How easily the Brother & Sisterhood can become co-opted by The Party. This fascinates me to no end. I have seen it particularly with the educated left-wing progressive Democratic wing these past years complying with whatever the experts deem is the party line. But then the counterpoint of radical conspiracy theorists who have no love for the "sheep." I have seen it personally with friends who compromise morals and friendships in order to get into a certain show or crowd. I have seen it when someone becomes "popular" and loses a sense of his kindredness and roots. On a larger level, how many movements get absorbed in some fashion by The Party. The noble vision of the Green Revolution of Agriculture to save the starving people of the world which leads to increasing dependency, a Great War that will bring stability to a country when the goal is really to make money on selling guns and then on the clean up job and ongoing infrastructure contracts, etc. etc. I wonder how the fogs of war and deceptive lures of the modern comforts will be revealed to us all over these next years and what uncomfortable places both mentally and physically we will have to go in order to show our true love, sovereignty, courage and connection. I wonder what blind spots I have about my own evolutionary path. We are weaving a fabric of connections that may eventually serve as a platform for our collective mirroring and honest reflections. Beautiful and thought provoking writing here Charles, appreciate your efforts on behalf of us all!
You have a lovely way of expressing yourself. We have had all of history to achieve your vision and we still seem eons away. "Might makes right", the rule of the jungle, is for all the animals, and we, the only animal that could transcend this, can't seem to do it. Your vision and ours is to enjoy a world of love, of caring for all embodied spirits.
Orwell's dystopic vision, while it is generally taken as a warning, seems like a handbook for the controllers of today. Inevitably, there was no escape in "1984", and for us to escape the inescapable entrapment that seems laid out for us today, we will need the courage that you call for along with creativity that is "out of the box".
Is it possible to have a love so profound that it can stand up against ravenous rats eating one alive, starting with the face? In Oriana Fallaci's non-fictional story, "The Man", the hero is the only one to never give in to the torture during the Regime of the Colonels in Greece from 1967 to 1974 and name names. The only one. No one else could withstand torture. One can never know if one will have the necessary courage to stand against cruelty and injustice until one is actually tested. When I was a young activist I would non-violently never allow violence in my presence, and never got hurt. I was gladdened to discover that I had courage. But I never knew if the next time it would prevail. Now, that I approach 80, though incredibly youthful in spirit, I have little confidence that I will rise to the occasion when and if needed, though I like to imagine that I might.
Dear Charles - I have been reading your writing since I first read "The More Beautiful World" when it first came out - so I am a long term "fan". I also think this piece is the best yet, so beautifully and profoundly important, such appropriate nourishment for our collective soul. Reading it I am reminded of The Brothers Karamazov, the whole book a refutation of the famous "Grand Inquisitor" argument in that book. I read 1984 when I was still in high school, and haven't the stomach to ever read it again, not because it is disturbing (which of course it is), but because it is so final, so hopeless, hopelessness is indeed the ultimate weapon, a powerful force to weaken the best of us. What a testimony you have offered here of the immense power of love. Thank you!
Thank the Lord that I did not have to read 1984 in school. And I have yet to read it for the very reasons you mentioned (and I never will, especially after some of the excerpts Charles provided).
You write, "The Party maintains its rule through endless war, endless hate, endless pursuit of power." I disagree. I think it maintains power by using our compassion against us, instilling guilt and its bedfellow, blame. It keeps us pulling those babies out of the river and ranting at anyone who doesn't, because if we ALL did it, it would work! But it won't work.
Our compassion is being overwhelmed, as we hold ourselves and each other responsible to 'Be the change you want to see.' I'm not advocating a new -ism. George Orwell comes by his cynicism honestly in the brutal betrayal of American volunteers in Catalonia. I've never read anything as dismal and heartbreaking. And from that history, I take lessons in how power works and what it's capable of. Orwell's fiction is his interpretation of that raw reality. I don't know if interpreting fiction as if it's reality makes sense. The reality we're dealing with seems dark enough, without the projection of omniscience and omnipotence on it.
Charles, it's not that people don't care enough, in my humble opinion. It's that we're being tricked. That trick is going to play out but 1984 isn't our future, any more than it was in the past 1984. We're not writing this script, and neither is the Party. There is no evil, only a system that's reached its maximum concentration of power before it implodes. Change is coming.
