Slowly, I began to wean myself back on news but in a different way. I limited my time on the computer. I kept the new, constructive habits in my life. I had a certain amount of silence during the day. If I found myself getting upset at the news, I turned away from it. I started to be able to educate myself in world affairs, without taking it personally—without getting angry. I worked at being neutral–participating, but not allowing myself to feel threatened or to allow the world affairs to effect my own mental and physical health. That surprised me, because at one time I couldn’t understand people who didn’t get intimately involved in politics, especially after the Iraq War began. I thought that if you weren’t in the streets and outraged, you were conveniently hiding your head in the sand. The choices that I was faced with, and ones that I realize I am privileged to make, were about healing myself and finding out who I was when the world wasn’t in the way. I began to see how incredibly negative the news is. I became hypersensitive to any negative language, and it permeated nearly every nook and cranny of media. Where were the solutions? Where were the radical ideas? Where was the creativity? Where was optimism? Where were the visions for our future?

I concluded that I/we can not positively affect global issues without healing ourselves first. We can’t fix the all of the problems of our broken government through any ways in which we are used to. Our government is dramatically cracked. The Bush administration has eroded the Constitution. Furthermore, there is a systematic erosion of our social infrastructure—from FIMA, to the military, to the public education system, our financial standing, and reputation. The corporate media’s priorities are not connected to truth, but profit, so our information is tainted. Protesters are now perceived to be a nuisance perpetrated by crazy extremists, thanks to effective propaganda tools; therefore, they seem no longer effective. These factors contribute to a sense of helplessness and victimization amongst the American people. We face very serious and immediate threats to our country, the world, and they need to be addressed, but I am arguing that the ways in which we are fighting for its survival are based on old models and have to be rethought.

To regain our footing we must regain our sense of selves. We must take a long hard look at who we are and what we want, as individuals, as a nation, and as global citizens. Taking responsibility for our part in the equation is essential. Negative commentary further divides us. Feeling guilt is anti-productive. Ranting and raving adds to the negativity. Blaming doesn’t do any good. People hold on to their ideals in a defensive stance, pointing fingers at each other. We are not listening to each other. We are not listening to ourselves. We each have a hand in where we are now. We are not victims but participants, and we can choose how to best continue our participation.

I do hear positive, real solutions coming from non-profit organizations that are working internationally with myriad perspectives, voices of genuinely positive and intriguing ideas. This model reflects what I hope for our future: creativity, positive boldness, massive art making, networking, problem solving, real tolerance of differing ideas (including tolerance for people who don’t agree with us), education, and clear-headed, non-defensive, non-violent, forward, radical thinking. We have entered a whole new era—one of global proportions never before experienced.

I don’t mean to say that the postmodern age is based on negativity, but a particular brand of negativity has grown within it: it is a brand of selfishness and a sense of entitlement, which is destructive. We are drowning in dichotomies, sound byte antidotes, desperation, bitterness, and hopelessness– victimization. I believe that the Shock and Awe campaign was perpetrated against the American people as well, and its design, fraught with fear and distraction, has created a type of mass mental illness. If we want to change the realities that we don’t like, we need to get healthy. Just as myself and my cohorts can’t reach our dreams by holding onto past hurts and injustices, the social justice movement will never be successful fighting from a place of defensiveness, hate, whining, and longing for times begotten.

 

Man’s dilemma–now and always–has been that he misidentifies his own intellectual artifacts as reality. But these artificial suppositions are merely the products of an arbitrary point of perception. The inadequacy of the answers we receive is a direct consequence of the limitations implicit in the viewpoints of the questioner… Society constantly expends its efforts to correct effects instead of causes, which is one reason why the development of human consciousness proceeds so slowly. … While this random search for solutions has resulted in a maze of baffling complexity, true answers always have the hallmark of simplicity.               -- David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D.

 

In order for justice to truly take a hold in this global reality we are finding ourselves in, we need a new direction. As Dr. Hawkins infers, mere, simple perception is everything. He also infers that we need to get to the root of the human condition instead of applying antidotes to the symptoms. Believing in ourselves might just be the cause to a different effect. To find what we each believe in, we must first listen to ourselves. When we listen, we will find and “seize the courage necessary to preserve our sensitivity, awareness, and responsibility in the fact of radical change,” and we discover what it is that gives us joy (May). A life lived in joy will produce joy around us. Joy is powerful, creative, inspiring and contagious.

I envision that guilt and victimization in our culture are gone and replaced with taking responsibility, dreaming big, believing, kindness, fairness—things that we desire but are too injured to truly believe are possible.

I strive to join those who have invited in a new era: one of creative problem solving; vast amounts of art making; responsibility to individual physical and mental health, strength, and stability; and modeling a life lived in joy. In order to be truly successful at any endeavor, sincerity must be present. Individual house cleaning is key to finding sincerity. I saw this the other day portrayed in a positively worded bumper sticker: If What You Seek You Don’t Find Within, You Won’t Find Without. It takes a huge amount of courage to live personal dreams, and to move toward true desires, especially when one learns her cues from the postmodern age and its stale hangover. When in the process of reinventing new cues, one begins to find her true voice while witnessing the shadows of past motivations. Just as posmodernity echoes the needs of a collective psyche, so must the individual heal her psyche in order to constructively and sincerely participate in a new era. I’ve had numerous conversations, read articles, and heard stories that all point to this new era. I am not alone. I am tapping into a new consciousness. And it involves the balance of personal health, dreaming big, and participating in our world. And it is radical.