Embracing the idea of 'Survival of the Fittest' doesn't warm many hearts outside of Harvard Business School. It is the stuff of Hitler, eugenics, the World Trade Organization, and the Dominionist Bush maladministration.
I have noticed the similarities in both psychology and theology of human's deep-seated need to believe in god-like (powerful yet loving) parents, planets, deities, and Universe. I've decided that there is an innate emotion tied to survival of our species that might be called the 'Optimism Imperative.' It is a physical part of who we are.
That is, in order to survive first our parents (males are frequently quite abusive and violent) and then a hostile planet full of predators, bad weather, and food that runs away from us, we need to believe that our perceived source environment, be it family, jungle, or cosmos, actually WANTS US TO SURVIVE. This infuses a struggling human with the emotions of HOPE, FAITH, AND OPTIMISM which give us the motivation we need to leave the cave and look for food or sex or a job, the building blocks for long-term survival of our species and our immediate families today.
The evolutionary logic of expanding one human animal's survival tools to include all the tools in their family increases the chance of survival, strength in numbers. Hence the importance to survival of taking care of one's family. The size of the group that we define as our families have been growing steadily from blood relatives to tribes to religious sects to empires, like small businesses merging into conglomerates of people until we have come to our present nation-state system with nuclear arsenals that can destroy us all. The next evolutionary step in survival is taking care the largest extension of ourselves by ensuring peace in the human family, even though we can't see all their faces, so that a domestic argument doesn’t kill us all.
It is a deliberate tactic of the mainstream media that controls the images dominating what Americans see to not show us the faces of the people around the world whose lives we affect. If we saw what our bombs or pollution or corporate-inflicted poverty was doing to people, we wouldn't put up with it. And some people wouldn't make as much money. We might even demand control of our own lives. We can still tap into the innate empathy evolution has bestowed us with for our own survival and picture in our imaginations human survival around the world. We already have morality within our brains and don't need the Spartan values of Bush, Ashcroft, and Rumsfeld compelling us to lead moral lives and survive in a complex world.
The societal construct that institutionalizes the OPTIMISM IMPERATIVE for strong and weak alike is called CIVILIZED JUSTICE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND ENDING POVERTY, something the liberal Democrats have been legislating for decades in favor of the many weak while Republicans have been resisting in favor of the few strong.
Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich's platform calling for the empowerment of people over corporations would therefore seem to embody the inevitable next step in our species 7 million year-long pilgrimage from the survival of the fittest to the survival of us all, Pagans and Baptists alike.
How's that for EVOLUTION SCIENCE VALIDATING SOCIAL JUSTICE as embodied in Progressive policies? So no matter what you hear on TV, sustainable growth has nothing to do with Viagra and everything to do with the person who becomes our next president."