This week we begin reading the book of Vayikra, which is so different from Shemot that one almost feels a need to undergo an entire conceptual transformation. Now we shift from discussing themes of narrative and liberation, matters which speak to us directly, to dealing with concepts relating to “holiness”, a term which needs to be so radically redefined in our time that it almost has no meaning (a history of meanings of the term holiness in Jewish thought will be attempted for Perashat Kedoshim). My initial temptation was to become a play the phenomenologist, to compare our conceptions of sacrifice with those of other cultures, the use of language in Indian ritual, etc, but I was wary of the danger of explaining “away”, that is, trying to give a good “excuse” for all this talk of korbanot, sacrifices. Rather than attempting to justify practices out of practice for two thousand years, and keeping in mind the suggestions of R. Kook that we may never sacrifice animals again, I was more challenged to try to find some readings that might make these texts meaningful to us, today, in our lifeworlds. I will further admit that generally I read the Hassidic texts first and let them bring about associations; but on this theme I have been so moved by the writings of Georges Bataille that I went looking for commentators who would allow me to introduce his approach, and I’m glad to say that this year I have found one.

The Mei HaShiloach asks the definitive question regarding sacrifice quite directly. How can it be that if a person sins, he or she gets absolved from the sin by killing an animal? In truth, he explains, the critical issue is remorse and prayer, of course. However, there is an important component to sin that is addressed by sacrifice. People mistakenly assume that sin is a personal matter, but in fact, all of existence is interwoven in a spiritual continuum. Thus, in the initial state, the “Edenic” one, both humanity and the animal worlds were at a higher spiritual level and thus eating of animals was prohibited. Man’s responsibility for non human existence was one of care. Killing for food was only permitted after Noah and a truly fallen state of the world produced a situation where the only way Gd could assure responsibility on the part of man for the animal world was by allowing man to look at animals as food. This way, at least humanity and all the rest of existence could be mutually related through ingestion, so to speak. Rav Kook explains our need to eat in this manner as well, in Orot Hakodesh pages 292-3. At any rate, the animal as sacrifice, is a sign of our failure to keep up our end in this mutual interrelatedness of humankind and nature. Concurrently, however, it bears within it a message of the capacity for spiritual elevation, for we are reminded that these animals, when “consumed” in holiness, rise up to the levels symbolized by the animal faces represented in the Vision of the Chariot seen by Yechezkel. The elevation of the mundane animal to supernal spheres reminds us of our own ability to raise ourselves, and the universe, to the point that “even that which was originally thought of as a sin could be raised up to Gd”.

From the Mei Hashiloach, I would like to turn to an earlier master, the Radomsker. His text, Tiferet Shelomo, has made its way more and more to the center of my references; I don’t know why the sefer is not more well known, though I hope I am contributing something to a re-evaluation. He was known as a great scholar and initially was expected to follow in the more intellectual wing of Hassidut associated with the Pesischer, but chose the more socially minded path of the Lubliner and R. Meir’l of Apt. Both of these sides are reflected in his work known as Tiferet Shelomo. On the subject of the sacrifices, he has several interesting teachings. One that I will mention briefly, suggests that the core lesson is related to the transformative nature of speech. The only difference between any old animal and a holy sacrifice at the Bet Hamikdash is that someone said “this animal will be a sacrifice”. This transformative power is in the hands of every person, thus the bringing of a korban “michem“, from within you, as verse 1:2 would be read, means literally from within you, as speech. That alone could prompt a full essay, but I am after a theme found in another teaching of his.

In his longest piece on korbanot, sacrifices, the Tiferet Shelomo begins by asking our question in another formulation. Why would the prophets, who have so many social concerns and other spiritual questions, single out the sacrifices so frequently? Of all the mitzvot, commandments,  they might have addressed, why this one?

Before presenting the Tiferet Shelomo’s answer, a review of Bataille’s “Theory of Religion”, which deals with the issue of sacrifices is appropriate. (Aside from the relevance of his material, it seems right to bring him into the “library”, over, say Heidegger, in that as opposed to many other contemporary thinkers we frequently cite, Battaille was an active fighter in the Resistance). Battaile had previously introduced the concept of the “heterogeneous”, which is nicely summarized by Habermas as including

“all the elements that resist assimilation to the bourgeois form of life and to the routines of everyday life…the realm of the heterogeneous is opened up only in explosive moments of fascinated shock, when those categories fall apart that guarantee in everyday life the confident interaction of the subject with himself and with the world (Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, pp. 212).

