Purpose and Context, Activity
Dorothea Lange: First-graders pledging allegiance, Weill public school, San Francisco, California, 1942. Farm Security/Office of War Information Photograph Collection, Library of Congress. (CC 2.0).
On October 14, 2018 the television show Sixty Minutes aired the interview of Leslie Stahl with President Trump, in which he refused her request to pledge that he would not interfere with the investigation of his activities. The nation saw the reduction of what could have been a national conversation to a contest between the two of them: the President said “why should I pledge to you?”, as if the question was not asked on behalf of the entire country.
An environmental citizen today has to be concerned not just with such things as dirty water, hot oceans, and cruelly treated animals, but with the First Amendment. A healthy democracy is necessary for government to do its job addressing the problems we all face. Ignoring the fact that journalists represent the people tears connective tissue: the commitment to the whole that an American President is chosen to manifest. It is in the sense of a people made from everyone who happens to be here that we enjoy our freedoms. No citizen who wishes to be free of environmental disaster can afford to neglect the emotional energy that drives this cleavage with the American past, with our traditional source of pride, our Constitution. No would-be healer of divisions can ignore the opportunity to revive the spirit of civic duty that this moment presents, if many can be helped to recognize its meaning.
At the same time as this event, CSPAN was broadcasting without comment the Global Climate Action Summit held this summer in San Francisco. The lucky viewer who found the broadcast of this event saw something different. Not only was the forum packed with good news about how a climate-healthy economy could be quickly developed, but it demonstrated a culture of reason and a shared sense of constructive purpose. The viewer witnessed social fabric – national and international – being created through the acceptance and development of responsibility. Former NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg, now the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Climate Action, explained that cities and others have taken America’s Pledge, (https://www.americaspledgeonclimate.com/), and are remaining faithful to the purpose of the Paris Accord. In a time of radical deregulation (See http://www.trunity.com/ec-blog/the-great-undoing), and the Administration’s withdrawal from Paris, America is still reducing greenhouse gas reductions. When protesters briefly took over the Moscone Center and prevented Bloomberg from speaking, shouting that the air is not for sale, he waited politely, and then agreed with them, and joked that in America you can have environmentalists protesting an environmental conference.
An environmental citizen today has to be concerned not just with such things as dirty water, hot oceans, and cruelly treated animals, but with the First Amendment. A healthy democracy is necessary for government to do its job addressing the problems we all face. Ignoring the fact that journalists represent the people tears connective tissue: the commitment to the whole that an American President is chosen to manifest. It is in the sense of a people made from everyone who happens to be here that we enjoy our freedoms. No citizen who wishes to be free of environmental disaster can afford to neglect the emotional energy that drives this cleavage with the American past, with our traditional source of pride, our Constitution. No would-be healer of divisions can ignore the opportunity to revive the spirit of civic duty that this moment presents, if many can be helped to recognize its meaning.
At the same time as this event, CSPAN was broadcasting without comment the Global Climate Action Summit held this summer in San Francisco. The lucky viewer who found the broadcast of this event saw something different. Not only was the forum packed with good news about how a climate-healthy economy could be quickly developed, but it demonstrated a culture of reason and a shared sense of constructive purpose. The viewer witnessed social fabric – national and international – being created through the acceptance and development of responsibility. Former NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg, now the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Climate Action, explained that cities and others have taken America’s Pledge, (https://www.americaspledgeonclimate.com/), and are remaining faithful to the purpose of the Paris Accord. In a time of radical deregulation (See http://www.trunity.com/ec-blog/the-great-undoing), and the Administration’s withdrawal from Paris, America is still reducing greenhouse gas reductions. When protesters briefly took over the Moscone Center and prevented Bloomberg from speaking, shouting that the air is not for sale, he waited politely, and then agreed with them, and joked that in America you can have environmentalists protesting an environmental conference.
No one jockeying for advantage, playing politics as a game to win, conceding nothing to the other side, as Mitch McConnell played his position in the judicial appointment process, holds themselves accountable to everyone, but only to their side. Their loyalties are to a section of humanity, not to the process that serves the whole. They fragment the world and degrade the systems that hold it together. Extreme partisanship is disloyal to wholeness and to our children’s future. The dismantling and neglect afflicting the agencies that protect us, as concisely described in Michael Lewis’ crucially important The Fifth Risk, are not the manifestation of accountability to everyone, but protection and commitment to the current assets of only a few.
