“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

Buckminster Fuller

The following 3 posts were authored by Rocco Jarman, commenting on the urgent need for us as individuals and as a society to transcend our current small paradigms of politics and rise beyond them.

I presented the three of them as artefacts in a latest video on my YouTube channel along with some more of my own commentary & top spin. You can find the video here – https://youtu.be/s8KzrV81ZcE

For now, enjoy the three artefacts in their original version down below.
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Artefact 1 – Polarisation

We all love to say “Question everything” but what we mean is “Only question everything else” —the stuff you don’t already believe.
If asked if there is anything that would shift your position, the answer has to be “nothing” right?
And THAT is how you know that whatever you might know is based fundamentally on fear not on reason. This is a religious position, not a reasonable one.
This is the underlying cause of polarisation from the Right.

On the Left there is a different but a precisely related underlying cause of polarisation that says: “We care for the oppressed” but what they actually mean is “Only we can be the oppressed”. If we act harshly to someone else, coerce them, dehumanise them, it’s justified because we’re the victim and everyone else deserves it because they are either the perpetrators or the oppressors. If you disagree with us you are an agent of the oppressor and we are oppressed by your lack of unquestioning support. “To question us is to oppress us.”
That is the religious position on the Left.

And that is how polarisation sustains itself and deepens.
Politics is right now a religious mania with two self-sustaining poles. The driving force is suspicion and blame. It is tribalism at the bottom. And beneath that is always Fear.
Someone is profiting from your ignorance of this.

Artefact 2 – The Triangle of Conflict

Whoever wants to keep the problem in place is served by the tension at the base. The tension at the base and the problem therefore is solved by transcending the conflict and focussing on the actual problem more than the conflict.

This is the dysfunction in relationships, expressed as troubled marriages at the level of individuals and as politics at the level of groups. This is precisely true for internal conflict and the resolution of all paradoxes: in the face of apparent contradiction, explore the transcendent perspective. It’s necessary to do so.

This is the Law of Necessity.

If you cannot imagine that a transcendent perspective exists, it means your cognitive apparatus is overtaxed. This is why people fast, meditate and “step away” from problems. We call this overtaxing and overstimulation Overwhelm. The cure for overwhelm is fresh perspective and we call that stepping away Grace.

The more you care about a problem the more it can draw you in. The more you care about finding a solution the more you will be served by a fresh perspective.

Social media amplifies the conflict and propagates relentless engagement in it.

Artefact 3 – The Real Problems

blah blah Harris, blah blah Trump. 
Them, they, us, we. 
The pain you both cause yourselves and each other is self caused from a perspective that sees us all as one people.

The more one side pulls Left the more the other side will pull right. Today it’s about this law and grievance, tomorrow it will be something else. They have their beliefs about what better looks like and you have yours and neither serve the other and so the division just continues. And neither serve the suffering whole. Politics is not and cannot be the tide that raises all boats.

Corruption is a real issue, manipulation of the economy, injustice, inequality of means, thought and language policing—all are real issues. Climate change, however distorted for one team’s benefit, is a real enough issue.

But Coherence as a society is a real issue too. All of them will ensure our destruction but one of them makes the other ones worse.

We don’t solve our biggest and most pressing problems via bickering and dehumanising each other, but in that behaviour the left and the right are the same, through and through. Argumentative, belittling, belligerent, immune to fair criticism, spiteful, petty and ultimately both more part of the problem than the solution. Your inability to notice this about yourself and the whole situation situates you as a child or an adolescent in a circumstance that requires adult pragmatism and leadership.

Next Recommended Listening – Self Improvement with Rocco Jarman