A lot has happened since I published the Revolutionary Misfit Manifesto and launched the blog some 3 years ago. Things in our country, and in the world, have deteriorated, although recently some hopeful developments have appeared.
The earth has gotten hotter. The banks have gotten bigger. The rich have gotten richer. The system has become more corrupt. The crazies have become even crazier…
People are still, by and large, putting their self-interest over their impact. They’re still primarily thinking in terms of the small us. They’re still wearing those god-awful impact blinders…two of which have become especially egregious…nationalism and religious sectarianism.
The rise of Donald Trump as the presumptive republican nominee in the 2016 presidential race is a case in point. Here we have a guy with a real chance of becoming president, i.e., the most powerful human on earth, and whose entire campaign has been waged along the lines of small us, or us against the world, thinking.
It’s scary stuff.
Trump’s most likely opponent, heir to the Clinton political dynasty, may be better, but not by that wide a mark, in my humble opinion. Hillary may take a more inclusive tone, when it serves her, but she’s enmeshed in the neoliberal mindset that believes the best way to run the country is at the behest of a small ruling class of extremely wealthy campaign donors. That as long as they get what they want, the excess of their largess will overflow to the benefit of us…regular folk.
Well, that idea hasn’t worked out all that well over the last few decades…now has it?
But, wait, hope is on the horizon. Hope in an old, well-worn, package. His name is Bernie.
Who would’ve ever thought that a 74 year-old, Jewish, self-styled “democratic socialist from Vermont, with unkempt hair and a curmudgeonly, yet grandfatherly, aura, could give the most powerful political machine in our recent political history a run for her SuperPac donated dollars?
Well, as of this writing, he’s doing just that. It’s a long shot, granted, but his emergence imparts hope.
So, what’s responsible for this “feel the Bern” phenomenon. Is it Bernie’s overpowering charisma, or unquestionable policy chops?
Not really.
Bernie has helped rouse awake a sleeping giant of youthful discontent.
Truth to be told, we’d already seen some fitful stirrings a few years back, in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse. All of a sudden people, primarily young people, began to notice that economic inequality is a real and pervasive problem in our society. And that the collapse was a symptom of that underlying disease.
And what better place to pinpoint as “ground zero” for the epidemic than Wall Street.
So a group of young people decided to make a stand against inequality right in the epicenter of inequality. Their effort was derided by the predominantly neoliberal establishment as futile and infantile…but they persisted.
However, the Occupy Wall Street movement was missing a couple of components. First, a coherent message against the evil they were protesting. In other words, it was missing a clear message of what a society with less inequality could and should look like.
Perhaps, even more importantly, they were missing a viable leader.
Well, that message and leader have emerged in the form of the 2016 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. And the millennials, the ones derided as lazy, naive and basically inept, have risen to the occasion to give this guy an actual chance at the presidency.
In light of all these events, I decided it was time for a revision of the manifesto.
I still firmly believe in the principles of Impact Mindfulness first espoused. And I am enthusiastic to find such advocates as Pope Francis and Bernie Sanders. They may not couch things in the same phraseology as you will read in these pages, but their message is similar nonetheless…
And what is that message?
First and foremost, it’s that we humans have an obligation not only to ourselves, but to one another. We’ve gone astray with the mindset of me first…the mindset of rugged individualism, the Randian mindset, the neoliberal mindset of capitalism run amok. That’s really what has gotten us into deep doodoo.
The problem with self-interest, or greed, as the prime economic motivator are the power imbalances it inevitably gives rise to. Taken to the extreme, which is where we seem to be heading these days, these imbalances ensure that some will have it all, while others will be left with relatively nothing.
In a world where abundance reigns, it just doesn’t seem logical, and certainly not sustainable, for a handful of rich people to own more of the earth’s resources than almost half the entire world population. It doesn’t seem right because it’s not right.
The millennials are beginning to take notice of this anomaly…they are taking a stand against it. And that gives me great hope for the future.
The millennials are beginning to adopt the principle of impact over self-interest and therein lies their potential to change the world.
The Donald Trumps of this world want to lead us to believe that the small us is the only one we should pay attention to. The Fox News driven ideology of “American Exceptionalism” has helped elevate Trump to his startling status as presumptive right-wing nominee.
But the truth is that the world’s a very big place. There are exceptional humans in all corners of the globe, regardless of the particular national boundaries that encapsulate them. One is not made exceptional by birthright or birthplace. One becomes exceptional by impact. And all of us humans have that innate potential.
The idea of the BIG US is to see ourselves, as Bernie often likes to say, in this thing called life together. It doesn’t matter where you live, what color of skin you have, or which god you worship. We are all part of the human race towards a more dignified life for all members of our species. Impact Mindfulness suggests that we should be about expanding those opportunities for everyone, not hoarding them for the benefit of some human subgroup.
There are still some major barriers getting in the way of our impact. Gradually they seem to be eroding, but they are putting up a grand fight in the process, kicking and screaming as they fade from consciousness.
I call those impact blinders. The two that seem to be screaming the loudest these days are nationalism and religious sectarianism.
The Trumpet calls for “America First”, banning the entry of all Muslims, building a wall along the southern border, or deporting 11 or 12 million undocumented immigrants, wreak of misguided nationalistic fervor. Horrible things have been done throughout human history in the name of nationalism. Do I need to remind you that Hitler rose to power voicing similar extreme calls towards nationalism that we’re now hearing routinely from Donald Trump.
The U.S. has made some strides eliminating religion as an insidious impact blinder. The recent Supreme Court decision that same-sex marriages be given the same legal respect as heterosexual ones is a major step in the right direction. Not surprisingly, the religiously blinded, the so-called “constitutionalists”, have declared war on such notions of freedom. Now we’re seeing state after state enacting “bathroom access laws” to make sure that a person goes to the bathroom that god intended him, or her, or whatever, to go to.
Impact blinders may be gradually falling to the way-side, but they still have potential to do quite a bit of damage before they’re done.
So, I am writing this as a revision of my manifesto, both to commend the progress of progressive millennials and to encourage and inspire them to continue on with the fight. The movement that began with Occupy Wall Street and that has found momentum with the Sanders’ campaign transcends the political.
This is not about power, it’s about what’s best for people and planet.
I hope the words on these pages encourage you to stay in the fight.
This will be the introduction to the new book: The Impact Revolution: How Millennials Can Change the World with Impact Mindfulness.
image credit: JenniferMedia via Compfight cc