It was shortly after 9/11, when George W. Bush declared his "war on terror" by separating the world into good - of course including himself - and evil, when this kind of argumentation first struck me as something utterly undesirable, maybe even as the root of some major problems our world is facing. This text of yours elaborates what has been a gut feeling over years to a rather clear line of thought on a social and political level. Thank you very much for that, Charles. On a psychological level, there might be another important condition: I think, the fellowship of love can only work with fellows who love themselves. Fellows who get rid of the voice of the Party inside their head telling them, that they are not good enough. That they are not pure enough, that they had meat on tuesday, that they took a plane just for vacation, that their CO2 footprint isn't sufficiently small. I believe, this voice has to cease for sanity and love to sprout. First inside ourselves and then outside, forming social islands of sanity and love, thereby more and more limiting the influence of the Party.
Well I'm sitting at the morning kitchen table with big fat tears in my eyes. Thank you Charles. For the whole essay, yes, and for something more specific I hadn't expected. It is bringing joyous sobs up out of me still to think of it. The redemption of my friends.
For as long as I have had political consciousness, I have harbored deep judgement of most all my friends, and of myself for continuing to associate with them. "They are not political enough. They prefer the comforts of their small lives to the courage it will take to turn this thing around. They are not willing to throw themselves upon the gears of Climate Change/Industrial Modernity/Militarization/etc, etc."
In several weeks, I am to reunite with someone I used to call a best friend before years of distance pushed between us. We were drinking buddies in college, and he has been less capable than I of pulling himself away from booze, away from irony. I had written him off – someone I have warm feelings for, sure, but not someone with whom I can partner in moving toward a more beautiful world.
I don't have words right now to describe the shift I felt reading your powerful words. All I can say is that as I read this last part, an image came to mind of my friend laughing, in that kind, good-hearted way he does. And it is so clear that, for all his numbing, he has a great love within him. So, too, do the rest of my beautiful friends. To greater or lesser degree (but all to some degree), I can see this love, this tender spiritedness, within them.
I don't have to reject my friends. Rejecting them in the name of a superficial "activism" is the problem. I have chosen well all along. It is no accident that these people have come into my life, no sign of my inner deficiency that I am surrounded by people who aren't Heroes of the Political. Something in me has known: these are the ones whose lights burn bright, these are the ones who hold forth their tender hearts. They are worthy of my fellowship, and I of theirs.
I can see now that it is precisely because of the ideology of the Party you have described that I rejected them. "Are you willing to abandon your slacker friends for the Greater Good?" Yes, said I. No longer.
Have just shared with friends and acquaintances as a timely reflection of this year past with hope for a miraculous 2023. Thank you for omitting any reference to the C virus and allowing as many to read, reflect and hopefully, stir from their slumber.
2 Timothy 1:7 For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind
I so love this! Inspiring and a great reminder as I remember my own essential nature of Love rooted in my Heart!
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~Rumi
More than ever, I am crystal clear that Rumi hit the most essential nail on the head! So I’ve started a worldwide club dedicated to amplifying the Wisdom and Healing of the Human Heart in each of us, and you’re ALL welcome to join… It’s FREE: HeartFloss.Club
I’m working on the website, so still under construction, but visit me there in the New Year!
Happy Holy Days, and enjoy your Sweet Heart always!
I have no words to share except these, "thank you, thank you, thank you". It is as if, when I read your work, I hear myself reflected in them - thoughts and concepts that have percolated in the quiet depths of my own mind surface here in your writing, and I feel...whole, seen, connected. A recent reacquaintance introduced me to the New Year's ritual of offering gratitude in place of resolutions or intentions, and it struck a deep chord with me. I figure, what better way to seamlessly weave the gifts of the past year and those before, with the potentiality of the one yet to come? In this moment, having read your essay and the series of which it is part, I am reminded once again of how grateful I am to have encountered your work all those years ago, Charles, as a high schooler reading "Sacred Economics", and feeling as though, finally, someone was speaking sense. To paradox, peace, and the continued unfolding,
"What doublethink does on the level of mind, betrayal of love does on the level of soul." You can betray yourself, and ultimately, fragment into pieces. The good news is we are entering a phase of soul reintegration, and the Great Work is to remember who you really are, which as Charles so aptly states, is LOVE. Love is more powerful than Fear, and every choice made from love changes the world for the betterment of all beings.
