Post by Magnet Man on Sept 10, 2006 15:27:48 GMT -5
Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.
The cause of America is, in a great measure, the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all lovers of mankind are affected, and in the event of which, their affections are interested.
-Thomas Paine
Philadelphia, Feb. 14th, 1776.
American World Leadership
The reason why America is an international pariah
Plans for a mass change of American consciousness
and the mindset required for World leadership
The Redundant American Dream
The American Dream, which has served to draw millions from around the world to our shores, has fallen into general international disrepute. The ostentatious nature of the wealth amassed by one nation over the past three centuries, and the seemingly vulgar appearance of a nationalistic ideal that encourages each of its citizens to aspire after millions, despite the obvious signs of environmental distress, while billions suffer from hunger, war and disease in the Third World, is viewed by the rest of the world with an unhealthy mix of envy and distaste. Our materialistic lack of self-restraint has poisoned the minds and hearts of thousands of idealistic young people in the Middle East who are committing desperate acts of suicide in an effort to halt the tide of America’s expanding global influence.
Universal condemnation of a once laudable ideal raises questions of how the American Dream differs from that of other nations and what its significance has been in the larger field of global development. A short investigation into an obscure point in America’s developmental history might bring to light an interpretation of the Dream that has not perhaps been fully evaluated.
The Influence of Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine’s denouement of the divine nature of royal appointment was a crucial aspect of his pamphlet on Common Sense. It helped to break the Iron Age spell of superstitious loyalty to the crown (which had originally evolved during the Bronze Age of totemic worship and ancestral reverence) and galvanize the colonists into war.
Not enough emphasis has been placed on the positive/negative dynamic of how that radical break from class-conscious thinking initiated, in itself, the mass change of the common man’s mind-set that has so radically altered the course of mankind’s cultural development.
The Positive Dynamic
With equal rights to accumulate kingly wealth decreed to be the entitlement of every man, Paine was directly instrumental in inspiring an entire nation of commoners to let go of their former social taboos, which had made it culturally unseemly for the common man to aspire to the power and privilege of the nobility – to go ahead and dream the dream of kings and unrestricted wealth – without an inhibiting sense of disloyalty to one’s birth rite. This surge towards a new level of mass consciousness set millions of Americans on the road to become the world’s economic super-power.
The Negative Dynamic
Unfortunately, exposed only to the negative aspects of the nobility, Paine left out a vital leavening ingredient in his socio-economic equation. Never directly aware of the finer cultural points of sophisticated self-restraint, together with and sense of compassionate respect for the hard life of the under-class, which defines the essential spirituality and evolutionary purpose of creating a noble class of leadership, which is designed to set a standard of the finer aspirations of life, in his denouement of the King and the House of Lords, Paine cut the umbilical chord of America’s direct connection to its cultivated lineage of noble example.
The International Result
Consequently, in the great rush towards prosperity that Americans have enjoyed, which has created over the past two centuries some three million super rich families, and some twenty million more who are very rich, and who all may be as wealthy as any king ever was, they are for the most part, devoid of a cultivated sense of nobility and the larger social responsibilities such privilege status entails.. Thus an essential in-bred sense of self-restraint and cultural influence that vast wealth and social status is supposed to exercise over the nation, is not a significant factor in governing the commercial behavior of the American psyche or in its political expression.
It is this brash rudeness that the more cultivated Old World is sensitive towards and which undermines its admiration for the power we have developed.
And so the unrefined rough and tumble wealthy young nation of America finds itself today in much the same place as young European nations once did. It is dominated by rudely ambitious baronial Corporations, each fiercely defending its territory against rival takeover wars, with their eyes on international (imperial) expansion at any expense. The commoners who work the mass production lines have to pay through the nose to rent or buy tiny plots of God’s Earth just to build a house and raise a family. As the inevitable gap between the 6% rich and the 94% poor widens, the working man has to deal with tax collectors, corrupted politicians and zealous religious ministers, while supporting a vast, heavily-policed, government bureaucracy and is left wondering and puzzled why he is viewed as an international pariah.
American World Leadership
For good or bad, America is the acknowledged super-power on the planet. It is in the position of supreme dictator. In order to initiate a global concert of efficient planet management, the world desperately needs strong and focused leadership. The congregation of all the cultures of the world in America, is an evolutionary rite of world leadership.
Nobility is in deed - not in title.
What America needs now, in order for such a dictatorship to be benevolent and all-inclusive, is to inculcate a noble outlook in its next generation of young people and educate them to see not just America, but the whole globe as a single estate under the stewardship of the entire human family..
The New American Consciousness
In this new atmosphere, is it common sense to suggest that America is ready for a refinement of its National Dream? Is it ready for a new revolution? Is ready to break its atavistic hold on a redundant Constitution? Is it ready to disband the petty partisanship of an ineffectual Congress? Is America ready to set higher standards for the selection of an equal gender Senate. Is it ready to dismantle an out-dated education system? Is it ready to refocus its short sighted, short-term corporate business practices? Is America ready to initiate a whole new consciousness of the collective Self and learn the business of planet management?
In the coming days, weeks and months, this communication will attempt to give some idea of what ideals and practicalities the new dream should be focused on.
