When Generosity, Love, and Kindness are Public Policy,

[bobbolink]

When Generosity, Love, and Kindness are Public Policy, the Violence We Saw in Arizona Will Dramatically Diminish

By Michael Lerner

So many people walk by the homeless, angry at them for having reminded us of the daily suffering caused by an economic system of which we are part but which we do not think we could change without spending a lot more energy than we have, and risking potentially dangerous confrontations with the rich and powerful forces that control our society. We don’t want to get involved with them, not only because doing so may open us to be vulnerable to their suffering, but also because we ourselves don’t feel that we’ve gotten the recognition we deserve for our own suffering, so “why should I spend my time involving myself with these strangers whose suffering would only add to my burden, particularly since I doubt I have the capacity to do much for them?”

Too many people imagine that we can simply turn our back on the suffering of others, or control it through a military, police, and psychiatric system when the daily barrage of media propaganda hasn’t been sufficient to keep the “dangerous others” in line. Yet we are mistaken, because the suffering of others cannot be escaped and manifests in the election of increasingly right-wing politicians, in crime, and in psychotic behavior from people who may someday enter our personal space in a violent way as did the assassin in Tucson! At your local supermarket, or on the highways, or in a movie theatre or coffee shop or in a shopping mall, or where your children go to school! It has already happened in all of these places, and it will get worse!!! Or perhaps you imagine you could just stay in your home and never leave, and thus be protected? A far more rational, though by no means easy, way to get lasting protection for yourself and your children or grandchildren is to create the Caring Society.

Creating a caring society would require a new bottom line so that every social and governmental policy, every corporation, every school and university, and even every personal behavior is judged to be rational, productive or efficient not only to the extent that it maximizes money or power, but also to the extent that it maximizes love and caring, kindness and generosity, and ethical and ecological sensitivity, as well as enhances our capacity to respond to the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement at the grandeur and mystery of all that is. Allow yourself to imagine a society based on these principles, teaching them in schools, making them the core of the message of the media, and rewarding the behavior of those who embody this New Bottom Line in their work world and/or in their personal lives. This is the Public Policy that would make a huge reduction in violence in our lives and our society!!!

Two major policy initiatives embody this approach and need your support:

1. The ESRA (Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment) to the U.S. Constitution being introduced into Congress this week on the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision. The ESRA aims not only to overturn that decision but also to eliminate all private money in national elections and replace it with public funding. It requires media to supply free and equal time for all major candidates while banning private advertising during the months before the election, and it requires large corporations to get a new corporate charter once every five years — a process that requires them to prove a satisfactory history of environmental and social responsibility to a jury of ordinary citizens using the new bottom line as their guide for assessing corporate social responsibility. The ESRA also requires teaching the values of caring for each other and for the earth at every grade level in any school receiving public funding directly or indirectly (please read it and ask your elected representatives and your city council and state legislature to endorse it — www.spiritualprogressives.org/ESRA and join our campaign to build public support).

2. The GMP (Global Marshall Plan), which would replace the strategy of domination as the way to achieve Homeland Security with a strategy of generosity. The GMP would commit the United States to dedicating 1-2 percent of our annual Gross Domestic Product each year for the next twenty to a program to eliminate domestic and global poverty, homelessness, hunger, and inadequate education and inadequate health care. The program would also seek to repair the global environment and enlist all the other advanced industrial countries in this same venture. (Please read it and ask your elected representatives and your city council and state legislature to endorse it at www.spiritualprogressives.org/GMP and join our campaign to build public support.)

http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/when-generosity-love-and-kindness-are-public-policy-the-violence-we-saw-in-arizona-will-dramatically-diminish/

Note to mods: The editors of TIKKUN want their information posted, with attribution, which I have done.

Thank you.

[Odin2005]

1. K&R

[jwirr]

2. It is the right thing to do. Hopefully that will make a difference.

[bobbolink]

3. Are you talking about the amendment as the right thing to do?

First, it will require all of us to take it seriously and put lots of effort into passing it.

Second, there are some things missing in it.... while he talks about homelessness, and the reasons why middleclass people ignore and detest homeless people, he leaves out the necessity of regulating how people who seek any form of assistance, be it governmental or "private", are most often treated very badly. This, obviously, leads to depressing/anger, and is part of the whole scenario.

Thank you for your comments.

[LiberalLoner]

4. This is beautiful. n/t

[bobbolink]

6. I hope you will let them know that at Tikkun, and sign the petition, if you feel so led.

thanks for your post.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

5. K&R

[bobbolink]

7. Thank you. It seems worthy of discussion.

I heard something on Ring Of Fire tonight about the "No Labels" thing that got me to wondering about this.

It is all very tangled.

[bobbolink]

8. kicking in honor of Martin Luther King