In other words, humanity has become accustomed to objectifying everything around oneself, treating everything that is not-self as a tool, a means to our own ends, judging it on grounds of usefulness, transforming everything into commodities, without taking into account the uniqueness and presence of the Other. This general way of thinking, explains Battaille, is usually challenged by experiences with death; one realizes that the rupture introduced in life by the loss of a loved one is not the same as losing a “spouse”, for example. So:

The power that death generally has illuminates the meaning of sacrifice, which functions like death in that it restores a lost value through a relinquishment of that value…what is important is to leave a world of real things, whose reality derives from a long term operation and never resides in the moment…sacrifice is the antithesis of production, which is accomplished with a view to the future; it is consumption that is concerned only with the moment…in sacrifice the offering is rescued from all utility…

In a sense, according to Bataille, what is critical about sacrifice is that it is the taking of an “object” which has value to us, (he points out that in no culture is a luxury item used for sacrifice), and it is wasted. We longer use it for a purpose, as an instrument, but by wasting it is transformed into a singular unique existence of its own.

The Tiferet Shelomo explains that the uniqueness of sacrifice to the Prophets, and the reason they often chose it as a target for critique, is that sacrifice is intended to be entirely an act of giving, one in which the only sense of it is in its total surrender; all other mitzvot have some kind of “surplus value”, a practical meaning or some kind of usefull end. However, in sacrifice, no thoughts other than that “this sacrifice is an act of sacrifice for Gd” are meaningful, so that one can understand Isaiah’s argument, that why would Gd even want a sacrifice if it had false meanings attached (ie material gain, societal standing, etc). In fact, the only instances in Jewish law where thoughts alone make the activity “un-kosher” are related to the sacrifices, being the prohibitions of pigul and notar (where the mere intention to eat the sacrifices outside of the mandated time is enough to invalidate them).

Thus he reads verse 1:2 as “in order to sacrifice, you must come close with that which is (learned) from the animal” – that is, just as the animal becomes elevated,  becomes a ‘sacrifice’, without any intention or thought of gain on the part of either the animal or the one bringing the sacrifice, that is the way we must come before Gd at all times (particularly with regards to prayer). The animal is not conscious of gain or utility in becoming sacred. Our relation to Gd must also be in this manner, not a relation of utility but of total immediacy, and not one relating to any sort of future gain, but from a position of self-overcoming. This is why sacrifice has been linked to prayer. Prayer is meant to represent the same moment of transcendence, of approaching the sacred from the same place of self transcendence. The Tiferet Shelomo goes one step further, stating that this moment of self-overcoming is critical for our experience of Shabbat as well- he ends this teaching with the suggestion that the last Hebrew words of this perasha, “l’ashma ba” form an acrostic for the words “l‘kel asher shavat mikol ha’maasim beyom hashivi’i” (for Gd who rested from all his activity on the seventh day), linking this reading of the meaning of sacrifice to the experience of Shabbat as well. A Shabbat of presence, of self transcendence, of the yearning for unmediated relationship with Gd, is achieved with the renunciation of “utility” leading to an immersion in the significance of the moment.

In summary, then, from this perspective the central teaching of the korbanot rite is that we must learn to not relate to our world in an exploitative manner, in which everything around us exists purely there for our manipulative consumption and selfish enjoyment. We begin by transforming our relationship to Gd into one of the “de-utilitised” , which we call the “holy”. To use an example from Melanie Klein, we learn not to look to Gd as the “good breast”, solely as the extension of our desires, with whom we are angry when we are hungry (becoming the “bad breast”). When we are infants, at an important point we begin to note that the mother is a separate individual who has her own needs and thus we learn that we too are separate individuated beings; that our needs are within us and the world is a much more complicated place than we imagined, where there are many individuals with many needs. This, in Kleinian child psychology, is an important step in individuation and in healthy relations with the parent. This process is reiterated somewhat in the korbanot as we have interpreted them here. We learn to separate the holy from our exploitative purposes. We learn to communicate in such a manner by transforming our prayers in the same manner. Time becomes holy when we learn to live our Shabbat this way. Once we are “trained” in recognising sacred otherness in our spiritual lives, we have the capacity to recognize that every person has their own unique set of needs and drives, their needs are not our needs, and we find ourselves living properly in community. (A thought just hit me – Perhaps this is what is meant when Avraham is congratulated for not holding back his son from Gd at the Akedah – that Avraham reached the point where he truly allowed another living being to individuate). Thus the true moment of atonement comes when one realizes that the world is not only narcissistically absorbed in one’s own sins, etc, but rather, when one realizes that we are part of a whole community of life, each with their own specific needs and desires, where the truest atonement is the recognition of the Other’s existence and autonomy. World events prove that this lesson is far from being actualized.

