A Moral Center [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on November 4, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

I was grateful for the meme. It gave me simple language, a shorthand, for something I was wrestling to articulate: We are not having a difference of opinion. We are having a difference of morality.

I wonder that it took a meme to open my eyes. This in not about information bubbles or dueling points-of-view or fact-checked-information.

We are on the eve of an election. This election is unlike any other in our lives. The choice before us eclipses policy differences. On the ballot is democracy or not-democracy. A constitutional republic or an autocracy.

The maga-candidate sows division, darkness and grievance. He is a pathological liar. He is obsessed with retribution. He vows to use the military to silence “the enemy within”. He promises to arrest his opponents. Last week he suggested a firing squad for Liz Cheney. In a multicultural nation, a nation of immigrants, he promises mass deportations.

This is not empty rhetoric. As we’ve learned from his overthrow of Roe, he will do what he says. He has a Heritage Foundation plan called Project 2025 to dismantle our democracy. He disavowed it when public knowledge of his embrace of this extreme fascist blueprint hurt his chances for election. It is his milksop pattern: by pretending he has no knowledge he abdicates responsibility for his words and actions. It is a damning statement of his lack of character. It is a characteristic of an authoritarian narcissist.

What is also a damning statement of character is to vote for such a man. To turn a blind eye to all that he has said, all that he has done, all the lies that he has told, is a statement of our character.

Presidential historian Jon Meacham recently reminded us that within the spirit of the Constitution lives the character of our leaders – and also the character of the led. Our national character. “Out of many, one” is more than a quaint Latin phrase printed on our currency.

A character check: compare the maga-candidate’s daily mantra, “I have no knowledge” with the sign Harry S. Truman proudly displayed on the resolute desk: The buck stops here.

A vote for the maga-candidate is literally a vote to suspend the Constitution (his words). It is a vote to suspend our national character. It is a vote absent of a moral center.

We choose our leaders as a reflection of ourselves. It is why this election is unlike any other in our lives. The image the maga-candidate reflects back to us is at best repugnant. It is empty of character. It is the opposite of our nation’s identity.

If you see yourself in this man, a misogynist, xenophobe, racist, filled with rage and retribution…we are having something much more profound, much more serious than a difference of opinion.

We have a difference of morality.

Decency matters. Conduct matters. Language matters. Character matters. Principles matter. Intentions matter. Discerning the difference between right and wrong, between good and bad behavior, matters.

It’s the spirit living in our Constitution. It’s the character our leaders ought to reflect back to us because it’s the character we should demand from our leaders.

And so we vote.

Democracy or not-democracy.

Will we live and act from a moral center, striving to fulfill the promise of a more perfect union, or will we throw it away and spiral into a fascist void?

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE ELECTION OF OUR LIVES

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A Perspective Giver [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on October 24, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

I could have sat all day on the porch and stared at the sculpted landscape, the fingers of Lake Powell reaching into the canyon. My artist’s soul rejuvenates in the southwest. It excites my imagination while quieting my mind. Just as the high desert sun warms me to the core of my being, the geography invigorates the core of my artistry.

It’s been two weeks since I sat on that porch and looked with awe at the horizon and watched the colors transform from hot orange to dusty purple as the sun progressed across the sky. It was akin to looking at the ocean surf, a rolling touch of the eternal. A perspective-giver.

While sitting on the porch I pondered our nation’s inability to fully reconcile with its past. It’s impossible to drive through tribal lands and not consider the full history of our nation. It’s been much on my mind recently since it is a central theme of my latest play, Diorama.

Think about it: just this week the maga-candidate-for-president suggested he would stop funding schools that taught about slavery. Nikki Haley, while running for the Republican nomination for president, said that there’d never been racism in the United States of America.

I sometimes wonder in these divisive times if the USA is like an alcoholic that refuses to admit that it has a problem. Why so much denial? Why so many blatant lies? In fact, it’s not new. Take a gander at the Lost Cause narrative propagated throughout the south (and the nation) following the civil war, a tale of happy slaves and benevolent slave owners. You might recognize it as it has resurged as the official curriculum in the state of Florida (and other states) in 2024. Twelve generations of brutality white washed and to what end?

Of course, it is the white-washed America that the reds aspire to inhabit – and to achieve their fantasy they necessarily need to ignore the full scope of our history. There’s no responsibility in a white washed history. In cowboy brain there are only good guys and bad guys so the good guys need never question their actions or confront their shadows. It’s an infantile narrative, not only unworthy of a maturing nation, but crippling to its growth.

The fourth step in the AA twelve step program suggests that, in order to restore our sanity – in order to grow up – we must be willing to make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. We must not be afraid to admit when we are wrong or recognize when we have strayed from our ideals.