Devotion to the interests of the “winners” is nothing new. It was celebrated by leading thinkers throughout the industrial revolution, termed “Social Darwinists”. Out of the worship of the supposedly fittest came the repellent idea of eugenics, “careful elimination of the unfit and dependent” (Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, p. 82). After listening to a speaker present such a thesis at a 1906 conference Lester Ward, first president of the American Sociological Society, “branded the doctrine”
The most complete example of the oligocentric world-view which is coming to prevail in the higher classes of society and would center the entire attention of the whole world upon an almost infinitesimal fraction of the human race and ignore the rest.
Besides missing most people those who think they only owe duty to their small group miss the fact that when they damage the system they hurt themselves. The system of systems on which we depend is composed both of nature, as Harrison Ford strongly reminded everyone at the Summit, and the economy. As the panelists in Van Jones’ session made clear, there is a $23 trillion economy just waiting to be developed. Companies like L’Oreal, with 73% reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and 33% increases in production, are showing us how to do it.
The Pledge of Allegiance was originally published in The Youth's Companion on September 8, 1892. It read:
I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
According to US History.org, (a project of the Independence Hall Association), its author, socialist minister Francis Bellamy, “hoped that the pledge would be used by citizens in any country.” Many Americans today have grown up with a different pledge, one that is specific to the United States, and that says this country is “under God”.
Some are loyal to a piece of the world only, and exist primarily in competition: respecting power more than universal principle flows from this posture. It is possible, however, to observe the pledge in a way that is accountable to the entire world of humanity and to life itself, while pledging loyalty to one’s own team, one’s own group, one’s own country. This is the idea of the Paris Accord, and the United Nations, and the aspiration of citizens of world civilization engaged in cooperation concerning issues that face us all. There is no need to abandon one’s identity to be part of this. Our coexistence is a moral imperative, to be sure, but it is also just a simple fact. Those who would act to change the direction in which we are heading can usefully attend to how we may shift loyalties by fostering recognition of it.
The moment in which our president reduced the journalist from a representative of the people to someone he competed with should be seen in the light of what our founders believed could make us great. Jill Lepore reminds us in her magnificent These Truths that the question of whether democracy is best run by elites or by the people has been the preoccupation of political thinkers through the ages, and it was long thought that a healthy democracy could only be possible in a small country. It soon became clear that in America, a large one, factions were not being held in check, and that they might consist of “passionate, ignorant, and irrational men, who had been lead to hold ‘counterfeit’ opinions by persuasive men.” But the “way out of this political maze was the newspaper.” Madison wrote:
A circulation of newspapers through the entire body of the people is equivalent to a contraction of territorial limits. (“Public Opinion”, National Gazette, December 19, 1791).
Lepore writes that this “ingenious idea” would be revisited many times: “the telegraph would hold the Republic together; the radio would hold the Republic together; the Internet would hold the Republic together. Each time, this assertion would be both right and terribly wrong.” (Page 143).
Because the earth itself and all life upon it are threatened by climate change, the unchecked dissemination of toxics, the destruction of natural habitats and overharvesting, the development of a shared sense of what is at stake and what is important to everyone is crucial. What divides us too much stops us from moving forward. Newspapers and television news may be letting us down because they have become too beholden to commercial interests. But the idea of the news, and of good information, of communication, remains our hope, as does the idea of accountability and commitment that the Paris Agreement represents. It sustains the idea of reasoning together. In our joined awareness we can apprehend the way forward, which lies before us in the form of revised systems of energy, production, transportation, shelter, and fair and just economies. The participants of the Summit have a good story to tell, and if the news we see is the news that sells, then it is up to citizens to supply the demand that will cause the story to be told.
Frank Bainamarama, the Prime Minister of Fiji, spoke at the Summit about the Talanoa Dialogue, of how the conference opened with the sharing of stories that have the purpose of showing how we can move forward. https://earthjournalism.net/stories/fiji-taking-the-lead-in-pacific2019s-climate-action,
"Talanoa is a traditional word used in Fiji and across the Pacific to reflect a process of inclusive, participatory and transparent dialogue. The purpose of Talanoa is to share stories, build empathy and to make wise decisions for the collective good. The process of Talanoa involves the sharing of ideas, skills and experience through storytelling.
During the process, participants build trust and advance knowledge through empathy and understanding. Blaming others and making critical observations are inconsistent with building mutual trust and respect, and therefore inconsistent with the Talanoa concept. Talanoa fosters stability and inclusiveness in dialogue, by creating a safe space that embraces mutual respect for a platform for decision making for a greater good.” https://unfccc.int/topics/2018-talanoa-dialogue-platform
When the President refuses to pledge to a journalist, the vehicle for national discussion that the founders believed was the thing that could knit us together, it is up to us whether we buy that story. Demand shapes the market. Are we fascinated by how he can play the interaction to win, and seduced into backing the “winner”? Or are we seeking and telling a story that merits our loyalty?