Dear reader – as you look this over keep in mind that politically I’m so far to the left I fall off the planet every once in a while. Socialist, feminist, rabid environmentalist – all that sort of thing. But in thinking about the recent flap at NPR, I’m really hoping we can do better than the usual knee-jerks on all sides.

In case you missed it, some right-wing activists posing as potential donors got NPR’s leading fundraiser into a conversation about the Tea Party movement. With a hidden camera rolling along, the fundraiser said all sort of nasty things about them: gun carrying racists, xenophobes, and so forth. With NPR’s federal support under attack from Republicans, the footage has proved to be just the fodder they want to push first the House, and now the Senate, to end funding.

For the last six months we have been designing and constructing a new website for Tikkun magazine and it went live late on Saturday night. Do check it out here and through the “Tikkun Main Site” link above.

In his Welcome to Our New Website Michael Lerner writes:

Tikkun magazine is a voice for all who seek to build what we call the “Caring Society – caring for each other, caring for the earth.” We are a voice for all who refuse to accept that environmental destruction, wars, poverty, oppression, racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, hatred or fear of Jews, or despair are inevitable. We are the voice of those who refuse to be “realistic” and who instead are engaged in the struggle (a long-term struggle to be sure) to build a world of love and kindness; generosity; compassion; repentance and forgiveness; ethical and ecological sensitivity and responsibility; and awe, wonder, and radical amazement at the grandeur and mystery of the universe.

The print magazine is continuing to exist as a shorter quarterly publication, but the web is where we will now be publishing the majority of our content.

El Général

Here’s another story about a individuals who made a difference in generating the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. The article starts with an anecdote about our own Mark LeVine, Tikkun‘s longest serving contributing editor and author of Heavy Metal Islam, in Tahrir Square saying to a friend “This is really metal!” Then it gets to Hamada Ben Amor – better known as “El Général” – a 21 year old rapper in Tunisia, a fan of Tupac Shakur, whose Arabic raps against the dictator led to his arrest by the regime.

Eventually, thanks to a storm of public protest, El Général was released and returned to Sfax in triumph. Even the cops were now treating him as a celebrity. “People were proud of me,” he says cheerfully. “I took a risk, with life, with my family. But I was never scared, because I was talking about reality.”

El Général’s rap broke the spell of fear and showed his peers that it was possible to rebel and survive. Rap’s power is its simplicity. “People can just record songs in their living room,” says the Narcicyst, an Iraqi-born rapper living in Toronto, who got together with other MCs from the Arabic rap diaspora, such as Omar Offendum, and released a tribute track called “#Jan25 Egypt”, which has become a huge viral hit. “It’s something that can be easily done in the middle of a revolution.”

More here and here.

What is spiritual fulfillment? What is reaching the heights of spiritual development? Or, to use the classic term — what is enlightenment?

Classical Buddhist sources describe it as a state of mind in which we no longer think: “I am this, this is mine, this is my self.” Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra defines it as the ability to control, and cease, the modifications of the mind. More emotionally oriented traditions offer images of total oneness with the universe, complete submission to God, or a limitless capacity for love and compassion.

Usually enlightenment is understood as a total state of being — something so completely present that the nagging demands of ego (greed, jealousy, envy, ambition, fear, resentment — that sort of thing) simply evaporate in the face of the Ultimate Truth. We are, at last, at peace, at one with the One, freed from sin, ignorance, and Really Bad Habits.

