The Summer of the Rising Tides, Day 48: From Revolution to WeVolition

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July 18, 2020-

It was another interesting day. There was little on my agenda, until the Harmonic Convergence update session, entitled “Saturday Night Alive”. I made a visit to Farmers’ Market, seeing a few friends I hadn’t encountered in a while and shortening visits with others, who seemed more annoyed at my conversing a bit longer than they wanted. It’s still a good place to pick up fresh vegetables, healthful concoctions and dairy products. (Yes, I am one of those who enjoys a cold glass of milk, on a hot day. It’s not harming me.)

A lunch stop at our neighbourhood family restaurant was pleasant enough, until someone called the police on a couple who had left their dog in a car that had all four windows rolled halfway down. It could have been handled differently- I might have gone in and told the hostess about the make and model of the car, and the dog’s situation-as this is a small place and it wouldn’t have been hard to find the people. Long story short, the couple’s meal was covered by someone else.

There has yet to be a successful political revolution, if one is talking about a result which includes ALL people living in the country affected. There have been few that even serve the interests of a dominant culture-at least at first.

Politics can’t be divorced from spirituality, or morality. We can separate the state from specific religion, and oftentimes, that’s a good thing. Humans, though, are spiritual, and/or moral, and/or ethical beings. We can see down the road, if we care to look.

Where we are now, though, is a rather foggy place. I have long-standing friends who have cut me off, because I dare to say that adoption is preferable to abortion, while still maintaining that the mother should have the final say over her own body. or because I have posted the first person account of a young woman who escaped from sex traffickers. I have others who keep me at a distance, because I don’t support a whole lot of what the current president is saying and doing. Nor do I support the most prominent alternative.

I don’t have to speak to any of these people, ever again, though I still have love in my heart for who they are, essentially. My bottom line is human beings should not be subjected to what is in vogue, what is “chic”. Sexualizing children is NEVER “cool”, no matter WHO is on TV or on social media, defending it. Coercing people to adhere to outmoded practices and promulgating false versions of history-because “that’s patriotic”, is likewise, not kind or just. Calling for people to be killed, because YOU don’t like their view on life, is just plain sick.

Revolution is passe. I propose WeVolition: From the grassroots up, we the people can show the top-down crowd and the naysayers, on both sides, that we can build a genuinely decent society. We can handle safeguarding children, teenagers and young adults from human traffickers. We can, at the same time, learn to deal with the residual effects and continued practices of racism and sexism-despite the loud voices telling us that prejudice is not eradicable. We can curb appetites for addictive drugs that sap a person’s strength-whether they are obtained by prescription or from illicit dealers. We can devise a system for keeping babies alive, through birth, and finding loving homes for them, even if those homes are not those of the birth parents. We can find resources to provide running water and electricity for our friends and neighbours on rural First Nations reservations and back country Appalachia, Ozarks and the Mississippi Delta. We can find both natural and allopathic remdies for the viruses and bacteria that seem to have everyone running into their caves.

It will take knowledge. It will take volition (will power). It will take action.

WeVolition.

Dystopia

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I have a propensity for watching TV shows and films which have a dystopian theme:  Revolution, The Black List, Person of Interest, Game of Thrones, Hunger Games, Divergent, Ender’s Game.  I mainly like to see how the protagonists solve their dilemmas, though in too many cases, the choice is “Blam, Blam”.  Revolution got old, and formulaic, so it’ll be consigned to Hulu after one last episode.

Dystopia, the collapse of all we know and either love or hate, the primal turn to either a Lord of the Flies mentality, a Glengarry, Glenross or 1984 mindset, or both, seems to be much on everyone’s mind.  Despite my fascination with these shows, however, I don’t see an actual, full-blown dystopia as the long-term wave of the future.  Yes, we may very well endure a stretch of trials and tribulations, which won’t lend themselves to a quick return to “Business as Usual”, but I believe there will emerge something far better.

People are bound to notice that there are those who are building a better, more organized and less officious civilization from whatever ashes to which the old systems lead.  Some won’t want anything to do with it, but most will, over a period of decades.  I have had several iterations of my own life, in which, as Baha’u’llah, Founder of the Baha’i Faith wrote “Poverty is followed by riches, and riches are followed by poverty…” His meaning is that material possessions come and go, but He is emphatic in saying that we will always have what we need.

With Paul Simon, in “Peace Like a River”,  I see a glorious Day.