I mean, I love Charles' work I truly do, but whenever someone (not just Charles) writes something like this, I think: What if we all convert to love, truth, justice, beauty, and it happens that we all have a different idea of how these manifest concretely in physical reality? Isn't that damn close to our current situation? And then, how are we to work together to make those *actually* happen, physically, in this world, if we can't agree what that would look like? And if a number of us all agree on one version of love, truth, justice, beauty, then how is that version not an -ism? "Truth, justice, love and beauty" in the abstract are never controversial, it's always when we the people are to decide how to actually arrange society out there in the material world to make these ideals happen that conflict appears.
It's really not that politics is rife with conflict just because everyone is too blinded and brutish to get along with others.
Very well put Sistersmith! You nailed the frustration I feel with the esoteric terminology of the desirable states of being which we then argue about how to make happen in real life. Ideologic frameworks seem endemic to everything we do and this does seem to lead inevitably to some kind of ism. Maybe it's like addiction, you just have to keep trying to find healthier ones as you go along, but we cannot ever be completely free of some kind of addiction or ism in this physical world.
I agree and yet still I find myself sucked into ever more philosophical discussion even tho I do not believe we actually can think or talk or write our way out of this mess. I suppose for me all this is a distraction similar to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic while the iceberg looms ever larger in front of us. It all seems too big and inevitable to effectively respond to. Not a very hopeful attitude on Christmas day I know, but there it is. And well we might as well entertain ourselves on the way down!
It’s refreshing to hear I’m not alone here ;-). For more down to earth substack reads I like Gavin’s newsletter and Rhyd Wildermuth. I too get sucked in by the !/!WORDS and am able to connect in other ways. Rainbow Medicine Walking sounds lovely.
My favorite of yours so far! Brought me to tears. No words. Will keep and re-read. This piece is a treasure. Thank you.🙏🏻❤️
same here, breathtaking optimism
me too
Me too
How easily the Brother & Sisterhood can become co-opted by The Party. This fascinates me to no end. I have seen it particularly with the educated left-wing progressive Democratic wing these past years complying with whatever the experts deem is the party line. But then the counterpoint of radical conspiracy theorists who have no love for the "sheep." I have seen it personally with friends who compromise morals and friendships in order to get into a certain show or crowd. I have seen it when someone becomes "popular" and loses a sense of his kindredness and roots. On a larger level, how many movements get absorbed in some fashion by The Party. The noble vision of the Green Revolution of Agriculture to save the starving people of the world which leads to increasing dependency, a Great War that will bring stability to a country when the goal is really to make money on selling guns and then on the clean up job and ongoing infrastructure contracts, etc. etc. I wonder how the fogs of war and deceptive lures of the modern comforts will be revealed to us all over these next years and what uncomfortable places both mentally and physically we will have to go in order to show our true love, sovereignty, courage and connection. I wonder what blind spots I have about my own evolutionary path. We are weaving a fabric of connections that may eventually serve as a platform for our collective mirroring and honest reflections. Beautiful and thought provoking writing here Charles, appreciate your efforts on behalf of us all!
You have a lovely way of expressing yourself. We have had all of history to achieve your vision and we still seem eons away. "Might makes right", the rule of the jungle, is for all the animals, and we, the only animal that could transcend this, can't seem to do it. Your vision and ours is to enjoy a world of love, of caring for all embodied spirits.
Orwell's dystopic vision, while it is generally taken as a warning, seems like a handbook for the controllers of today. Inevitably, there was no escape in "1984", and for us to escape the inescapable entrapment that seems laid out for us today, we will need the courage that you call for along with creativity that is "out of the box".
Is it possible to have a love so profound that it can stand up against ravenous rats eating one alive, starting with the face? In Oriana Fallaci's non-fictional story, "The Man", the hero is the only one to never give in to the torture during the Regime of the Colonels in Greece from 1967 to 1974 and name names. The only one. No one else could withstand torture. One can never know if one will have the necessary courage to stand against cruelty and injustice until one is actually tested. When I was a young activist I would non-violently never allow violence in my presence, and never got hurt. I was gladdened to discover that I had courage. But I never knew if the next time it would prevail. Now, that I approach 80, though incredibly youthful in spirit, I have little confidence that I will rise to the occasion when and if needed, though I like to imagine that I might.