Here is another way, a very different way, to understand it.

Apart from academic specialists, business and government personnel with experience in the Middle East, and U.S. residents who have emigrated to the U.S. from the area, Americans are poorly informed about the Middle East, although Tikkun readers are probably much better informed about the Israel/Palestine issue than the average person thanks to Michael Lerner’s efforts to educate us over the years.

But ignorance about the Arab world is great, and so it is not surprising that a deep understanding of the causes of the recent revolt has not emerged from contributions to Tikkun Daily on the topic in recent days. To begin to address that gap, I call to your attention an article by Ali Kadri, “A Period of Revolutionary Fervor”, that appeared February 24, in The Bullet, the E-Bulletin of Socialist Project in Canada. Kadri is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics; he formerly served as an economic analyst for the UN regional office in Beirut. I limit myself to partial summaries, representative quotations, and a few comments of my own based mostly on recent studies of global political economy.

Two Phases of Egyptian History
“Egypt’s recent [i.e., post-1953] economic and social history could be split in two phases. A golden phase of high equitable growth, which ended in the mid seventies [this phase was associated with Nasser's nationalist regime - JG], and a leaden period of lower inequitable growth – it was lower but still high growth relative to other developing countries… “

“Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be….”
Ophelia (Scene 5, Act 4Hamlet)

I was sitting a few feet behind a friend last Friday, as the man at the other end of the room sentenced him to life plus five years.

I can’t say it came as a surprise, though the whole story still seemed unbelievable to me. His Honour had just told us the whole story, justifying the sentence he was pronouncing, and he clearly found it believable. He might not have been willing to bet his own life on it, but he was evidently willing to bet Shareef’s life on it. And that was the bottom line.

It was four years and eight months since I had looked at the front page of the Toronto Star one otherwise unmemorable morning, and found that my ex-student of ten years ago, Shareef Abdelhaleem, was one of the “Toronto 18″, eighteen young Muslim men who were charged with planning to set off three tons of ammonium nitrate in downtown Toronto. Shareef had remained in touch with me, coming in to the high school in which we had met periodically after his graduation, so I returned the favour, going in to Maplehurst penitentiary to talk to him a few times as the first the months and then the years trickled by before his case, his conviction, and now his sentencing.

This Sunday, I published an editorial in the Albuquerque Journal North explaining why I terminated a pregnancy at 16. I was inspired by Democratic Representatives Gwen Moore (WI) and Jackie Speier (CA) who stood up on the House floor in the middle of an assault on Planned Parenthood and the definition of rape and described their own decisions to end a pregnancy.

I intend to mail a photocopy of my editorial to the Congresswomen.

I hope every woman who has ever faced this decision will do the same. If we refuse to be intimidated or shamed, then we can’t be intimidated or shamed.

My public response, which appeared in the Journal North on March 6th follows below the jump. (Sorry, I can’t link because I don’t have a paid subscription to the Journal online).

Controversy

For the most part, I have been staying clear of controversies. My passion, and where I see my gifts, is for the process of bringing people together across differences more so than in advocating for this or that position. I take a stand for certain principles and for a vision of a world that serves everyone, not for particular opinions, even though I do have my opinions in abundance. This is a conscious and ongoing choice because I want to make myself available to everyone, not only those with whom I happen to agree on any given issue.

Today, however, I am about to walk a complex line on a rather sensitive topic. I am doing this because I have been writing about tests of courage several times in the last several weeks, and I want to acknowledge two men who have taken a stand despite significant costs in order to honor their own values and moral integrity.

A week from Monday, on March 14^th, Tikkun is celebrating its 25^th anniversary, to which the public is invited. Part of the celebration consists of 6 awards given to a number of people, one of whom is Justice Richard Goldstone from South Africa. Goldstone headed a fact-finding commission of the UN to Gaza in 2008-2009, and the report that came from that investigation has been the center of enormous controversy. So much so, that Goldstone agreed not to go to his grandson’s Bar Mitzvah to avoid a mass demonstration that would divert attention away from the family and the focus on the boy.

This week’s spiritual wisdom comes from Jonathan Granoff, a nuclear weapons activist, attorney, and Tikkun author. Granoff writes about the danger of pursuing profit maximization while disregarding its impact on our natural world. The piece below was published on the Worldshift Council’s website last October.

