Think of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  Actually that might not be helpful.  The pyramid shape seems to indicate an increase of value inversely related to commonality.  That’s where part of the trouble begins.  Yet, throw out the seemingly implied value statement.  I’ll say it outright:  the people at the “top” of the pyramid aren’t “better” than the ones at the base.  The pyramid shape of decreasing numbers with increasing ascension is not a relationship that necessarily holds.

 

Yet, the hierarchy does explain much.    Yes, the message we normally associate with the pyramid shape is harmful and useless and must be thrown out.  Yet, the hierarchy does indeed explain much.

 

When it comes to Americans, there is an impenetrable barrier between those who dwell at the actualization levels versus the ones fixated on nurturing and safety levels.  There is an intense failure in the ability to communicate.  I don’t think anyone would dispute this.

 

Think in terms of vibrations and frequencies of spirit energy, if you will.  They don’t all harmonize.  There is a clashing difference in the frequencies between those focused on physiological and safety vis a vis the actualization prioritization.  I repeat that it is dangerous and unhelpful to assign values to either.  I’ll say it again:  the people at the “top” of the pyramid aren’t “better” than the ones at the base.  But I’ll say again too, that the frequencies of vibration of actualization souls are not very compatible with the frequencies of vibration of safety souls.

 

The two aren’t able to talk.

 

But I’ll say it a third time before we move on:  one group of people aren’t better than the other group.

 

It’s a matter of priority, of frequency and affinity if you will.  For some people it’s all about base needs and safety.  These are what need be protected to give people any chance at “salvation”.  Others seem not to worry about their base needs.  Actualization, “God realization”, is the focus of human spiritual experience to these so tuned, with an affinity focused ever beyond.

 

I could easily fall into the trap of value assumptions.  Even using terms that I have:  “spiritual experience”, “ever beyond”, “God realization” is a step into the dangers of this trap.  I could be tempted to say that those attuned to actualization are less afraid than those who are committed to protecting the foundation and the base securities.  Even using the word “base”  is too much in the image of the pyramid, too much into the trap of value thinking, comparison shopping.  It is the same with assuming “fear.”

 

It is hard to think abstractly and constructively about things of this sort.

 

I’m hopeful that I can convey the abstract concepts I’m grasping at while having fully extracted the concept of value and the concept of “better than” out of consideration.  I’ve had a draw at the venom.  Let’s hope the extract has succeeded.  Then we can move on.

 

So, I’ll say one more time.  I will taunt us all a fourth time.  It is mistaken to assume some people are better than others.  Period.  Now, as the discussion proceeds, we can allow ourselves to worry a bit more in the other direction.  People who are concerned with our base needs and safety aren’t inherently better than those who don’t seem to regard it with the proper level of due.

 

Here I want to say something about distribution.

 

Consider how the human body is consistent with the planet earth when it comes to the distribution of H2O.  It is said and it is commonly understood that roughly 70% of the human body is comprised of water and that this is roughly consistent with the fact that about 70% of the earth is covered with water.  I want to use this easy-to-understand correlation to stand in for an assertion of mine:  the distribution of “good” and “bad” people on earth is even.  By this, I mean that across all identifiers of border or culture or skin color or creed, God has equally distributed “good” people and “bad” people.  This one is sometimes a non-starter in certain discussions.  I’m hopeful that it will gain a fair hearing in this context and forum.  Think about it for a while.

Take your time . . .

 

Now, I’m not necessarily saying that there are certain inherently good people versus certain inherently bad people.  These are assumptions that, as I will discuss further, commonly get projected on either side of the Maslow’s hierarchy.  I’m not getting into that particular knot much in this essay, but my belief is different anyway.  To me all are imbued with an infinite God potential.  To me all life is a playing out of karma.  To me there are many lifespans of physical avatar and karma is worked out in this manner.  This is neither here nor there for purposes of this discussion.

 

Just assume and consider for our purposes that a certain amount of “good”ly inclined people and a certain amount of “bad”ly inclined people appear in any slice of humanity that one can imaginatively make.  To get very controversial in a way that I do not mean to, consider only that this means that a comparison of residents of any particular country will slice out in the same good/bad proportions as those residents of any other particular country.  Same across religions.  Same across political creeds.  Same across economic creeds.

Here’s where I may lose some of you.  If I do, I do. There is nothing I can say that will make you buy into this concept.  If you think, for instance, that Americans are inherently “gooder” than those of any other country.  If you are convinced that capitalists are far “gooder” than socialists, if you are convinced that “Christians” are far more “gooder” than [regular, non-quotation marked] Christians or Muslims or atheists or Hindis or Buddhists, than I apologize for asking you to read even this far into what I write.  I have wasted your time.  I’m sorry.

