These articles I read and present inspire me to write about them as much as other things. Since this is not a dialogue but a monologue I will not apologize for the length or reach of my posts. If they only serve me to better clarify my understanding of life, they will have served well. If they serve anyone else they would be a source of profound joy.
The strange thing about health care and no care from the government is that both positions are right depending on the prevalent status quo. In capitalism, the centre left tends to organize a paternalistic government trying to minimize the damages to people from the system of exploitation while the right pretends that even that is not necessary because it’ll make people more dependent on the government and not develop their own will and capacities and unfortunately, they are both so right.
While it may be an altruistic move, healthcare is a very dangerous tool because if people have an average job, enough food and their health is taken care of they will tend to accept the status quo without striving for anything better and THAT is what keeps the status quo in place. People "function" like animals function until they "grow up": instinctively. Human beings have the mechanism to adapt instinctively to the outside world and cannot "face it" "look at it" until they are mature enough to not react instinctively to its conditioning. People "live" conditioned lives by their outside nature, like animals, and humanize themselves and their society when they mature enough to free themselves from the instinctive conditioning. At that point they become "creators", they "innovate" forms that are soon assimilated by society and form part of the status quo. This dynamic interchange between individual and society needs to be better understood. The aim of human life is to develop a mature individual: a creative being. Without "creation" the human being is simply surviving in their "natural" social environment just like animals survive in nature. Society is to the individual what nature is to the animal.
Of course, that’s a premise that few would accept in our times when “creativity” is the privilege of a few but from this perspective, creativity is the main characteristic of a healthy human being and life itself is simply the medium with which to evolve through allowing one’s creativity to develop through one’s work. The world is the stage on which to “create”. An “evolving” human being is one who is consistently in a process of creation not only of the outside world but also of his inner world, with “work” as an “objective reality” or the “objective factor” that “sculpts” both the individual and society.
As long as the perspective we hold in society is based on economic growth and protecting those who produce no matter what and how, it’ll be impossible to undertake a more human direction in which what matters is not how much is produced economically but why, how and what is produced.
The healthcare bill is obviously a necessity in a capitalist society in which people are not paid enough to pay for their own health and many don’t even have a job but it is from a human perspective of development of the empowerment of the individual, a tremendously dangerous tool that will tend to make people accept the capitalist status quo and it is that status quo what needs to be revised and modified if evolution is the aim.
I would then have to define “evolution” as the capacity of each and every individual to empower his and her self to a constantly increasing process of creation. An “evolving” society would then be one in which individuals can develop them selves “creatively”. A society in which the majority of individuals are performing mechanically repetitive jobs without a chance of improvement in which all the basic necessities are taken care of with “creativity” reserved for the privileged few, is a society in a retrograde process and in a tendency to self destroy.
I state this after verifying that human beings can be manipulated to exist a lifetime of service to others without ever serving themselves or the well being of the whole. What the cult experience clearly reveals is that human beings can use their lifetime to “evolve”, that is, to develop their own self beyond a purely instinctive life like animals do, into a purely “human” creative life, like human beings should do.
In that perspective the job of the government is to aid in the implementation of mechanisms that will free people from totally uncreative lives for the benefit of the few owners of production and direct production towards the creative process of the people for the benefit of the whole.
A “creative” society is not one in which the basic needs are not taken into consideration but one in which the basic needs are seen for what they are: basic instinctive human needs. Human beings like animals must eat, drink, shelter themselves and die but unlike animals, human beings have the possibility of “creating”. A human being is in its purest essence, a “creative” being.
People should not only be able to feed themselves like animals do but to develop themselves through their creative work. The aim of every “work” should be to reach a creative harmony between the human being and the world around him: a creative harmony between man and nature and man and society.
The destruction of nature as is being carried out is an expression of lack of consciousness: the unconsciousness of the whole of the human experience as intrinsically connected to nature.
The “divas” in the “arts” are also an expression of lack of consciousness, enthroning a few with the privileges of all. It’s necessary to view the arts and art as an objective creative process to which all people have a “Right” to be able to understand what being human means.