Our Choice: Creativity or Destruction
by Jonathan Granoff

The natural world has value independent of the markets of man and we ignore this fact at our peril.

Corporations and states can no longer operate as if they are independent of the natural world. Nature will not bend beyond limits to fulfill corporate growth. Corporations, states and individuals must conform to the dictates of nature. Isn’t it time we developed a bit of humility? Without the billions of ants the human community cannot survive. Yet, without humans ants will do just fine. An accurate perspective could do us all well.

The extension of human will over the natural world through science, technology and social organization has amplified its capacity for creativity and destruction. The main actors in expressing these two dynamics are limited liability de jure entities, mainly corporations, and states. Both organizational forms, as distinct from individual human beings, lack conscience. One form pursues power and the other wealth.

How can anyone oppose Michelle Obama’s campaign to combat the childhood obesity epidemic by educating children about healthy eating and exercise? How can anyone not rejoice about recent changes in USDA policies that will make school lunches healthier? Wouldn’t most people agree that it would be a positive thing to use government subsidies to encourage the production of healthy foods and sustainable agriculture, instead of the opposite?

As Mark Bittman wrote in the New York Times this week:

Agricultural subsidies have helped bring us high-fructose corn syrup, factory farming, fast food, a two-soda-a-day habit and its accompanying obesity, the near-demise of family farms, monoculture and a host of other ills. Yet – like so many government programs – what subsidies need is not the ax, but reform that moves them forward. Imagine support designed to encourage a resurgence of small- and medium-size farms producing not corn syrup and animal-feed but food we can touch, see, buy and eat – like apples and carrots – while diminishing handouts to agribusiness and its political cronies.

Eating healthier foods and exercising more are hardly controversial goals, yet some people on the far right are trying to politicize these common sense recommendations in order to score political points. Does Mrs. Obama’s contention that people should skip dessert once in a while really deserve Palin’s derision? Since when is trying to educate children about health and nutrition coercive? Should children really be allowed to eat whatever they want? Should any of us choose to indulge in whatever we want anytime we want?

Photo from giaitri59

I was at a recent conversation event with 16 reasonably well informed, educated people who came together to discuss the recent political unrest in the Middle East. One interesting thread in the conversation was that most of the people in the group were at a loss to understand why this was happening now or what started it. We realized that we had no cultural narrative or ideology that would explain what was going on, or how it would turn out. Perhaps there was one evolving narrative that explained some of it in hindsight though. When those in power maintain their power through fear, they can be overthrown by the population when people lose their fear. That loss of fear can spread like wildfire fueled by a combination of being inspired by others, and a belief that they have nothing to lose because of a bleak outlook for their current situation. When a system maintained by fear is teetering on the brink in an increasingly unstable situation, the efforts of single individuals can have a major impact on what happens next. That brings me to my two nominations for the Nobel Peace prize for this year.

Eventually, this conflict engulfed the French Cistercian Trappist monastery situated in a remote village, where its monks were much loved by their Muslim-Arab neighbors. They incorporated them into their everyday lives, even inviting them to family weddings and other life-cycle events.

Michael Lonsdale, the dignified bilingual French actor, plays Luc, the elderly monk and physician who ran a much-needed medical clinic. From the vantage point of his once secular life, Luc is charmingly depicted providing advice on love to a village girl who tends the abbey grounds and seeks out his wisdom.

The last time the Tikkun Award went to a poet, it was Allen Ginsberg who received it in person at a ceremony at Columbia University in New York City. He joined a list of significant figures who had previously received the award including Grace Paley, Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone, and Abba Eban.

Tikkun‘s poetry editor Joshua Weiner provides some context on why it is going this year to C.K. Williams.

What is the role of the poet in Tikkun‘s core vision, of commitment to peace, social justice, ecological sanity? What is the role of the poet in a movement that aims to foster solidarity, generosity, kindness, and radical amazement? What is the role of the poet when it comes to social change and individual inner change?

Poetry is often discussed in our culture as a kind of commodity that few people are buying; but like meditation, reading poetry, listening to poetry, is less of a product, and more of a process, of coming into fuller awareness. Awareness of what? Our sense of connection to others starts within, moves without, and returns. The reciprocity between self and world is one of continual fluctuation, and there is no poet writing today who is more attuned to the ethical implications of that existential flux than C.K. Williams.

