Where is the Kindness that Knows how to Help?
Where is the Wisdom that Knows how to be only and always and effectively Kind?
Where is the art; where is the thought; where is the thinking feeling and acting; where are the structures, laws, systems, bureaucracies; where are the traditions; where are the values; where are the political and private decisions: how do we instill and sustain intelligent kindness in everything we individually or separately create, change, maintain, live???
How to live for real? Alone and with others?
What would a government of, for, and by an intelligently kind people look like? How do we get there from here?
The legislature makes the laws. The judiciary interprets them. The executive enforces them. The people abide by them.
The legislature outlines the bureaucracies. The judiciary imposes constitutional limits on them. The executive fills their top posts and directs them. The people get taxed; use the roads; breathe the air, drink the water; immerse in the intertwining mediascapes, economies, cultures; use the foodstamps or enjoy not watching people around them go hungry; cheer on and/or get killed or lose friends in the wars and street violences.
We are now ten trillion years old. We’ve outlived this universe too many times to count. Naturally we could count, but there’s no point. We is an orb of spreading, laughing, sparkling light. We are free.
What is the science of actually helping? What is the art that actually wants to help, actually knows how to help, and actually does help?
If you make laws dictating belief; if you demand religious tests; if you force everyone into the same church, you tempt private citizens and leaders alike to deceive others and themselves about what is in their heart of hearts. This is not conducive to spiritual development. Also, consolidating power tends to bring more desperate power-grabbing/-clinging, which brings with it violence and corruption; and combining spiritual and political authority in one person or group is a serious consolidation of powers. Also, when we worry more about what people say they believe and/or experience in their heart of hearts than how they behave and act right there in the public sphere where public strength, potential, money, and goodwill are made and spent; well, when we do that, we practically beg hypocritical power-desperadoes to take us for a ride and make things worse and worse while whispering more and more ardently how good holy wholesome we loyal citizens are.
However, you can also make a religion out of nonspiritual virtues. And only spiritual values have the benefit of actually existing or mattering. Spiritual values–whether you like the word “spiritual” or not–are all any of us really care about. “I want a meaningful life.” “I want to help other people.” “I want to do something worthwhile.” “I want to enjoy my life for real.” “I think I should get out of bed in the morning.” You cannot mathematically, scientifically, or in any way intellectually prove that anything matters. Cool and/or mystical as it may seem to say we live beyond concepts like matter/don’t-matter, it isn’t true. We care; we believe; we need. We most fundamentally care about and need spiritual values like “this actually matters!!”
The wise person doesn’t grow beyond caring, believing, and needing; the wise person cares about Love, believes in Love, needs to live in and through Love. Caring/believing/needing = focusing-upon. As long as we live, we will focus on things; wisdom is not ceasing to focus, but focusing on what is True: this life is only Love.
There may be subtleties beyond the sense of things we’ve here just now sketched; but that doesn’t make our sketch inadequately true. The most subtle Truth is beyond words; adequately true words point in the right direction–that is the best words can do.
Spiritual values are of what you say, “no, but this actually matters!!”; humans cannot avoid such senses of things; but that is OK, because we needn’t let “no, but this actually matters!!” flit about from one greed-yank to another (“what really matters is scoring with that babe!”, “no, it’s succeeding in xyz business!”, “no, wait: it’s xyz wife, kids, house scheme!”, “no, wait: …. “): we can work to get better and better at caring about, believing in, understanding, and following that of which it is not a terrible lie to say, “no, but this actually matters!”: the Love that creates, sustains, shines through, lifts up, helps and eventually saves everyone of us: the Love without which nothing matters and with which everything matters: that Love and all Its children here, all us rags-over-Light.
So how to strike the right balance? It is not good for people to try to live without Truth, Goodness, the Light, God, Ground, Etc-names-for-what-language-can-imperfectly-but-not-therefore-necessarily-inadequately-point-towards. Some spiritual beliefs (ie: “Loving Kindness is the Way and Loving Kindness joyfully and selflessly chooses to befriend, get to know, care for, lift up, and cherish everyone”) are much better than others (ie: “can’t say what if anything matters, so may as well steal from the till and go get drunk”), and from the better ones flow better judgments about everything–including making, interpreting, enforcing, and following laws; creating and evolving political, business, and etc structures: everything. And yet, a real, effective faith in True Goodness can’t be dictated: it must come from whole-being seeking/unfolding of the Light within (intellect/emotions/body/Light-within all working–imperfectly but still meaningfully–together): only in this way can one adequately relate what is deeper than human thought and feelings to human thought, feelings, and actions. And pretending faith is some collection of dogmas–however beautiful they may seem–is corrupting spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, politically … So how to strike the right balance between inculcating, developing, and institutionalizing spiritual values on the one hand, and avoiding the soul- and system-corrupting mindless tyranny of forced belief on the other hand?
How to create a government where each individual has space to find their own way, and a surrounding conducive to finding one’s truest, deepest, widest, realest self?
Go easy. Go gentle. Relax.
Author: Dr. Harumph Galumph, who writes upon a two humped camel that strides pullingly over sand dunes tall as mountains.
Editor: Bartleby Willard
Assistant to the Editor: Ambrose “Amble” Whistletown
Distant manager with the copyright, all the deeds and everybody’s insurance claims: Andrew Watson