The “arts” are in themselves an “area of experience” to which all human beings should have access to but there should be “art” in everything people do no matter what they are doing. In this sense, what we understand by “art” is the skill with which the act being realized is in harmony with the whole.
There is no harmony in destroying nature to produce plastic guns for children: Guns, dolls and so many other millions of objects that given to children keep them from developing their own creativity. The first step towards allowing people to develop is to not “give” them everything. It’s a strange paradox. And the fact that people who have had “little” turn out to be amazingly creative and capable in their adult lives, should reveal to us the necessity of not stunting creativity in childhood as the capitalist model encourages. Indiscriminate consumption is what the capitalist model conditions people to do and that is a wildly dangerous vicious circle for any society: a few privileged produce what the many are to consume even if what they are consuming is against their own well being.
It’s interesting to note that this “model” of “life” in a society oscillates between two extremes: the few privileged and the many, the workers and the owners, the rich and the poor: Two extremes that benefit the few while the “whole” is simply not taken into account. What reveals the level of consciousness of an individual as much as a society is the capacity to act in harmony with the whole.
The “whole” or “unity” is not just a notion proper of spiritual development and the idea that individuals are enlightened by the experience of “unity” is not unique to spiritual practices. The inability to be conscious of the “whole” in society and therefore acting against some of its parts be they nature or people, is an aspect of unconsciousness. If it is clear that human beings are in a “process” of development, it should also be clear that “mistakes” are part and parcel of that process, necessary “steps” in the overall scheme. The struggle for development is not a straight line.
Some would pose that “war” is the natural condition of the human being and I would question that just as I would question that people should be breast-fed all their lives. It’s interesting to realize that “Conquests” have never been made by starving people but by strong people with a leader and have had the effect to mix races and nationalities of human beings. I wonder to what extent all our struggle has been towards not only becoming the “owners” of all our nature but the co-participants of all our human potential. In other words, did the human being set out to conquer nature by expanding and occupying every corner of the world and in so doing also to connect to human beings and their experience everywhere?
If that were so it would be no different to the particular process in which individuals must come to understand all the aspects of their own self if they are to master their lives: their bodies as much as the dimensions within their bodies. Their physical self as much as their emotional, intellectual and moving dimensions and their will to use each in harmony not only with his individual laws but with the laws of the universe.
The separation of the arts, science, economy and politics is an expression of the schizophrenic level of consciousness that we live in our times. “Life” is an expression of our level of consciousness: we cannot “organize” our societies different to what we ourselves are.
If the people in the lower income class do not empower themselves to understand their rights as human beings and demand that society be organized in such a way that it guarantees them a healthy development and people in the middle class equally dis-empower themselves playing the game of the people in the upper class, submitting to models of life in which they are willing to act against the people in the lower classes to “survive” in the status quo, and the people in the “high” classes are incapable of relegating their own economic gains towards a greater gain for the whole, we will continue to live in essentially inhuman conditions. If the “creative” potential of the high classes and those in power were at least overwhelmingly positive even to themselves, perhaps the status quo could be somewhat justified but the decadence of the high classes everywhere is significant enough to understand that the model is no longer one to be held on to.
Perhaps the “king” and all authority figures have been necessary for us to develop a sense of the unity and hierarchic order of all things only to come to realize that we are each the author of our own destiny and can bring society to a balanced status quo.
That balance cannot come from exploiting what belongs to all by a few and for a few. Nature has to be exploited and protected for the whole.
Without Obama, We Lose So Much More Than an Election
Posted on Jan 24, 2011
By Bill Boyarsky
The selfish negativity expressed by Republicans in the House health care debate last week showed why we should fight hard for President Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012.
Although their speeches were so canned, repetitive and boring that it was almost impossible to listen to them, the message was clear: Beat Obama, dismantle the health bill and take government out of the business of helping people. “Put a president in the White House who will repeal this bill,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, the tea party’s chief harridan, “a Senate that will repeal this bill. We will continue this fight until Obamacare is no longer the law of the land.”