By Elizabeth Clerico

Our society is in denial. Denial of death, which ultimately is a denial of life.

When we refuse to embrace death, when we run away from it, we lose a most sacred and precious opportunity to feel life, to appreciate the life we have on this earth.

I, like most people, was in that state of denial when my father was dying of cancer. I held onto hope when I knew in my gut there was none. I kept giving my father a false hope, one that I didn’t even believe in. Because of the charade I was playing, I never allowed myself to accept what was. I never talked about death and dying, and because of that I never created a space where he could feel comfortable talking about what he was thinking and feeling. Because I refused to accept what I knew to be true, (he was going to die) I placed a barrier, one in which he did not cross. I never allowed him to express his feelings with me nor did I share mine with him. At the time, I thought, even though it didn’t feel right, that what I was doing was right. It took a long time for me to realize that I resisted an opportunity for closeness, for growth and for truth. I have since learned that only the truth sets us free. My father did die and I did regret not telling him what I wanted to tell him, not saying the things I wanted to say.

Harriet Fraad’s illuminating piece here last week about marriage has got me thinking about men. We men are still not getting what the women’s revolution can give us. At least, many are but way more are not. We’re not getting it en masse. The evidence for this is that women are turning their backs increasingly on marriage. Why? Because it’s becoming a bad bargain for them. They increasingly realize how much more they contribute in a marriage than their man does. They grew, but men didn’t keep pace. Women still do much more of the emotional work and the housework, even while working full time jobs. Why can’t men clue in to the benefits for us of learning to give as good emotional support and practical caring as we get? Why can’t we realize that it’s good riddance to patriarchal male power, which isolated us from women and children and taught us hierarchy — for which male bonding could be a compensation, but often in a hearty way that prevents emotional openness, self-revelation and vulnerability.

Well, here’s a fascinating article about men changing en masse – actually it’s about future men, which is even better. Mark McCormack writes in openDemocracy about boys in England:

In the 1980s and early 1990s British society was gripped by extreme homophobia….

During this period, given the stigma attached to homosexuality, boys went to great lengths to show that they were straight by trying to prove that they were neither feminine nor gay. They espoused homophobic and misogynistic views, and sometimes fought to prove their masculinity. Sociologist Mairtin Mac an Ghaill, summing up the result, described heterosexual boys as being pre-occupied with “three F’s”: football, fighting and fucking. This type of control over gendered expression also led to the suppressing of many emotions. For example, while boys were permitted to vent anger, they were not allowed to emote: the expression of fear, intimidation or love for a friend were all feminised and condemned. Boys grew up to become emotionally stunted adults.

No surprises yet, but then the author does a study in current sixth forms (the equivalents of 11th and 12th grade in US high schools) and finds a truly dramatic change.

There was a time in my life when in prayer and meditation, I would ask questions of Jesus (among other deities) and often feel that I had received answers – usually in the form of another question that made me see everything in a different light. When I learned that George W. Bush also spoke to Jesus in this direct, intimate way and based his political decisions on these conversations, I felt (and feel) uneasy. Was there any difference between me and the man who ordered the invasion of Iraq despite worldwide protest against this action, including the protest of many religious people and institutions?

In her recent article in Huffington Post “God in Wisconsin,” Diana Butler Bass notes that The Roman Catholic Church as well as most mainstream Protestant denominations have endorsed the Unions in their standoff with Governor Walker, but he remains immovable, obedient to his personal understanding of God’s will.

Reading her article, I felt an appreciation for corporate religious practice, the checks and balances the institutional church can provide to the individual’s interpretation of divine will (which is often his or her own will dressed up as god, a particularly noxious and often dangerous form of spiritual inflation). My gratitude to mainstream institutional religion is ironic. I have always been on the side of those the church persecuted: mystics, heretics, and other nonconformists. Though I am an ordained interfaith minister, I currently have no institutional affiliation.

