Who killed the Progressive Movement?

Well, I am not sure that the progressive movement is dead… or if it even really existed.  But Princeton's Cornell West is trying to breath life back into it and told Obama so. West's Letter to Obama was broadcast on BBC World News America this week and asks a fundamental question about the focus of Obama's administration."How deep is your love for poor and working people?" 

I think that the events of the last 12 months have shown that there is much which the President can not control, Professor.  Was it Obama's fault that Max Baucus (D-MT) allowed the medical insurance companies write the health care legislation?   Obama saw what happened to the Clintons when they went outside of Congress and wrote their own version of the legislation. 

Determined not to make the same mistake, Obama ended up with an indigestible sausage whose making was all too transparent. We saw just how much the U.S. Senate marches to the tune of corporate protection.  Offered a wide range of health care funding options from many countries with better systems than we have, they chose none of them.

Put aside the problems with health care legislation and try to imagine what will happen to climate change legislation this year.  Once again, we will have legislation written by the very industries whose excess exhalations we need to control. 

So, here is a list of reasons why Obama has not lived up to your hopes, Professor.
Nancy Pelosi, Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Harry Reid…

need I go on?
Pete Stark, CA-13; Dennis Cardoza, CA-18; Jim Costa, CA-20

Beginning to get picture?
Max Bachus,  Evan Bayh,   Richard Dubin, Charles Schumer.

Here is a reminder, Professor.   Change from the top is always about power.  The direction of change must come from the people.  To the extent that we, the people, can rally around a few fundamental ideas, then we might accomplish what you desire.   Place your hope in the people, not the President.

Evolving with the world

I used a post on the California Green Forum to start working out some ideas I have about grassroots democracy. I was responding to a thoughtful friend of mine from very NoCal, Bernie Macdonald. In my typical fashion, I had at least one typo that confused a reader enough to ask me for a clarification. What I will do here is to cut and past from all of that and see if I can assemble something that is worth reading.. and thinking about.

Bernie had commented about where GPCA "business" was being conducted.

Also, as the working groups are essentially inactive due to lack of adequate participation, what means do you suggest to increase interest and activity of this vital function?

I was quick to make the point that some of the responsibility lay not with the individuals who failed to join in the Working Groups, but rather in a lack of leadership in those groups. While some (Campaigns and Candidates Working Group, Platform Committee, Media Committee) have effective leadership, some others do not and those are the ones that suffer most from lack of participation.

I would again, respectfully disagree. The lack of adequate participation is directly tied to the lack of leadership ( I sound like a shill for Mr. DeLear, but maybe I use leadership in a different context.) When faced with a task, if leaders lead, work gets done and people do step up.

Perhaps it might help to read book "The Embodied Mind" (Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch). According to Varela, "Mind and World arise together." Maybe it is not yet time for Gaia. Maybe it is. Maybe we need a leadership who can articulate that vision of the world so that we can all understand what needs to be done and why we need to change along with the world. Those who would remake the world in their own image or die trying just might.

For those with enough time, it is well worth reading first "The Web of Life" by Fritjof Capra (popularized) and then to read The Embodied Mind (dense). It would help comprehension of why this is an increasingly complex work and how we need to change to deal with it, if we can.

There are no simple answers to handling complexity and the often talked about grassroots basis for the Green Party is one of the more complex examples of emerging systems that we have in the sphere of politics. I would also suggest that such a system will only arise through the dedicated efforts of those few who are willing to study the processes is all of their complexities and to learn to make all of the connections.

Maybe, Bernie, your idea of a social forum is the right tool to be using for this But, that requires that the users be dedicated to achieving the result and not to proselytizing for one one answers or another. My years of religious study (Och Tamale) taught me to value those who are on the quest and to distrust those who claim to know the answer.

Just maybe, if we put the tools of this discussion to use against a practical problem of the exercise of political will, we might have a better chance to achieve something of lasting value as opposed to arguing about cabals and PACS. Just maybe, if we articulated why the current prison system is a failure and came up with a truly better solution to these problems of good and evil, resurrection or retribution, we might begin to attract more adherents. Just maybe, if we could show that there is a real benefit to community driven economics, we might have less community caused strife or night of violence on our streets.

Someone wrote to me and asked about Gaia and what was meant by that reference. They also pointed out a type in the last sentence of the paragraph, which I fixed, above. I will answer the Gaia question as I replied earlier this AM.

Gaia has a number of layered meanings, all of which were meant.

Gaia was the Earth Goddess or Mother Earth of ancient Greek Mythology.

Gaia is an ecological hypothesis that the living and nonliving parts of the earth are viewed as a complex interacting system that can be thought of as a single organism.

Gaia was a planet created in Isaac Asimov's Empire series of novers that behaved on the cognitive level according to the Gaia hypothesis... all living elements of the plant shared experience, both joy and pain, as well as thought.

If you take the Varela quote that I used earlier in the post, that Mind and World arise together, then you have to face the fact that the successful organism (organization) must develop as the world (society) develops. While it is great to push toward some ideal mode of joint decision making, it is part of the developing world but, to insist on nothing but that process will ultimately fail if the rest of the world (society) is not there yet. There is a tension here that needs resolution or the organism (GPCA) may die.

And here I will snip out my confession regarding my typo and include the rest of that note.

To focus on the process at the expense of the goal is to invite the criticism of the Cheshire Cat.

"Which road should I take?" she asked the cat.

"Where do you want to get to?" the cat asked helpfully.

"I don't know," admitted Alice.

"Then," advised the cat, "any road will take you there."

I believe that the failure to understand the nature of self-organizing systems is at the heart of why the GP has failed to achieve it's dream of grassroots participation and why GDI proved to be not the solution some hoped it would be. In nature (society?) the principles of self-organization come into effect primarily in systems that are far from equilibrium. Consensus is a means of maintaining (or restoring) equilibrium.

I have been trying, in various way, to change a discussion of things like email list etiquette and styles of leadership or decision making into a discussion of basic aims or goals in pursuit of which that leadership will emerge with whatever style of decision making is appropriate to that time and place. There is a dissonance when things are out of synch with each other as they are now.