I received the Official 2015 Member Survey from MoveOn.org yesterday, and it began with the question, "What hopes and dreams do you have for our country in 2015?". I thought for a moment about specific issues, such as getting the money out of politics (my number one political priority for many, many years), or gun control (my biggest hot-button issue). Yes, I know "gun safety" is easier to spin, but to me gun "safety" is about being trained to use it properly and storing it in a locked box. What we need is gun control, or more to the point, gun removal. But I digress.
So, survey question. Hopes, dreams, 2015. Well, any progress on either of those issues seems a bit of a moon shot at best. Given our current political climate what seems more doable? Tax reform? Not likely. Pro-choice progress? Wow, seriously? It's then that I'm reminded that sometimes you have to stop focusing on the tree and look at the whole forest. Without a significant shift in context--a transformation, if you will--our progress will always be glacially incremental at best. And if your response is to say, "Aha! What about the recent, virtual sublimation (the kind that goes from solid to gas, bypassing the liquid phase) of the definition of marriage?", to that I will say, "Exceptions prove the rule".
Some of the most valuable lessons I've learned have come from studying and analyzing nature. What naturally occurs in the world of, well, nature? How does life that does not rely on thoughts, feelings, emotions, or psychology function? Here's what I see.
Nature is constantly moving forward. Life is always evolving...forward. Never backward. Once our deepest ancestors crawled out of the ocean onto dry land they never went back. Except for summer holidays and spring break. Once modern humans evolved to stand upright we never reverted to the stooped posture of our forebears. Nature, as far as I can see, never repeats itself. It never says, "Gee, this experiment didn't work so well, let's go back to the way it used to be". It either kills off the failed experiment, or allows it to progress to the next one. But it never paves the same real estate twice. Life is unequivocally committed to improving itself in it's relentless march forward. At least, that's my liberal arts-educated, layman's view of things.
Which brings me back to the survey. So...what are my hopes and dreams for my country in 2015?
That something will happen to affect a greater awakening to the universal constant that all life continues to evolve. All life constantly moves forward. Regression is just not part of the design of life. And human beings are not exempt from this onward march, and that includes our collective social consciousness, which has relentlessly progressed throughout our entire history. Progressive values always win out...eventually. And no amount of denial, or kicking and screaming to hold the line and stay where we are, much less go back to a previous point in our social evolution, will prevent our evolving to our next stage of social being-ness. It's simply, as the saying goes, a fact of life.
So, as I am often fond of saying, "It's always better to ride the horse in the direction it's going".
