The Fourth of July has
passed. For me it was a bittersweet time filled with gratitude and
sadness. I am grateful to live in the United States with the
freedoms, history and opportunities that I enjoy. Yet part of me is
saddened by our present state of affairs.
We shout, “We are number
one,” but statistics no longer bear this out.
- Of 65 developed nations, the U.S. ranking in education is:1
- 14th in reading skills
- 25th in Math skills
- 17th in Science skills
- The US ranking in health is:
- 29th in infant mortality @ 6.8 infant deaths per 1000 live births.2
- 37th in the performance of our Health Care System3.
- Of the wealthiest nations, the US:
- Has the 2nd highest child poverty rate @ 23.1% of 35 developed countries4
- According to the Corruption perception index (CPI), the US:
- Ranks as the 24th least corrupt nation in the world at 71%. (New Zealand ranks 1st @ 93%).5
The
inscription on the base of the statue of Liberty, our beacon of
freedom to the rest of the world, reads:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
The
history of the United States is a unique experiment in democracy.
We have been a melting pot, attracting many kinds of people with
different gifts, all who desire the opportunity to better themselves
by contributing to our society. This diversity has produced a
powerful engine of creativity that has made us the envy of the rest
of the world.
Yet
today we seem to be intent on throttling down this engine by keeping
immigrants out. States are passing laws that handicap them. We have
literally built a wall on our southern border to keep immigrants from
entering our country. We often treat them with suspicion. We are
fearful of those who are different.
This
fear of difference applies even to our own citizens. Our political
system is corrupted by fear. We are more interested in damning our
opposition than we are in developing solutions to our many problems.
This was demonstrated dramatically for me last week as I read the
threads on the Facebook pages of my friends.
One, a
person more conservative than I, posted a statement critical of the
Supreme Court decision which upheld much of President Obama's health
care reform package. All the comments but one, which followed this
post, derided the decision as well as the character of Chief Justice
John G. Roberts Jr., who cast the deciding vote upholding the
decision. There was virtually no discussion of the provisions of
the bill, and there was no concern expressed for the people who were
being affected by it.
I was
about to add a comment myself, criticizing these respondents, when I
realized that the tone of this page was no different from that of
Facebook pages of some of my more liberal friends. Their pages too,
were filled with comments that ridiculed the faults of conservatives
whom they despised. Again there were few comments on the content or
of the people affected by the issues being discussed. In both cases,
commentators assumed that their political positions were totally
correct, and the agreement of like-minded contributors re-enforced
this bias.
How on
earth are we going to address the enormous problems facing our
society if all our of energy is poured into criticism and ridicule?
Besides being disingenuous, this approach is lazy. It is always
easier to criticize someone else's plan than it is to come up with a
positive one of your own.
Last
week, physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN
laboratory in Geneva announced that they had found evidence of the
Higgs Boson (or God particle) predicted by the Standard Model7
in theoretical physics. This experimental evidence will lead to
greater insights into the processes which occurred in the big bang,
the moment of the creation of our cosmos. It may also prove helpful
in the exploration of the enigmatic dark matter and dark energy8.
This result was made possible because a group of nations invested
billions of dollars in building the LHC and because an international
group of physicists committed thousands of hours in theoretical and
experimental investigations over the last several decades.
These
people spent years proposing, rejecting and refining their insights
regarding the moment of birth of our cosmos. They disagreed and
competed with one another in the process. But they were unified in
their goal to press deeper into the mystery of our existence. If
some scientists involved in this effort had stooped to the level of
ridicule that we see in our political system, they would have been
ostracized by the majority of scientists in the field. The only
thing that counts in the scientific endeavor is theoretical
predictions that are substantiated by reproducible experimental
results. It is this process of commitment to a goal over decades
that has produced the amazing Higgs boson results. This discovery
may have opened a whole new era in the study of the origin of our
cosmos.
Now, I
acknowledge that the issues facing humankind are messier than those
facing physicists; but they are also orders of magnitude more
important for the survival of our species. It doesn't take a genius
to know that the explosion of our global population is straining the
limits of the earth to support us. We are facing the real
possibility that future wars will be fought over scarce water
resources. More and more plant and animal species are becoming
extinct. We have no idea how these species might serve as resources
for our future survival.