A fearless moral inventory. An honest look at our complete history, the good, the bad and everything in between. As Aldous Huxley wrote, we are in a race between education and destruction. An educated populace would never tolerate the lies of the would-be-autocrat and would easily see through the crazy revisionist history that he manufactures and spews. Perhaps that is why he vows to dismantle the Department of Education.

The question before us in November is whether or not our democracy will prevail and mature or will the white nationalist monster, in a celebration of ignorance, eat our collective freedoms and send us swirling into the immoral (and infantile) fascist nightmare outlined in Project 2025? A fearless moral inventory or the path of the Lost Cause cowards?

The choice is ours to make. The story is ours to tell.

Waiting & Knowing, 48″x48″ mixed media

read Kerri’s blog about PERSPECTIVE

http://www.kerrianddavid.com

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A Simple Equation [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on September 23, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

“…to the degree that each of us is dedicated to wanting there to be peace in the world, then we have to take responsibility when our own hearts and minds harden and close.” Pema Chödrön, Practicing Peace

Inside, I am wrestling. This political era is challenging everything I believe, everything I believe about humanity, everything I believe about myself. For instance, as someone who spent years facilitating DEI workshops, I have found the hard wall of intolerance; my intolerance.

My intolerance reduces difference to a simple equation. An example: My wife is a survivor of sexual assault. The harm inflicted on her by her rapist ravages her to this day. The maga candidate has been found liable for sexual abuse. He has been accused of sexual assault by dozens of women. For me, a vote for the maga candidate is no more or no less than a vote for a serial rapist. It’s a simple bottom line. Support of the rapist bespeaks acceptance of rape. Never mind the the incessant racism, the misogyny, the lies, the grift…

Another simple equation: A person who votes for the maga candidate is complicit.

For the first time in my life I am finding it impossible to stand in the other’s shoes. I can’t understand it and, more to the point, I am no longer willing to try. And so, the growth begins. I have found my edge.

I’m finding that there are very good reasons to be intolerant. There should be – there need to be – hard lines drawn in the sand. We have laws for a reason. We have separation of powers for a reason. There is a line between moral and immoral, between right and wrong – for a reason.

We’ve been watching past seasons of Alone. Our pals got us hooked on it and I am finding it helpful as I stand on my edge. People left alone in the wilderness quickly learn about their basic needs. They learn about themselves. Although adept survivalists, most nearly starve to death in a matter of weeks, yet it’s not the lack of food that defeats them. It’s the lack of human contact. As they move through their ordeal of aloneness, they become increasingly grateful for the people in their lives. They become humble. They weep. These rugged outdoors-types speak openly about what they fear. When stripped down to the basics, they meet themselves as if for the first time.

They become effusive in their gratitude because they become clear about what matters and what does not.

I feel that I am – we are- learning about ourselves as a nation. We are certainly in the process of being stripped down. The basics of our beliefs – beyond the rhetoric – are being excavated and revealed. And, as I discover the inflexibility of my intolerance, clear about what matters, I am also plumbing the depths of a deeper well of gratitude.

It is not an exaggeration to say that I am thankful for people who ask questions en route to the truth – people who desire to be informed beyond their own comfortable belief. I am thankful for courageous people who can no longer stomach the rot – who place country over personal gain. I am thankful for people who honor and fight to hold the line of decency and democracy.

I am grateful for meeting my intolerance.

I am grateful for people who still think sexual assault is a crime and anyone who sexually assaults should be imprisoned rather than rewarded with the highest office in our land. A bottom line. A line drawn in the sand. A simple equation.

read Kerri’s blogpost about GRATITUDE

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Easy To See [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab.]

Posted on September 14, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

We crossed paths with some friends on the bike path and, of course, our conversation turned to politics. Our discussion – like all of our political conversations lately – begin and end with disbelief.

The maga candidate is a horror-story of a human being, a consummate liar, a dedicated victim, found liable for rape, a convicted felon, an authoritarian who openly intends to dismantle our constitution, promoting dangerous conspiracy theories, sowing division for personal gain while feeding the anger of people who deserve to have their issues addressed and not exploited by their candidate.

In every conversation we ask again and again,”What do they not see?”

As Kerri reminded me, “They DO see it.”

That troubles me.

In the very first full paragraph of my book, I wrote, “Not many people see. Most people merely look. Just as most people hear but they do not listen, most people look but they do not see.” Words that haunt.

Angry people do not see. They can’t. Angry people do not think. They can’t. They can only blindly react. This maga candidate and his fox-news-propaganda-machine keep his crowd angry, fear-full, firmly distracted, ensconced in lizard brain. Fight-or-flight. He profits. They lose.