Dear Charles - I have been reading your writing since I first read "The More Beautiful World" when it first came out - so I am a long term "fan". I also think this piece is the best yet, so beautifully and profoundly important, such appropriate nourishment for our collective soul. Reading it I am reminded of The Brothers Karamazov, the whole book a refutation of the famous "Grand Inquisitor" argument in that book. I read 1984 when I was still in high school, and haven't the stomach to ever read it again, not because it is disturbing (which of course it is), but because it is so final, so hopeless, hopelessness is indeed the ultimate weapon, a powerful force to weaken the best of us. What a testimony you have offered here of the immense power of love. Thank you!
Thank the Lord that I did not have to read 1984 in school. And I have yet to read it for the very reasons you mentioned (and I never will, especially after some of the excerpts Charles provided).
You write, "The Party maintains its rule through endless war, endless hate, endless pursuit of power." I disagree. I think it maintains power by using our compassion against us, instilling guilt and its bedfellow, blame. It keeps us pulling those babies out of the river and ranting at anyone who doesn't, because if we ALL did it, it would work! But it won't work.
Our compassion is being overwhelmed, as we hold ourselves and each other responsible to 'Be the change you want to see.' I'm not advocating a new -ism. George Orwell comes by his cynicism honestly in the brutal betrayal of American volunteers in Catalonia. I've never read anything as dismal and heartbreaking. And from that history, I take lessons in how power works and what it's capable of. Orwell's fiction is his interpretation of that raw reality. I don't know if interpreting fiction as if it's reality makes sense. The reality we're dealing with seems dark enough, without the projection of omniscience and omnipotence on it.
Charles, it's not that people don't care enough, in my humble opinion. It's that we're being tricked. That trick is going to play out but 1984 isn't our future, any more than it was in the past 1984. We're not writing this script, and neither is the Party. There is no evil, only a system that's reached its maximum concentration of power before it implodes. Change is coming.
Yes - a wave looms largest just before it breaks.
Oooh, I like that! Much better than 'it's darkest just before the dawn' which never made sense to me.
It was shortly after 9/11, when George W. Bush declared his "war on terror" by separating the world into good - of course including himself - and evil, when this kind of argumentation first struck me as something utterly undesirable, maybe even as the root of some major problems our world is facing. This text of yours elaborates what has been a gut feeling over years to a rather clear line of thought on a social and political level. Thank you very much for that, Charles. On a psychological level, there might be another important condition: I think, the fellowship of love can only work with fellows who love themselves. Fellows who get rid of the voice of the Party inside their head telling them, that they are not good enough. That they are not pure enough, that they had meat on tuesday, that they took a plane just for vacation, that their CO2 footprint isn't sufficiently small. I believe, this voice has to cease for sanity and love to sprout. First inside ourselves and then outside, forming social islands of sanity and love, thereby more and more limiting the influence of the Party.
Well I'm sitting at the morning kitchen table with big fat tears in my eyes. Thank you Charles. For the whole essay, yes, and for something more specific I hadn't expected. It is bringing joyous sobs up out of me still to think of it. The redemption of my friends.
For as long as I have had political consciousness, I have harbored deep judgement of most all my friends, and of myself for continuing to associate with them. "They are not political enough. They prefer the comforts of their small lives to the courage it will take to turn this thing around. They are not willing to throw themselves upon the gears of Climate Change/Industrial Modernity/Militarization/etc, etc."
In several weeks, I am to reunite with someone I used to call a best friend before years of distance pushed between us. We were drinking buddies in college, and he has been less capable than I of pulling himself away from booze, away from irony. I had written him off – someone I have warm feelings for, sure, but not someone with whom I can partner in moving toward a more beautiful world.
I don't have words right now to describe the shift I felt reading your powerful words. All I can say is that as I read this last part, an image came to mind of my friend laughing, in that kind, good-hearted way he does. And it is so clear that, for all his numbing, he has a great love within him. So, too, do the rest of my beautiful friends. To greater or lesser degree (but all to some degree), I can see this love, this tender spiritedness, within them.
I don't have to reject my friends. Rejecting them in the name of a superficial "activism" is the problem. I have chosen well all along. It is no accident that these people have come into my life, no sign of my inner deficiency that I am surrounded by people who aren't Heroes of the Political. Something in me has known: these are the ones whose lights burn bright, these are the ones who hold forth their tender hearts. They are worthy of my fellowship, and I of theirs.