The daughter of an Episcopal priest, who practiced and preached the social gospel in the 1960s, I left the church to become a member of The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). I attended a silent Meeting (as distinct from a pastoral) where each person shared in the Meeting’s ministry and anyone moved by the Spirit could speak from the silence. Quakers temper the individual’s “leadings” with the corporate discernment of the whole Meeting. Their model works as well as any I have ever seen. So why didn’t I remain a Friend?

Tom Shadyac and a student at a high school screening of "I Am"

On Monday night I saw the movie I Am by Tom Shadyac. In case you don’t know – Tom has been a writer and director of numerous comedy films which have netted him millions of dollars. In the course of the last number of years he has been on an incredible journey of shifting his values from success and consumption to simplicity, love, and compassion. He sold his mansion and established a foundation with the money. Here’s what his website says: “Ultimately, the goal of The Foundation for I AM is to help usher in a more loving, kind, compassionate, and equitable world for all.” The movie tells some of his story, and also sets out to answer two key questions through interviews with a number of well known thought leaders such as Desmond Tutu, Howard Zinn, and others: What’s wrong with the world, and what can be done to change it?

I enjoyed the movie tremendously. I appreciated the footage that served as background to the interviews, and his appearances on the screen that were interspersed with the interviews. It’s a rare documentary, in my experience, that manages to balance information, a strong point of view, and entertainment. This is what I experienced with this movie. I was inspired by seeing someone make such a personal journey of rededicating his resources to a cause other than personal consumption. I very much recommend it to anyone interested in these topics

In addition, I have asked very similar questions, and have been thinking about the overlap between the movie’s answers and my own, as well as differences that were provocative and have already enriched me. The movie focuses on the profound role that the story of separation and its derivatives – scarcity, competition, and massive consumption – play in keeping war, domination, and poverty in place. I also was so happy to see a movie that shows some of the evidence that has been mounting in recent years that is challenging the core assumptions of separation. This evidence is so strong now, that researchers at UC Berkeley talk about “the survival of the kindest.” All of this was very compelling.

It was the “what can we do about it” part about which I was left puzzled and somewhat disappointed.

The Washington Post reports that according to a recent survey, “fully half of all whites without college degrees identify as Republicans or are GOP-leaning independents, and 42 percent call themselves conservatives, more than other groups.” How can this be? Why would presumably working class whites support the party of Big Business that favors outsourcing, benefit-cutting, and other policies that immiserate working people? Indeed, it was Republican policies that got us into this economic mess, and the GOP is currently trying to make things worse with their job-killing budget cuts and cold-hearted attempts to shred what little remains of the safety net. Is it time to revive the term “false consciousness”?

According to the article in the Post, “whites without college degrees also are the most apt to blame Washington for the problems, and are exceedingly harsh in their judgment of the Obama administration and its economic policies.” More specifically, the data reveal that 64% of whites without college degrees blame “the government in Washington” for the current economic situation, as compared to 52% of college-educated whites. Among non-college-educated whites, 37% think Obama’s economic program is making the economy worse (compared to 34% of college-educated whites) and 42% think it is having no effect (again compared to 34% of college-educated whites).

While on its face, this seems to bode ill for the possibility of creating a progressive movement, a closer look at the survey data reveals a less demoralizing picture of public opinion. While it’s true that 89% of whites blame “the government in Washington” for “the economic challenges facing this country today” either a lot (60%) or some (29%), 78% blame Wall Street institutions either a lot (48%) or some (30%). So while whites are more negative towards the federal government (89%) than blacks (73%) and Hispanics (71%), whites are also more negative towards Wall Street (78%) than blacks (68%) and Hispanics (64%). This is somewhat heartening for those of us who favor populism.

On Thursday, February 17, I received one of the best phone calls of my life.

I wondered who was calling me from the (306) area code. Where was that anyway?

“It’s mrghhtbfxr,” said the voice on the other end of the line.

“Who?” I asked.

“mrghhtbfxr!” repeated the voice excitedly.

“Who????!!!!!”

It’s River! I’ve found a kidney!” Kitsap River is a Daily Kos blogger. I had been trying to give her a kidney.

I was so happy for River. But I was also so happy for me!

After a year of tests, I had just been confirmed as a match. I was mustering my courage for a SERIOUS TALK with the husband and kids.

Saved by the bell! Now I could keep my kidney without feeling guilty.