In times of social upheaval the cultures tend to build thick walls to protect their version of civilization that houses their sense of good in monasteries, libraries, or in an infinite variety of creeds, codes, or cults. Upheaval is a series of macro social decisions ripping up the connections that once held the whole together for the purpose of community and governance. In these crisis eras, new decisive versions of “what really matters” are exported out of the individual experience into a more stable version of institution, that, while rigid, mimics briefly the new temporal version of safety for humanity. 

The individual’s internal decision making “sense of safe “is the primary competitor with the same individuals “sense of good“.  When the social fabric of any culture, including our own USA, breaks down, the first step to recovery is to reinforce a true sense of safety that doesn’t overwhelm the individual’s sense of good. The answer is ultimately not found exclusively in creed, code, or cult but in the individual’s experience of their own individual body and life in community which is the medium of life’s spirit as well as everything else. 

But when the social fabric of a nation breaks down, in those first stages, there is no safety. We are experiencing that breakdown process today in America. Power can seduce individuals unencumbered by the considerations of good and use them to consolidate the wealth of a broken culture in service to the private agenda of longevity. And here we are in stage one of national dissolution with a leadership busy shattering this nation to harvest the relinquished power for private gain and longevity. Tragically, this is just another repeating cycle of history and we live in historic times.

Urgent Proposal for Good

Safety does not come in numbers, but in a humanity committed to choosing good in the community rather than greed or any of the other purely private “seven deadly sins”. The teacher who instructed “love thy neighbor” wasn’t a shallow joker making laughable suggestions. The Good Decision process is grounded in an act of faith, religious and/or secular, that good is the counter force to power’s amorality. The authentic sense of good or true conscience guides the culture’s decisions individually and in the collective. Inside the this process of resurrecting culture can be found a subtle universal chord that can reconnect the diversity of cultures and nations without smudging or bludgeoning the diversity itself. Authentic religious traditions point us in that direction. So let us ground ourselves as individuals, secular or religious and become both as individuals and communities more like monasteries committed to a future of good decisions. That would in itself be good and probably our ownly salvation. For certain, this nation needs its conscience back.