What We Truly Seek
By Don Hynes
04 December, 2007
Countercurrents.orgAmerica must do what it fears most to do - contract; a direction opposite to its self image of limitless expansion, its belief in a Divine national preference. Financially America has been obsessed with personal and corporate wealth and militarily with unchallengeable might, serving its iconic projection as the unyielding victor, the ever champion, the exceptional nation. After two hundred years of unparalleled advance, to the pinnacle of international power following World War II, America will learn as all unbalanced ambition does, that descent will follow rise, that the worship of wealth will ultimately yield poverty, that arrogance will succumb to humility. America will contract; the only questions being the final cost and with what grace. If we choose our future as we’ve chosen our recent past we are in for a torturous descent.
The strategy of those in power is essentially confusion; the primary means to distort our individual and collective decision making: the Surge, the Bail Out, the Clean Skies Act, Mission Accomplished, Cooperation and Friendship with the Republic of Iraq, No Child Left Behind, the Protect America Act, all lies and obfuscation, portraying virtue where there is none, charitable promise where there is only violence and greed.
We can come to our senses as a nation, for we have the inherent intelligence, but what we lack is reflection, avoiding the often difficult work of moral character with what simply sounds good, preferring entertainment to the developed practice of insight. Our perceptions must be strengthened and refined by steadfast inquiry, our thinking forged by the willingness to learn and to stand against the lies and deceit of our governance, our media, our culture.
Is it possible for peace to come from a conference between an unrepentant oppressor and a selected collaborator from the oppressed, meeting with a moral non-factor and his female counterpart? A snowball’s chance in hell are the odds for the recent Annapolis photo opportunity leading to anything meaningful, although as intended, providing more confusion and deception to those who do not look behind the smoke and mirrors
The gravest implication, and the foundational purpose of sowing confusion, is to further ignorance and harvest impotence; the imploring “what can I do?” a relinquishment of individual sovereignty, collective direction, a despair amongst those who feel disenfranchised amidst the still present opportunity of freedom.
Life calls to us from beyond the bars of this self-invented prison. We can put aside some of the holiday decorations, the sentiment that as yet has no foundation, and willingly contract; refusing debt, refusing the mercantile indoctrination, disciplining ourselves toward the learned ability to know when and what is simply enough.
When our ambitions have fully contracted we may find that the contractions will lead to birth, the birth of what we truly seek during winter’s dark: real kindness, grounded generosity and the wise practice of compassion.
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