 

However, if you’re still with me, let me say something emphatic:  it is my certainty that the Creator did indeed create a balanced world.  At any given time in vast infinite history, there has always been a good disproportionate distribution of spiritually inclined with physically inclined. (It has ever been the few who can “see” and the many who are “of this world”).  There has always been a very equal distribution of the propensity and affinity for good with affinity for bad.  It is just like gravity.  It is a universal principle that holds.  As the song says:  “people are the same wherever you go.”  There is much truth in that simple lyric.  Much authority and truth.

 

But that’s enough on that.  Let’s return to our original discussion:  the inability to communicate.  There is very little understood articulation experienced by people on differing ends of the human focus hierarchy.

 

Certainly it is to be commended that there are people who sincerely believe that providing for our base subsistence needs and protecting our safety are top priorities in a bad world.  It may well be right that we all must be kept safe and secure in a dangerous world before we have any hope of any spiritual or higher level reward.

 

Likewise it is to be commended that there are people who recognize our spiritual essence.  These are people who are focused on those things that feed the spirit.  Thank God.

 

The danger is when a commitment to one or the other approach infiltrates our value system.  For it is easy for either approach to hide bad practitioners. (This might be a counterintuitive concept). There is a blindness when one associates one’s own kind with right and goodness.

 

Let me explain a bit further, if I can.

 

Take the mantel of the law and order safety and security focused.  It is easy to see others freeloading on all the good safety and security that has been provided.  It is easy to get caught up in the righteousness of being a provider and protector.  Freeloaders who take advantage of the safety and security provided for them at little or no cost seem to have little or no respect for providers.  They are takers.  Ungrateful takers.  They seem to be continually wasting their time on useless or harmful new-age consciousness expanding spiritual aspirations at the expense of all the sacrifice.  It is easy to see a mistaken belief on the part of such idealists that money is unlimited.  It would readily follow then that redistribution of hard-earned work is squandered,  and that the safety and security and justness of the world is in danger from takers and freeloaders.

 

Now consider another perspective.  It is easy for one who is spiritually focused to somewhat take for granted base needs, safety and security and aspire to higher things.  It is easy for an intellectual to value free-thinking, research, open thinking, personal development and freedom from the mundane.  To one with a ‘head in the clouds’ it may seem apparent that undue attention, worry and attachment to the base levels at the expense of expanding one’s mind might seem a willingness to live at a more crass level:  ignorant, base and simpleton.

 

This is oversimplification and not at all explanation, I can see that.
What I’m getting at is much more nuanced and I have the feeling that I am failing in the task.  It is way too simple to say that there are simply two camps, two ways of looking at things.  No matter what efforts I make I seem also to be setting value on what I refer to as “higher” as “expanded” as “open”, such, such, and such ad infinitum.

 

It is all too simplified indeed.  Too conveniently simplified.  These thoughts seem very unhelpful and useless.  I chase my thoughts like birds.  Any time I get close, they fly away scattered only to regroup inaccessible.

 

Except that, in America, today, there indeed seems to be a clear division into two camps.  These camps are broad.  Upon close examination, the fractures within the camps are kaleidoscopic.  It is surprising that they hold together.  Yet, the numbers have fossilized for some time.  There is a zero-sum/all-or-nothing split in our country that approximates 50/50.  Call it red/blue.  Call it conservative/liberal.  Call it right/left.  Call it intellectual elite/the “ppl.”  Call it all of these things.  At some time or other someone has.  We have all pretended this means something true and tangible.  And it has not been respectful.  Call it “brainwashed by the liberal fake media” versus “fair and balanced.”  Call it intelligent vs. stupid.  You can bet someone has already.

 

All the nuances can and have been simplified.  It is all too simplified indeed.  I should, perhaps, give up.  Many have.  Most pretend to one side or the other and disparage all the other side.  I refuse this game.  I say that respect can go all around.  It is important to me that you keep in mind what I said earlier about equal distribution by the Creator of good inclined, good intended, bad inclined, bad intended.  I’m telling you that the Creator will always distribute such human propensities evenly.  How I know this, I cannot tell.  But you can keep it in mind as you work through things with me.

 

So, the country is painted into a winner takes all delusion corner.  It has divided into two opposing camps.  The camps war with each other, each “side” assuming the mantel of righteousness to fight the gallant fight against the destructive forces of the stupidly “uninformed” “other” “side”.

 

Friends, how did we get here?

 

Well, let me tell you what I think.

 

How shall I proceed?

 

I have in mind two concepts:  the dao symbol of yin and yang and the Augustinian concept of the depravity of man as opposed to, say, the Pelagians. I’m not sure with which I will start because the two are so entwined inextricably with each other in some kind of neo-Gordian knot.

 

Let’s try and cut through.