I can see now that it is precisely because of the ideology of the Party you have described that I rejected them. "Are you willing to abandon your slacker friends for the Greater Good?" Yes, said I. No longer.
Now I have big fat tears in my eyes reading your words too Haakon. Beautiful.
Have just shared with friends and acquaintances as a timely reflection of this year past with hope for a miraculous 2023. Thank you for omitting any reference to the C virus and allowing as many to read, reflect and hopefully, stir from their slumber.
2 Timothy 1:7 For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind
You give the gift of hope to me. Thanks.
I've been reading your work for some time and always felt it is a little above me. It came together in part 6, I understand now. Thank you.
I so love this! Inspiring and a great reminder as I remember my own essential nature of Love rooted in my Heart!
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~Rumi
More than ever, I am crystal clear that Rumi hit the most essential nail on the head! So I’ve started a worldwide club dedicated to amplifying the Wisdom and Healing of the Human Heart in each of us, and you’re ALL welcome to join… It’s FREE: HeartFloss.Club
I’m working on the website, so still under construction, but visit me there in the New Year!
Happy Holy Days, and enjoy your Sweet Heart always!
Funny name, heartfloss, but fitting.
Dear Charles, your worlds beyond their formal beauty contain the activating codes of the revolution of love. May every open heart let them in fully.
Beautiful.....
I have no words to share except these, "thank you, thank you, thank you". It is as if, when I read your work, I hear myself reflected in them - thoughts and concepts that have percolated in the quiet depths of my own mind surface here in your writing, and I feel...whole, seen, connected. A recent reacquaintance introduced me to the New Year's ritual of offering gratitude in place of resolutions or intentions, and it struck a deep chord with me. I figure, what better way to seamlessly weave the gifts of the past year and those before, with the potentiality of the one yet to come? In this moment, having read your essay and the series of which it is part, I am reminded once again of how grateful I am to have encountered your work all those years ago, Charles, as a high schooler reading "Sacred Economics", and feeling as though, finally, someone was speaking sense. To paradox, peace, and the continued unfolding,
M.
"What doublethink does on the level of mind, betrayal of love does on the level of soul." You can betray yourself, and ultimately, fragment into pieces. The good news is we are entering a phase of soul reintegration, and the Great Work is to remember who you really are, which as Charles so aptly states, is LOVE. Love is more powerful than Fear, and every choice made from love changes the world for the betterment of all beings.
I mean, I love Charles' work I truly do, but whenever someone (not just Charles) writes something like this, I think: What if we all convert to love, truth, justice, beauty, and it happens that we all have a different idea of how these manifest concretely in physical reality? Isn't that damn close to our current situation? And then, how are we to work together to make those *actually* happen, physically, in this world, if we can't agree what that would look like? And if a number of us all agree on one version of love, truth, justice, beauty, then how is that version not an -ism? "Truth, justice, love and beauty" in the abstract are never controversial, it's always when we the people are to decide how to actually arrange society out there in the material world to make these ideals happen that conflict appears.
It's really not that politics is rife with conflict just because everyone is too blinded and brutish to get along with others.
Very well put Sistersmith! You nailed the frustration I feel with the esoteric terminology of the desirable states of being which we then argue about how to make happen in real life. Ideologic frameworks seem endemic to everything we do and this does seem to lead inevitably to some kind of ism. Maybe it's like addiction, you just have to keep trying to find healthier ones as you go along, but we cannot ever be completely free of some kind of addiction or ism in this physical world.
Too many words, too many abstractions, too much repetition. Sometimes it feels like too too much and the beat goes on ad nauseum
I agree and yet still I find myself sucked into ever more philosophical discussion even tho I do not believe we actually can think or talk or write our way out of this mess. I suppose for me all this is a distraction similar to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic while the iceberg looms ever larger in front of us. It all seems too big and inevitable to effectively respond to. Not a very hopeful attitude on Christmas day I know, but there it is. And well we might as well entertain ourselves on the way down!
It’s refreshing to hear I’m not alone here ;-). For more down to earth substack reads I like Gavin’s newsletter and Rhyd Wildermuth. I too get sucked in by the !/!WORDS and am able to connect in other ways. Rainbow Medicine Walking sounds lovely.