The illness that we have struggled with since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1981 has been eliminated. We are like a people who have collectively been afflicted with a slow growing cancer that almost killed us during the Bush presidency. Last night we got the CT scan and lab work back and our doctor told us we are cancer free. The chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, was successful and we are ready to begin our recovery. The disease we have suffered is the notion that we stand separate, that each of us is only an individual, not a part of a whole, but alone, afraid, fighting against each other for a larger part of a meal that has no flavor, or nutritional value, no heart, no soul.
Weakened, but grateful for a new chance at life, we have a new day. Our task will be to rebuild our strength while moving with a new purpose.
I see a new kind of revolution, a respect revolution and it strikes at the heart of the illness of separation, greed, and fear. Comparing the vision and purpose expressed in Barack Obama's commencement speech at Weslean College to the vision and purpose expressed by Adam Smith, a visionary in his day and a philosophical hero of contemporary corporate capitalists illuminates a significant dispositional difference between the Obama movement in the Democratic party and the corporate wing, whole bird really, of the Republican party. Looking at Obama first, talking about service as a central theme in the life of an individual is a good starting point for comparison.
"It's because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential and discover the role you'll play in writing the next great chapter in America's story"
Here the view of self is individual, but inclusive of others. In fact the inclusion of others is represented as an integral aspect of self, not something remote from self that can be argued for or against.
Here is the ancient hero of the Republican party and the corporate elite who have poisoned the land and the spirit of our human heart.
Once upon a time, 1776, Adam Smith wrote the Wealth of Nations, creating many of the principals of modern economics, and giving birth to a famous son, The Invisible Hand. Mr. Smith was a Scottish moral philosopher who accomplished his life’s work during the industrial revolution before the invention of, the cotton gin, car, and even the cell phone. The birth of Mr. Smith’s famous son occurred when he wrote,
"By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. ... By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it."
Here self and the impact of taking action based on a view of self that includes others is reduced and finally discarded by ridicule, a device still widely used in Republican propaganda. The most powerful medicine to prevent this disease from reoccurring is respect for each other as full individuals who are valid and all a part of a whole that is bigger than the sum of its parts.
We are all part of a great human soul, heart, consciousness, species and we are all individually and collectively part of the world in which we live. Steinbeck dramatized it beautifully in the words of Tom Jode talking to his Ma.
Tom: I been thinking about us, too, about our people living like pigs and good rich land layin' fallow. Or maybe one guy with a million acres and a hundred thousand farmers starvin'. And I been wonderin' if all our folks got together and yelled...
Ma: Oh, Tommy, they'd drag you out and cut you down...
Tom: They'd drag me anyways. Sooner or later they'd get me for one thing if not for another. Until then... It's just, well as long as I'm an outlaw anyways... maybe I can do somethin'... maybe I can just find out somethin', just scrounge around and maybe find out what it is that's wrong and see if they ain't somethin' that can be done about it. I ain't thought it out all clear, Ma. I can't. I don't know enough.
Ma: How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? Why they could kill ya and I'd never know. They could hurt ya. How am I gonna know?
Tom Joad: Well, maybe it's like (Preacher) Casy says. A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then...
Ma Joad: Then what, Tom?
Tom: Then it don't matter. I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too.
Today Tom Jode can step out of the shadows of anonymity in our big soul. In the form of this movement we share we have been working on Tom's task.
maybe I can do somethin'... maybe I can just find out somethin', just scrounge around and maybe find out what it is that's wrong and see if they ain't somethin' that can be done about it.
Yes we can!
I see an emergence of a new green Keynesian economic model that will respect all of us as and nature as valid and part of a whole, but that will be for a diary of another day. I am going to bask in the delight of knowing our cancer has been overcome and a new day is possible.