Make America Sane Again...
Or maybe for the first time?
When I started writing this post I thought I was going to juxtapose thoughts on Make America Great Again with Make America Sane Again, which is why I created the hat picture above. I did it in Photoshop, starting with a photo of a MAGA hat, covering the word 'great' and using the existing letters to create the word 'sane.' It took a while. The 'S' was the hardest as there was no other 'S' to copy. I made it from a 'G.'
I realized, during a conversation I had recently with someone about AI, that I probably could have done it in a minute using good old Artificial Intelligence. Perish the thought! Or not… I have things to say about AI in a different post.
The direction of this post shifted, so the MAGA comments will be forthcoming later. Whether I use GREAT or SANE in this phrase, the word AGAIN makes no sense. We may be in a particularly insane period of public discourse at present, but there has never been a time when America was unquestionably great or sane. It’s always been a mixed bag of competing opinions, positions, and actions—some better, some worse, depending on your point of view.
No matter what, there is no going back. There is no again. Live and learn, or don’t learn.
Is sanity, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder?
Definition of the word SANE:
having a healthy mind and not mentally ill, showing good judgment and understanding.
That definition leaves sanity as a subjective quality. Who gets to define 'healthy'? One man’s good judgment is another man’s disaster. The conversation we’re having now about colonialism/imperialism, and what that means, acknowledges that it is the rulers, the winners, who get to say what good judgment is and isn’t—who get to say what is and what isn’t.
They get to say it until what they think they have conquered fights back, as it will. Trying to suppress nature, human or otherwise, never works. You’d think we would have figured that out by now.
The real conflict is between sanity and insanity
We are seeing so many tragic conflicts between differing ideologies, differing stories…between people wanting what others have and trying to take it from them by force, or wanting people to obey them, or wanting them dead, and the resistance from people who do not want to be robbed, dominated, persecuted, and killed. I’m not saying aggression is always a one-way street; it’s usually a lot more complicated.
The real conflict though, the one in which we all may end up as collateral damage, is between the immaturity (insanity) of the human species and natural law. By the way, if we don’t grow up fast, gain better judgment and understanding (aka sanity), natural law is going to win.
What is the difference between ideological constructs and natural law? Ideological constructs arise from our minds and emotions, from what we want, what we fear, from what we think we understand but probably don’t. Ideological constructs are fixed, or try to be, which is the exact opposite of nature. The laws of nature are so inherent that they can be expressed in movement and change.
I Ching #32 Duration
Thunder rolls, and the wind blows; both are examples of extreme mobility and so are seemingly the opposite of duration, but the laws governing their appearance and subsidence, their coming and going, endure. In the same way the independence of the superior man is not based on rigidity and immobility of character. He always keeps abreast of the time and changes with it. What endures is the unswerving directive, the inner law of his being, which determines all his actions.
Ladies, please excuse the sexist language. They didn’t know any better at the time. What they really meant by saying ‘man’ was people—everyone.
Natural Law
Natural law is gravity, space, time, and all the nested hierarchies of patterns and systems that keep the earth spinning, the grass growing, the sun shining, and that accept birth and death as easily as breathing in and breathing out. Our human nature is based on natural law… whether we like it or not. It’s what we have to work with.
Natural law isn’t playing a game; it’s just being, it just is, and that’s why it will win. A contest between two similar contestants, even if one will prove superior to the other, is fair. The contest between human ignorance and the Way of Life is not a fair contest. It’s totally rigged in favor of reality.
Can we define sanity as recognition of natural law, which I also call reality?
What would a sane America look like?
I don’t know. It would be a time in which everyone, left, right, up, down, and in-between, would come to the table with a little less arrogance, a little less self-righteousness, a little less fear and a little more compassion. A little more faith in the value of interconnectedness and sustainable systems.
What would a sane world look like?
Same as above at a more sophisticated level of cooperation and collaboration because of a larger scale and more variants.
A sane America, a sane world, would be one in which human beings have accepted certain aspects of reality, so that our natural self-interest would be enlightened by understanding that we are part of an irreducible whole. We would understand that life, and ourselves, and what we design and create, is an unfolding, a becoming.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t dream and imagine and try to bring our visions to life. I’m just saying that to be on the safe side, the sane side, we need to make art, not trouble.
By art, I mean everything that is created in collaboration with humility, spirit, deep longing, and confidence in what is not yet known. Trouble is hubris—flying too near the sun on wings held together by wax. But by making art/trouble a duality I am obscuring the function of humility to accept the process of unfolding, of becoming.
We are living in a time of epic, maybe even mythic, proportions. Beneath the inevitable brouhaha of desperation and desire, the broad strokes are clear: Worldview V.1 (might makes right, if you are not one of us we’re against you, and the fewer of you there are the more there will be for me/us) challenges Worldview V.2 (sustainable systems, we're all in this together, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link).
It is to be hoped (as my mother would say, because she disliked the word 'hopefully') that the 'I's won't have it; that the 'WE's will win. Human life will never be anywhere near perfect on this planet. It could be better. We could be better. More sane.
Perhaps sanity is a version of not knowing. It’s thinking and feeling and acting within an expansive territory that is both trustworthy and mysterious. I feel that sanity requires a deep compassion for ourselves and each other, for what we are and what we are not. For what we could be. Sanity requires love. Maybe sanity is love. What do you think?
"We need to make art, not trouble." That's brilliant, Janina! I agree that the words "great" and "healthy" and "sane" all have subjective interpretations instead of actual definitive definitions. Another important thing to ponder about natural law: is "natural law" actually our reality, thereby our "sanity," IF we discover that "natural law" has been ruthlessly tampered with? Is natural law, which should be our ruling paradigm, actually "natural?" Or is it, as are all of us, the unwitting victims of chronic and corrosive overreach by those (few) with power-hungry desire for domination and control over the world?