They do not see – they could not see – or they’d gag, turn their backs, and walk away. Or maybe, as Kerri suggests, they DO see. And white nationalism, violence borne of age-old-ignorance is what they want. It is, apparently, what they support.

This meme floated across my screen the other day. “I can’t respect people who respect him.” There are no more better angels in my nature. I can no longer twist my brain to try and understand the enablers of this monster. His lies are hurting people. Witness what is now happening in Springfield, Ohio. There is no mystery here. This is thuggery.

This red-hat-rage is mob mentality. His enablers, voiding their judgment, their morality, their values, are bonded by fear and whipped into a fury by a narcissist who fuels their nightmare with fantasy and then feeds on their panic.

Any attempt at finding something to respect in their hate-filled-point-of-view is to pretend that it has validity. It is to become one of the enablers of this train wreck.

They will (I hope) wake up someday, blurry-eyed and confused, and like all people who stormed all night, out of their minds with the mob, they will ask themselves, “What have I done?” Then they might begin the long journey back to self-respect.

In the meantime, there is no reasoning with a mob.

The best we can do is vote. And, this time, more than issues and policies, we choose between our democracy and fascism. We choose between decency and…gross indecency. This is not about the price of eggs. The choice is abundantly clear and, when in one’s right-mind, it’s actually very easy to see.

read Kerri’s blogpost about SEEING

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Simply Say, “Enough.” [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on September 2, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

She snapped. I watched it happen, the moment when there was no more room for tolerance, no more space for grace. Had she spoken she simply would have said, “Enough”.

You can’t make up this stuff.

A hot mic on the Access Hollywood bus should have ended it.

Being found liable for sexual assault (rape) by a jury of his peers should have ended it.

Being accused of sexual assault and misconduct by 25 women should have ended it.

His recent repost of repugnant tweets about Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris should end it. But it won’t. As a survivor of sexual abuse she’d had enough. She snapped.

Misogyny in the United States is not only alive and well, it is being celebrated by at least half of the voting population. The man-who-would-be-king has no bottom to his baseness. How is it possible that so many are so willing to follow him into the pigswill? How is it possible that this miscreant* is the person the red hats have chosen to emulate, to support, to uphold as an example for their children, as the standard bearer to lead them into the future?

In a recent interview James Carville warned that this miscreant “under-polls” meaning that the people who support him are ashamed to admit that they support him and his reprehensible views. So they hide their support. They mask their truth. I suppose being so ashamed of your beliefs that you lie to conceal them implies at least some small shred of self-awareness. A gutted morality. Or perhaps it is plain cowardice.

Misogyny: the hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls. It is a form of sexism that can keep women at a lower social status than men, thus maintaining the social roles of patriarchy.

Running a campaign on hatred. Contempt. Amplifying prejudice and sexism. In other words, the miscreant and his hate-party are empty of vision and ethics. This paucity of heart and thought leaves them with no recourse but to demean others – as it seems their single goal is to maintain at-all-cost the rusty social roles of a collapsing patriarchy.

Strumming the strings of those who fear equality, whipping up a crowd terrified that they will come up short on an even playing field.

This is what I wanted to tell her when she snapped: drowning men push all others underwater to elevate themselves.

Those who support the miscreant, like the miscreant himself, are drowning. It’s easy to see: working to restrict voters, gerrymandering maps, desperate to change voter laws and procedures so they can tilt the outcome in their favor no matter the result of the election. The miscreant has proclaimed that, once in office, he will “fix things” so we need never vote again. It’s the statement of a sad little man and his party swallowing water, afraid to compete, afraid to say, “This is what we believe.” (see Project 2025 and the lengths they now go to disavow it). It betrays a fundamental disregard – and disdain – for the system they proclaim to protect. If they truly believed in our system of governance, if they truly believed in the values they purport to conserve, they’d not fear an even playing field. They’d defend it. They’d welcome it. They’d arrive at the table with a fierce dedication to protect the right of all citizens to freely vote. They would not tolerate so crude and base a man as their leader.

If his party will not hold him accountable or at least condemn him, if the law -as it seems – is incapable of holding him accountable, then the voters must. We need to end it.

Never mind the impeachments, the felony convictions, the dozens of indictments awaiting trial, the evidence-free claims and incessant whining of an election he lost, the violent attempt to stop the transfer of power…with the once-stiff spine of the republican party now a swampy puddle on the floor, it’s time for this nation to snap and say “Enough.”

His repulsive rhetoric is not locker room talk. His party’s “boys will be boys” excuse needs once-and-for-all to be swept into the dustbin of history with the miscreant and his privileged-hate-speak.

There is no excuse for misogyny. It’s way past time for the old boys to man up and learn to play on an even and equal playing field. American woman are not stupid. And that’s exactly what the old boys are afraid of.