The cause of America is, in a great measure, the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all lovers of mankind are affected, and in the event of which, their affections are interested.
-Thomas Paine
Philadelphia, Feb. 14th, 1776.
American World Leadership
The reason why America is an international pariah
Plans for a mass change of American consciousness
and the mindset required for World leadership
The Redundant American Dream
The American Dream, which has served to draw millions from around the world to our shores, has fallen into general international disrepute. The ostentatious nature of the wealth amassed by one nation over the past three centuries, and the seemingly vulgar appearance of a nationalistic ideal that encourages each of its citizens to aspire after millions, despite the obvious signs of environmental distress, while billions suffer from hunger, war and disease in the Third World, is viewed by the rest of the world with an unhealthy mix of envy and distaste. Our materialistic lack of self-restraint has poisoned the minds and hearts of thousands of idealistic young people in the Middle East who are committing desperate acts of suicide in an effort to halt the tide of America’s expanding global influence.
Universal condemnation of a once laudable ideal raises questions of how the American Dream differs from that of other nations and what its significance has been in the larger field of global development. A short investigation into an obscure point in America’s developmental history might bring to light an interpretation of the Dream that has not perhaps been fully evaluated.
The Influence of Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine’s denouement of the divine nature of royal appointment was a crucial aspect of his pamphlet on Common Sense. It helped to break the Iron Age spell of superstitious loyalty to the crown (which had originally evolved during the Bronze Age of totemic worship and ancestral reverence) and galvanize the colonists into war.
Not enough emphasis has been placed on the positive/negative dynamic of how that radical break from class-conscious thinking initiated, in itself, the mass change of the common man’s mind-set that has so radically altered the course of mankind’s cultural development.
The Positive Dynamic
With equal rights to accumulate kingly wealth decreed to be the entitlement of every man, Paine was directly instrumental in inspiring an entire nation of commoners to let go of their former social taboos, which had made it culturally unseemly for the common man to aspire to the power and privilege of the nobility – to go ahead and dream the dream of kings and unrestricted wealth – without an inhibiting sense of disloyalty to one’s birth rite. This surge towards a new level of mass consciousness set millions of Americans on the road to become the world’s economic super-power.
The Negative Dynamic
Unfortunately, exposed only to the negative aspects of the nobility, Paine left out a vital leavening ingredient in his socio-economic equation. Never directly aware of the finer cultural points of sophisticated self-restraint, together with and sense of compassionate respect for the hard life of the under-class, which defines the essential spirituality and evolutionary purpose of creating a noble class of leadership, which is designed to set a standard of the finer aspirations of life, in his denouement of the King and the House of Lords, Paine cut the umbilical chord of America’s direct connection to its cultivated lineage of noble example.
The International Result
Consequently, in the great rush towards prosperity that Americans have enjoyed, which has created over the past two centuries some three million super rich families, and some twenty million more who are very rich, and who all may be as wealthy as any king ever was, they are for the most part, devoid of a cultivated sense of nobility and the larger social responsibilities such privilege status entails.. Thus an essential in-bred sense of self-restraint and cultural influence that vast wealth and social status is supposed to exercise over the nation, is not a significant factor in governing the commercial behavior of the American psyche or in its political expression.
It is this brash rudeness that the more cultivated Old World is sensitive towards and which undermines its admiration for the power we have developed.
And so the unrefined rough and tumble wealthy young nation of America finds itself today in much the same place as young European nations once did. It is dominated by rudely ambitious baronial Corporations, each fiercely defending its territory against rival takeover wars, with their eyes on international (imperial) expansion at any expense. The commoners who work the mass production lines have to pay through the nose to rent or buy tiny plots of God’s Earth just to build a house and raise a family. As the inevitable gap between the 6% rich and the 94% poor widens, the working man has to deal with tax collectors, corrupted politicians and zealous religious ministers, while supporting a vast, heavily-policed, government bureaucracy and is left wondering and puzzled why he is viewed as an international pariah.
American World Leadership
For good or bad, America is the acknowledged super-power on the planet. It is in the position of supreme dictator. In order to initiate a global concert of efficient planet management, the world desperately needs strong and focused leadership. The congregation of all the cultures of the world in America, is an evolutionary rite of world leadership.
Nobility is in deed - not in title.
What America needs now, in order for such a dictatorship to be benevolent and all-inclusive, is to inculcate a noble outlook in its next generation of young people and educate them to see not just America, but the whole globe as a single estate under the stewardship of the entire human family..
The New American Consciousness
In this new atmosphere, is it common sense to suggest that America is ready for a refinement of its National Dream? Is it ready for a new revolution? Is ready to break its atavistic hold on a redundant Constitution? Is it ready to disband the petty partisanship of an ineffectual Congress? Is America ready to set higher standards for the selection of an equal gender Senate. Is it ready to dismantle an out-dated education system? Is it ready to refocus its short sighted, short-term corporate business practices? Is America ready to initiate a whole new consciousness of the collective Self and learn the business of planet management?
In the coming days, weeks and months, this communication will attempt to give some idea of what ideals and practicalities the new dream should be focused on.