The State of the Spirit, 2011

Celebrating25YearsofTikkunMagazine W I N T E R 2 0 1 1 W W W. T I K K U N . O R G T I K K U N 17 TheStateoftheSpirit,2011 byMichaelLerner T he bad news is that global warming will soon beirreversibleand,bytheendofthetwenty-firstcentury , large parts of the earth will be under water. Chinaisemergingastheworld’sgreatestsuperpower while continuing to regiment its people and repress democraticcivillibertiesandhumanrights.JustastodaytheWest spendsitsenergiesfightinganelusive“waronterror”generatedby itsfantasythatitssurvivaldependsondominatingothercountries to gain their fossil fuels, in the future Western elites of wealth and power may seek to create medieval-style enclaves surrounded by private Blackwater-style armies to prevent ordinary citizens from getting at their dwindling supplies of food and other goods. Most people will be encouraged to blame each other and fight each other for the decreasing sustenance left to the majority of the planet’s residents. All this is likely to happen gradually, as American power slips away and, with it, the particular opportunities that the citizens of this partial democracy fought to win in the past. Increasingly, we in the West may be taught to believe the “common sense” that people only care about themselves and that nations will always seek to dominate others to advance the interests of their own elites—andthatthereforedomination,militarism,andcrueltyare necessary for “us” to survive (though in fact, that “us” will be a smaller and smaller part of the entire population). And meanwhile ,thepatheticallyinadequatesafetynetwonthroughdecades ofcitizenandlaborunionactivismmaybecutbackinthenameof economic frugality and keeping taxes low, at least for the wealthy who might otherwise cut back on investments and thus provide fewerandfewerjobsfortherestofus. Meanwhile,mostliberalsandprogressiveswilllikelyspendthe next twenty years either supporting political parties that don’t even begin to address these issues in a holistic way (and justifying that by pointing out that candidate x is really much less bad than candidate y), or putting their energies into building a community garden, alternative food store, or other intrinsically good local project or struggle that is satisfying because it is achievable. But these local projects will do nothing discernible to reverse our society’s shift away from its founding democratic and human rights principles unless progressives embrace a larger vision to unify their local projects such as that of “The Caring Society— caring for each other, caring for the earth.” Withincreasingnumbersofpeoplefeelingdisempoweredand retreating into relative isolation in personal life (an isolation enhancedbytechnologiesthatofferendlessgamesandopportunities 18 T I K K U N W W W. T I K K U N . O R G W I N T E R 2 0 1 1 25 YEARS OF TIKKUN tocommunicatewithstrangersonlinewithoutriskingthemutual recognition and deep ethical connection that face-to-face contact arouses, as Emmanuel Levinas and Peter Gabel have taught us), theselargerchangesinthesocietyandinourworldareunlikelyto bechallengedinanyseriousway,evenbythosesufferingthemost. Powerlessnesscoupledwithendlesslycreativeformsofentertainment and disinformation threatens to yield individuals who can’t imagineeverengagingineffectivestruggletochangetheworld. The good news is that we have a good ten to twenty years to reverse this process, and, as an old Jewish joke would have it, ten moreyearstolearnhowtoliveunderwater. What a Conscious “We” Could Accomplish I don’t want to minimize what we could accomplish if we could create a conscious “we” that understood what was needed.ThishasbeenthegoalofTikkunsincewebeganin1986: tofosteravanguardconsciousnessamongtensofthousandsofour readers who could understand the depths of depravity that global capitalism and the ethos of materialism and selfishness are creating, the great dangers to the planet and our human capacities, and the pressing need to build a political movement that transcends the narrow economistic legacy of the Left. This new movement must explicitly build itself around the goal of replacing the Old Bottom Line of maximizing money and power with a New Bottom Line seeking to maximize love and caring, kindnessandgenerosity,ethicalandecologicalsensitivity,andawe andwonderatthegrandeurandmysteryofbeing. Weneeda“vanguard”(think:theFranciscans,theQuakers,the Sufis, the Ba’hais, the abolitionist movement, the civil rights movement, the Jewish Renewal movement, the women’s movement—allthekindsofvanguardIhaveinmind—butnotthe communist party or the Weathermen or the Watchtower crew) that creatively reaches out to the rest of the world to help people acknowledge the way their own needs for recognition, love, and participation in a society that lends meaning to their lives is actuallybeingthwartedbytheverysocietywhich ,forthemoment,has provided us with unsatisfying substitute gratifications. If that vanguardcouldembodytheloveandcaringthatittalksaboutand effectively use the democratic process and the available means of communication to mobilize these underlying spiritual needs into an effective political movement, then all the disasters...