Today of all days, 4th of July, we ask, what does it mean to be
an American?
the very term, American, isn’t an answer, it is a question…
“I am an American”?
that is a question about what it means to be an American…
the question involved is a economic, political and social one…
the political question being asked, given that human beings are social
beings, what sort of political system should we have? the answer given is
a system (and it is a system) that people should be able to control their
own fate, their own destiny by making political choices collectively…
a majority rule system of politics…
instead of a dictatorship in which decisions are made by one or a few people…
are people qualified enough to make their own decisions about how they lead
their own lives?
to choose one system over another is to make a choice over the ability
of people to choose wisely for themselves…
despite the last election which made the individual choices we make
problematic, I still hold to the collective wisdom of people…
one of the questions about our modern age is how does the wearing of
masks which helps hide people from who they are and what is possible for them,
how does wearing a mask influence our collective choices?
If I am not being truthful to myself, how can I be truthful to the collective in
which I live in?
the mask I am forced to wear, influences the choices I make…
the isms, ideology, the narrative we follow, influences the choices we make…
so why don’t we question the ism’s, ideologies, the narrative we follow?
we pretend we have answers in the ism’s, ideologies, narratives we hold
to…capitalism, Catholicism, communism, Buddhism, democracy, monarchies,
and so on…
these are not answers, but questions about what it means to be human?
science has a definite method or methodology it follows…
and it is encouraged to discover the correct answers…
for example, before Copernicus, there was a ism, ideology,
a narrative about the way the universe moved…that the earth was
the center of the universe was the narrative before Copernicus,
and he questioned that narrative…thus “disproving” the old model,
the old narrative of the earth was the center of the universe…
science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge
in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe…
every single advance in science advances a new narrative, ism about
the way the universe works…
so science is a question about how the universe works…
at no point does science offer up some “final” answer as to
which narrative is the “correct” narrative…
each question leads to another question and once again,
we don’t have a why given in science…
it is about the how, not why……
I don’t get final answers in science, I get the latest understanding of
how the universe works…
and that difference between getting the final answer and getting the
latest answer makes all the difference…
so given this understanding, we can see what is the role of such
isms, narratives as capitalism really means…
capitalism is not the final answer, it is simply the answer for a past
age… capitalism no longer answers our questions anymore…
as a model, a narrative capitalism leaves much to be desired…
it fails too many people, it isolates people from each other…
it is too much of an “US vs THEM” understanding of the universe…
at every step of human existence is another step for inclusion for
human beings… exclusion doesn’t work on any level in human existence…
if we look at human history, the march of history has been for inclusion,
not exclusion…
from the Egyptians to today, has been a journey from the one, to the few to
the many to all…
our country foundations of voting has gone from the few, landowning white men,
to become ever more inclusive…to women and to blacks and to the young…
it hasn’t become exclusive, solely to the few or to the wealthy, but to everyone
regardless of accidental traits of existence…color of skin, the religious,
of sexual identity, to height or to the color of one’s eyes…
the very movement of human existence has been of going from
the one or the few to many or to all……
and the 20th century history could be written as inclusion and exclusion…
the Nazi’s were examples of exclusion, the Fascists were example of
exclusion, the KKK are examples of exclusion, the GOP is an example
of exclusion…the ongoing GOP voter suppression is an example of modern
day exclusion, whereas the Democrats practice inclusion…
the Democratic party clearly has a much larger “tent” then the GOP
and the Democrats are attempting to allow everyone the chance to vote…
inclusion, not exclusion…
and for this and other reasons, the Democrats are the party of the future…
for the future will follow the past and become ever more inclusive…
from one to few to some to most to all…
and in every area of life, follows this path of one to many to all…
we go from a few scientists to some scientists to many scientists, perhaps
someday we will get to every one being a scientist… or not…
we have more scientists graduating from MIT in one class year to
being more scientists then in the entire world in 1600……
so if you ask yourself, what questions am I asking?
are you British? Are you white? are you male? are you
religious? are you an atheist? are you gay?
each one of these are not answers but questions of existence…
what is your question of existence?
Kropotkin