The
increasing gap between the educational levels of rich and poor
children in our society and the relatively lower educational aptitude
of all our children spells trouble for the US as we compete in a
complex global arena. Although we may argue about the cause of
global warming, it is becoming abundantly clear that this increase in
the ambient temperature of our planet has disastrous implications for
the survival of life. Yet we ignore the warning symptoms of the
collapse of our ecosystem choosing instead to argue about our
perceived differences.
We are
presently in the grips of a global economic recession that has forced
middle-class people out of their homes and jobs while the desperately
poor in our world are threatened with fates that are almost
impossible to imagine. Much of this disaster was triggered by greedy
people who turned our banking structures into a carnival side show
where the few benefitted by cheating the many.
It
should also be clear that these same greedy people are “gaming”
our political system? They have hijacked the Republican party. They
manipulate us through fear and cause us to adopt policies that are
not in the best interests of our nation or of our world? These
charlatans are neither Republican nor Democrat, liberal nor
conservative. They would have hijacked the Democrat party in the
same way if it were in their best interest to do so.
Yet
all is not gloom and doom as we celebrate the birthday of our our
nation. I remember the grand visions of the founders of this
country, visions which are manifest in the Declaration of
Independence, the Constitution of the United States and the words
inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty. These proclamations
profess a faith in the potential of humans to be more than we think
we are. They are indeed soulful and soul filled declarations.
How
can we re-embrace the spirit of our forebearers even as we
acknowledge the serious nature of our present condition? It is clear
that we cannot continue to gratify our infantile urges to demonize
those with whom we disagree. We must engage those who differ with
us, acknowledging that we need all
the human resources and viewpoints possible to address the horrendous
problems we face.
Simply
electing Barack Obama or Mitt Romney for president is not sufficient
to address these issues. Our political system has become little more
than a power game where people in Washington spend most of their time
preparing for the next election and little time on working together
to improve the life of the majority of our population. Our political
system lacks soul, and only “we the people” can provide this
soul.
If you
are a member of one of the major faith traditions, consider what is
asked of you by Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, the Hebrew prophets and
other spiritual leaders. These leaders did not attracted followers
because of their religious theories or by self aggrandizement.
People followed them because their
lives demonstrated characteristics that were ascribed to God.
Almost universally, they asked their followers to act
with love and compassion toward those who are suffering. If we are
to live with soul, it's not what we believe that makes
the difference. This is where we get bound up in petty disagreements
that further divide us. It's about how we live.
Our
power as a nation, as a people, will not come solely from our ability
to elect a particular person for a political office. It will not come
from our military or economic domination of world affairs.
If we are really going to honor the spirit in
which this nation was founded, we need to re-imagine our beginnings.
We need to ask what really brings life to our world. We need to
explore with others, particularly those who differ from ourselves,
that which is life giving to each of us. We need to tell our
political leaders, as well as the charlatans who seek to manipulate
us, that we are tired of their games. We need to live with soul.
This will not “solve” our issues any more
than the physics experiment at CERN solved the issue of our
existence. Yet as we bring our whole selves into living each
moment with love and compassion, things will change, just a
little bit. For me, this possibility is reason enough to celebrate
the birth of our nation.
Robin Meyers8
puts it well: “Our power will come .... from one simple,
nonnegotiable, radical idea: the power of love is ultimately
greater than the love of power.”
- US ranking in education by OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) of 65 nations on a scale from reported by the Guardian on December 7, 2010: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-education-rankings-maths-science-reading#data>
- http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db09.htm
- New England Journal of Medicine - <http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0910064> (The conceptual framework underlying the rankings proposed that health systems should be assessed by comparing the extent to which investments in public health and medical care were contributing to critical social objectives: improving health, reducing health disparities, protecting households from impoverishment due to medical expenses, and providing responsive services that respect the dignity of patients.)
- http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2012/05/29/US-Second-highest-child-poverty-level/UPI-67641338349787/ - UNICEF study & The Opportunity Gap by David Brooks, NYTimes, July 10, 2012
- http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/
- The Underground Church by Robin Meyers, p. 175