*miscreant (noun): a person who behaves badly or in a way that breaks the law.

read Kerri’s blogpost about MISOGYNY

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Find The Deeper Impulse [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on May 12, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

stop sign quarter copy

See a penny, pick it up. All that day you’ll have good luck. 

I saw a penny in the parking lot of the UPS store and, wanting to have a full day of good luck, I swooped down and picked it up. Kerri, horrified, said, “What are you thinking? Put that down!” I was marched back to the truck and slathered myself with hand sanitizer.

My penny swoop debacle in the parking lot of the UPS store is how I mark the beginning of the pandemic. It was the first time that the danger of a simple action, touching what someone else had touched, penetrated. The penny dropped [sorry – I couldn’t help myself]. It was early in this experience called pandemic, before masks, before social distancing. Wash your hands. Don’t touch your face. And, above all, leave the good luck penny on the pavement.

And it seems like years since I touched that penny.

My penny swoop was an impulse. Kerri asked me what I was thinking but I wasn’t thinking. I was riding on the instinct train. The child-rhyme ignited my luck desire and I went in for the grab. And, isn’t that the real hardship of this pandemic? Quashing the impulse to hug your friends, to walk toward your neighbor to say hello, to let the kids play together, to stop in the store and chat with acquaintances? 20 stands outside  his mother’s assisted living apartment; she stands on the balcony and they shout to each other. Each day I watch Kerri override the deep-mother-instinct to run and find her children, all-grown-up-and-moved-away.

It’s unnatural, this veto of instinct. And, it is what makes us human. It is natural to run from danger and yet doctors and nurses everyday walk into hospitals during this pandemic. They walk into exposure. First responders, police and fire people, everyday put the public safety above their own. It is what lifts us into our humanity; placing the needs of others above our own. It is what we celebrate, what we admire. What we claim as our highest ideal. People giving of themselves for the benefit of others.

We call that sacrifice. We call it service. We call it sacred. We  call it grace and generosity. We go to houses of worship and proclaim it. We make movies about it. Frodo must destroy the ring of power for the benefit of all. Otherwise, he twists in his selfish personal power lust and becomes like Gollum. This tale is universal for a reason.

And, I suspect that I am wrong. The survival instinct has a deeper nature. Soldiers talk about it just as first responders do: in the moment of real danger there is not a question about throwing themselves on top of their companion, sacrificing self to save the other. It, too, is an impulse. A purer survival instinct. It is not an override.  It is, when all else is stripped away, what we are.

“Compassion is the basis of morality.” ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

 

read Kerri’s blog post about PICKING UP SPARE CHANGE

 

 

neighborhood cheers website box copy

 

ComfortNow Framed copy

 

 

Filed under: Awakening, Perspective, The Direction of Intention, Two Artists Tuesday, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Consider Your Neighbor

Posted on July 25, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

503. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

At the beginning of class, Saul-the-chi-lantern asked a couple to speak of their recent experiences studying with the master. They’d just returned from a trip to New York. The woman (I can’t remember her name) said, “There was a quote that really struck me: What good is your chi if it does not consider your neighbor.” Given yesterday’s post, I smiled. Interconnectivity seems to be the theme this week.

Last night I watched a potent and unsettling interview Bill Moyers conducted with journalist and activist Chris Hedges. Hedges has written a new book, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, about the impact of capitalism on the world. He roots his examination in 4 devastated and exhausted communities in the United States; places where the poverty is shocking and the system is wittingly or unwittingly maintaining the cycle. There is a cost in lives of our consumer economy that we shield ourselves from seeing – even within our borders. There is also an ecological cost that we pretend is not our doing.

Chris Hedges used a term, “moral fragmentation” to describe us, a society that has thoroughly confused money with morality, whose value set has eroded and been replaced with, as he named it, “Wall Street values.” He said of the financial players, they know the impact of what they do and think that being a good father is enough or absolves them (us) of their actions. This is what Joseph Campbell meant when he said, “Our mythology is dead.” In the absence of a cohesive narrative, a greater story, we eat each other; we justify the virtues of the 1% at the expense of the 99%. “We’re good people. We are justified. Our way is the right way.”

As within, so without; and the reverse I also true. When we forget that we are a community, we cannot participate as a global community; the motives are consumptive, the collapse is internal and inevitable. To off shore the jobs and expect economic recovery is madness. To put corporate wealth ahead of societal good is suicide. A society driven by bottom line motives is already bankrupt; it is only a matter of time before the exterior of the social body shows the internal rot. It is a cancer.

It is no small sentiment – and there was a good reason the quote stayed with my classmate: “What good is your chi if it does not consider your neighbor.”

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