 

Let’s start with Augustus, shall we?  We Americans are somewhat familiar with the concept of original sin and a little more vaguely and sub-consciously sated with the protestant variety of depravation.  Many consider man to be inherently sinful, always wanting to get something on someone else. People are always wanting, always scheming for the leg up, literally over someone’s woman or daughter sometimes. In this school of thought, protection and strong law and order are indeed called for in a basic, all penetrating way.  You don’t know all the dangers that are out there.  Over time, with sufficient banding together against such threats, the inner threat gets glossed over, taken for granted, forgotten.  There never seems to be a shortage of external enemies.  This has two effects.  First, there is never a shortage of outsiders to protect against.  The more identifiably different and alien the outsider, the easier it is to ward against them with strength in numbers.  This seems to be going on a bit whereby the security and base needs are considered sacrosanct and in need of protection from transgressors and sinners and outsiders.  It becomes easy to see opponents as freeloaders, wanting to take advantage of the security always wanting to undermine the security. They’re always “gaming the system” always “after yer Lucky Charms.”  There is a strong sense of a fortress of goodness under constant siege by the forces that, somehow, can’t stand goodness or are restless to undermine all the hard work that created the safe haven fortress to begin with.

 

On the other hand, for Pelagians, there is a sub-conscious assumption of the inherent goodness of people.  There is an awareness of a potential to rise above, to make things better, for goodness to thrive.  This potential always seems to be stifled by forces that resist change and development, that fight against the trusting of intelligent aspirations to improve things.  These others will take any measure, no matter how backwards looking or mean and crass to cling to and preserve “law and order” and “tradition.”  Over time, with sufficient focus on the higher callings and intelligent aspirations of life, the strength of the assumptions of human goodness get taken for granted and, after sufficient frustration with those who resist change and who resist intelligence and who resist development for the sake of keeping the status quo intact, thankfulness gets lost.  The appreciation for the hard-earned glue that holds things together gets lost or forgotten.

 

With these overgeneralized ersatz explanations of the two camps in mind consider each from the noble point of view.  This may (or may not) help understanding.

 

The one camp, believing at heart in the depravity of man, nonetheless, holds out, almost by definition, the hope that proper discipline and corrections can improve man.  However, those who do not respond to discipline and/or correction are thought to be a corrupt danger who must be isolated and never given benefit of the doubt or, indeed, any tangible benefit at all.  “Lock them up!”

 

The other camp, believing at heart in the goodness in man, nonetheless, despairs in those who deliberately impede progress.  Try as they may to educate and to “bring up” those laggards, the tendency, with frustration after frustration, is to write these off as hopeless:  deliberately ignorant, inexplicably defiant.  They are “deplorables”, so to speak.  The instinct is to write them off, to consider them not workable.  While progress and change march forth at pace these can be left behind.

 

So, keeping in mind the tao ying/yang symbol and remembering that one little thing I implied there, the fact of forgetting, remember also that there is a blindness to the little white spot or to the little black spot within each half.  Each camp employs equal force continually turning and twisting around in quest for improvement, perfection, and realization of goodness itself.  Each camp tends to align its own grouping with the mantle of good and to malign the opponent with the mantel of bad.  Each would like to eliminate the other.  Each forgets that, within the heart of them, the spot of the other has never left, be it the yin or be it the yang.   Each contains and includes an element of the other.  This, as a result of the appropriation of mantles of good, becomes, in reality a self-hate.  There is a damned spot that is never out!  Damn spot!  Out!

 

This is the most important time for me to say what I’ve said all along:  it is a maxim that the distribution of good and bad is equal through any cross-cut of any possible collective grouping of any mass of people.

 

It should be obvious that neither group is good while the other is bad.  These extreme dichotomies are just not so.  It is human delusion to think so.  And this deluded thinking allows the truly bad, the bad intentioned, the bad hearted to hide amongst their apparent fellows.

 

For instance, in the Pelagian camp would be those who truly are freeloaders, who aren’t pushing for the community good but truly do want to piggyback on the security and safety and protection hard sacrificed, hard earned by those who have provided the base levels of law and order.  There are some who can hide in this camp who are indeed literal “takers”.

 

In the law and order camp can hide many who truly are selfish, who truly want to hurt others and deny justice, who want to appropriate more for themselves and who truly want, in a mean spirited way, to exclude others and rig the game in their favor.

 
This discussion should (but maybe won’t) make it obvious what the problem is.  In assuming all the qualities of good for one group and assuming all the qualities of bad for the other, it is all too easy to assume that all the “opposing” camp is bad.  It is an easy picture to paint.  The “other”, in this delusion,  carries all the bad qualities in defiance of the reality of an evenly distributed bunch.

Likewise it should be obvious (but maybe it isn’t) that name-calling only makes it worse.

Ignoring the Creator’s fundamental law of equal distribution comes with disastrous consequences.  It becomes impossible to see the good in those who provide base needs and help secure things – they come across instead as evil selfish graspers and deniers with no interest at all in anything good save to maintain the grossly biased status quo.  It becomes impossible to see the good in those who aspire to spiritual progression and encouragement of developing the inherent good in people.  They come across as elitist manipulators of dependents, always creating division and discontent, always favoring the takers over the hard workers.

 

It becomes that no one side can trust the other.  It becomes that all lines of communication or understanding are severed.  It becomes to seem hopeless.

 

This is where America is now.