The neutral camera of CSpan seems dull and plodding in comparison to conventional television but whoever saw Harrison Ford’s anger about the denigration of science and his passionate plea for nature knows why he is so compelling on the screen. Whoever heard Catherine McKenna, the Canadian Minister for the Environment and Climate Change, heard the narrative we could be hearing and telling, that the conventional wisdom has it backwards: the transition to sustainability does not involve sacrifice, is not going to result in scarcity. Instead, it is failing to transform that will ensure scarcity and that harms us and will harm our children. Prosperity actually lies in developing the green economy. She reminded us:
Pollution is not free.
We can’t wait for the corporate-owned news industry to figure out how to make money covering that story. We have to ask for it and tell it ourselves.
What if we reach out to those who are transfixed by the spectacle, seemingly immobilized by fear and dread, to remind them of the meaning of our democracy: that it is about all of us winning together? Could we not place some hope that this idea could revive a rightful pride and bring back to life leaders happy to pledge to justice? Who respect reporters as representing the endless variety of people, the entirety of us?
If we pledge in the inclusive manner our capacities to reason together it should help us to see the better future that has already been proven technically and economically feasible. If we pledge to listen to, and share, stories of mutual respect, of hopes for sustaining life as we love it, it should help.
There are several pledges of allegiance to the earth. One is from Foundation Earth, (http://earthpledge.org/), led by Andrew Kimbrell, Brent Blackwelder, and Randy Hayes, and inspired by the life and work of Thomas Berry:
I pledge allegiance to the Earth
To its mountains, rivers, soil and sky.
One planet, irreplaceable
To be protected and cherished by all.
Hofstadter wrote (p. 81) that Ward felt
If there is no cosmic purpose, there is at least human purpose, which has already given man a special place in nature and may yet, if he wills it, give organization and direction to his social life. Purposeful activity must henceforth be recognized as a proper function not only of the individual but of a whole society.
Devotion to the interests of the “winners” is nothing new. It was celebrated by leading thinkers throughout the industrial revolution, termed “Social Darwinists”. Out of the worship of the supposedly fittest came the repellent idea of eugenics, “careful elimination of the unfit and dependent” (Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, p. 82). After listening to a speaker present such a thesis at a 1906 conference Lester Ward, first president of the American Sociological Society, “branded the doctrine”
The most complete example of the oligocentric world-view which is coming to prevail in the higher classes of society and would center the entire attention of the whole world upon an almost infinitesimal fraction of the human race and ignore the rest.
Besides missing most people those who think they only owe duty to their small group miss the fact that when they damage the system they hurt themselves. The system of systems on which we depend is composed both of nature, as Harrison Ford strongly reminded everyone at the Summit, and the economy. As the panelists in Van Jones’ session made clear, there is a $23 trillion economy just waiting to be developed. Companies like L’Oreal, with 73% reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and 33% increases in production, are showing us how to do it.
The Pledge of Allegiance was originally published in The Youth's Companion on September 8, 1892. It read:
I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
According to US History.org, (a project of the Independence Hall Association), its author, socialist minister Francis Bellamy, “hoped that the pledge would be used by citizens in any country.” Many Americans today have grown up with a different pledge, one that is specific to the United States, and that says this country is “under God”.
Some are loyal to a piece of the world only, and exist primarily in competition: respecting power more than universal principle flows from this posture. It is possible, however, to observe the pledge in a way that is accountable to the entire world of humanity and to life itself, while pledging loyalty to one’s own team, one’s own group, one’s own country. This is the idea of the Paris Accord, and the United Nations, and the aspiration of citizens of world civilization engaged in cooperation concerning issues that face us all. There is no need to abandon one’s identity to be part of this. Our coexistence is a moral imperative, to be sure, but it is also just a simple fact. Those who would act to change the direction in which we are heading can usefully attend to how we may shift loyalties by fostering recognition of it.
The moment in which our president reduced the journalist from a representative of the people to someone he competed with should be seen in the light of what our founders believed could make us great. Jill Lepore reminds us in her magnificent These Truths that the question of whether democracy is best run by elites or by the people has been the preoccupation of political thinkers through the ages, and it was long thought that a healthy democracy could only be possible in a small country. It soon became clear that in America, a large one, factions were not being held in check, and that they might consist of “passionate, ignorant, and irrational men, who had been lead to hold ‘counterfeit’ opinions by persuasive men.” But the “way out of this political maze was the newspaper.” Madison wrote:
A circulation of newspapers through the entire body of the people is equivalent to a contraction of territorial limits. (“Public Opinion”, National Gazette, December 19, 1791).
Lepore writes that this “ingenious idea” would be revisited many times: “the telegraph would hold the Republic together; the radio would hold the Republic together; the Internet would hold the Republic together. Each time, this assertion would be both right and terribly wrong.” (Page 143).