Rep. Paul Ryan, the House Republican leader on fiscal matters, expressed the goal in even starker terms, going far beyond health care and heaping scorn on the very idea of the safety net that has been part of American life since the Great Depression:
“Over time, Americans have been lured into viewing government—more than themselves, their families, their communities, their faith—as their main source of support; they have been drawn toward depending on the public sector for growing shares of their material and personal well-being. The trend drains individual initiative and personal responsibility. It creates an aversion to risk, sapping the entrepreneurial spirit necessary for growth, innovation, and prosperity.”
These words are from Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future,” which he issued a year ago to the great approval of Republicans and even tips of the hat from those Democrats who are more concerned about the deficit than the unemployed.
With Republicans in control of the House, Ryan now has great power. As chairman of the House Budget Committee, he has been given authority to in effect write the budget that will be voted on by all the members. Because of new Republican House operating policies, he can do this himself by setting limits for domestic spending categories—“more power than has ever been invested in a budget committee chief,” noted The New York Times.
His “roadmap” gives a clear view of what the Republicans see as their path to win the Senate, keep control of the House and unseat Obama in 2012.
One of the GOP’s major proposals is eliminating Medicare as we know it, except for those now being covered. Current Medicare recipients would get a small tax credit to purchase policies in any state, opening the door to unregulated marketing of health insurance that may not cover necessities such as maternity care and cancer screenings. Government would also provide a small cash grant and let you invest in a medical savings account. Social Security would be gutted, with recipients being encouraged to turn over a third of their government pensions to the stock market. Ryan’s Budget Committee may also try to eliminate funds to implement the health care law.
Another House Republican plan, this one from the tea party-influenced Republican Study Committee, would cut federal funds given to states for Medicaid medical care for the poor.
That program is one of the best features of the health care act that the House voted to repeal last week. By 2014, the working poor, now excluded, will be eligible if the plan is not repealed.
The health care plan—Obamacare, as the Republicans call it—was never much liked by a substantial number of liberal Democrats. Obama’s refusal to embrace the best plan—Medicare for all—infuriated them. So did his decision against including a government health insurance plan among the options to be offered to Americans beginning in 2014.
As a result, support from an important part of the Democratic base was absent in the crucial days before passage of the law. Abandoned by the left, assaulted by the right and afflicted with an odd case of inarticulateness, the president and his administration failed to explain what they had given to the country.
Now, too late for the 2010 election, supporters of the law are beginning to defend it. In the House debate last week, one Democrat told stories of how constituents have already benefited.
Young adults under 26 are remaining on parental policies. Policies can’t be canceled unless the insurer proves fraud. There are no longer lifetime limits on benefits (such limits permitted cancellation after a certain limit had been reached). New policies must offer free preventative services. Patients can choose their primary care, OB/GYN or pediatric physicians from their insurance network without referral from another doctor. There is a new right to appeal insurance company decisions. Medicare recipients have received a $250 rebate from the prescription drug plan. Small businesses are receiving tax credits for offering health insurance to employees. People with pre-existing conditions can buy insurance. You can use the nearest emergency room without suffering insurance company penalties.
By 2014, the landscape will change much more. Consumers will shop for the best policies at state exchanges, with competition hopefully driving the price down.
Of course, key parts of this plan are threatened by the lawsuits brought by Republican state attorneys general, who may succeed in the current Supreme Court. But even so, much of the law will remain, and be revised and strengthened over the years, just as happened with Social Security and Medicare.
The Republicans want to repeal the entire package and wipe out the other government programs created to help people in economic distress. All they have to offer is a ringing call for a return to Victorian days, as proposed in Rep. Ryan’s roadmap. And they insist on doing it as the country is barely recovering from a recession caused by Republican policies. That’s reason enough for us to start working now to make sure Obama wins another term.
AP / Charles Dharapak
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