The Next Democracy

Value 4. Respect and Reverence for all life and the living;

The history of this country may have to stop and fill a volume or two about the the ‘right-to-life’ tragedy created by Americans and has divided our nation so absolutely that the fabric of our society has torn nearly in half.  Which side of the womb you most valued regarding life became a political flashpoint.  Respect and reverence cannot be captured or contained in law or politics. Respect and reverence are two capacities sewn into our very blood and bones when they exist in us at all. Just as coffee beans ground through an inadequate mill come out bitter and acidic, so has the dialogue concerning reverence for life come out bitter and divisive when run through the binary media mill of American thought. We couldn’t handle the power of the story of the fetus because seeing the progression from cell to organism to human altered our sense of good at such a primal level. This is a new relationship with the unborn, largely made more popular and possible by the ultrasound, and this relationship does not need new law.  Our new capacity to actually watch the story of human development demanded a deeper look and a more nuanced discussion conducted with reverence.  Of course we took the coarse path.  We went to law and punishment making visible our diminished collective capacity for reverence as a culture.

A Modest Proposal for Good

The liability for simply being born has never been higher.  Never mind that every living organism just might deserve reverence, love and safety. Once again I point to the wisdom of the ancient indigenous cultures who often prayed before and after the necessary kill of the hunt. They took their communal responsibilities for the web of life seriously. We have no choice in this passionate division but to demand a look at life with reverence for all or collapse as a nation in the rancor of division.  The role of the binary ‘this-or-that’ is proper in the decision, but it is the heart (or feeling state if you are tired of the heart metaphor) that organizes the meaningful context for a decision at the level of reverence to occur.  Keep politics, courts, and law out of the sacred region called reverence. A good rule of thumb is everything that occurs under our own skin should be revered and must not be diced with legislation. The unborn/born dilemma of two-skins-in-one cannot be reduced to a meme or a law. Reverence should be limited to being a value in our “Declaration of Democracy”. That might be good.

Click below for the The Next Democracy Project