Because the earth itself and all life upon it are threatened by climate change, the unchecked dissemination of toxics, the destruction of natural habitats and overharvesting, the development of a shared sense of what is at stake and what is important to everyone is crucial. What divides us too much stops us from moving forward. Newspapers and television news may be letting us down because they have become too beholden to commercial interests. But the idea of the news, and of good information, of communication, remains our hope, as does the idea of accountability and commitment that the Paris Agreement represents. It sustains the idea of reasoning together. In our joined awareness we can apprehend the way forward, which lies before us in the form of revised systems of energy, production, transportation, shelter, and fair and just economies. The participants of the Summit have a good story to tell, and if the news we see is the news that sells, then it is up to citizens to supply the demand that will cause the story to be told.
Frank Bainamarama, the Prime Minister of Fiji, spoke at the Summit about the Talanoa Dialogue, of how the conference opened with the sharing of stories that have the purpose of showing how we can move forward. https://earthjournalism.net/stories/fiji-taking-the-lead-in-pacific2019s-climate-action,
"Talanoa is a traditional word used in Fiji and across the Pacific to reflect a process of inclusive, participatory and transparent dialogue. The purpose of Talanoa is to share stories, build empathy and to make wise decisions for the collective good. The process of Talanoa involves the sharing of ideas, skills and experience through storytelling.
During the process, participants build trust and advance knowledge through empathy and understanding. Blaming others and making critical observations are inconsistent with building mutual trust and respect, and therefore inconsistent with the Talanoa concept. Talanoa fosters stability and inclusiveness in dialogue, by creating a safe space that embraces mutual respect for a platform for decision making for a greater good.” https://unfccc.int/topics/2018-talanoa-dialogue-platform
When the President refuses to pledge to a journalist, the vehicle for national discussion that the founders believed was the thing that could knit us together, it is up to us whether we buy that story. Demand shapes the market. Are we fascinated by how he can play the interaction to win, and seduced into backing the “winner”? Or are we seeking and telling a story that merits our loyalty?
The neutral camera of CSpan seems dull and plodding in comparison to conventional television but whoever saw Harrison Ford’s anger about the denigration of science and his passionate plea for nature knows why he is so compelling on the screen. Whoever heard Catherine McKenna, the Canadian Minister for the Environment and Climate Change, heard the narrative we could be hearing and telling, that the conventional wisdom has it backwards: the transition to sustainability does not involve sacrifice, is not going to result in scarcity. Instead, it is failing to transform that will ensure scarcity and that harms us and will harm our children. Prosperity actually lies in developing the green economy. She reminded us:
Pollution is not free.
We can’t wait for the corporate-owned news industry to figure out how to make money covering that story. We have to ask for it and tell it ourselves.
What if we reach out to those who are transfixed by the spectacle, seemingly immobilized by fear and dread, to remind them of the meaning of our democracy: that it is about all of us winning together? Could we not place some hope that this idea could revive a rightful pride and bring back to life leaders happy to pledge to justice? Who respect reporters as representing the endless variety of people, the entirety of us?
If we pledge in the inclusive manner our capacities to reason together it should help us to see the better future that has already been proven technically and economically feasible. If we pledge to listen to, and share, stories of mutual respect, of hopes for sustaining life as we love it, it should help.
There are several pledges of allegiance to the earth. One is from Foundation Earth, (http://earthpledge.org/), led by Andrew Kimbrell, Brent Blackwelder, and Randy Hayes, and inspired by the life and work of Thomas Berry:
I pledge allegiance to the Earth
To its mountains, rivers, soil and sky.
One planet, irreplaceable
To be protected and cherished by all.
Hofstadter wrote (p. 81) that Ward felt
If there is no cosmic purpose, there is at least human purpose, which has already given man a special place in nature and may yet, if he wills it, give organization and direction to his social life. Purposeful activity must henceforth be recognized as a proper function not only of the individual but of a whole society.
ACTIVITY
Subscribe to a newspaper or other publication that requires subscriptions to flourish, that provides quality information. Think about what that means. Do not accept glib characterizations of the publication’s supposed political leaning, but consider how it presents information and how it does its work of ascertaining facts and meaning and fostering understanding of issues. Do not assume that intelligent conversation will simply occur without support and engagement in it.
Subscribe to a newspaper or other publication that requires subscriptions to flourish, that provides quality information. Think about what that means. Do not accept glib characterizations of the publication’s supposed political leaning, but consider how it presents information and how it does its work of ascertaining facts and meaning and fostering understanding of issues. Do not assume that intelligent conversation will simply occur without support and engagement in it.
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