The Promised Land Project: Coming Down off the Precipice: My Essential Message

Turning Vision into Action....at least hypothetically

Strike up the music of the band
We're blazing a trail for the promised land
Heaven on earth is within you.

Through the writing of stories, poetry, essays, and a novel, I’ve creatively contended with the consumer culture and the problem of the ideal in the modern era. This preoccupation in time would lead to a vision of cultural transformation and where I believe our democratic society needs to go to truly progress beyond the modern era. Conceding my limited credibility, this blog provides a synthesis of recognized visionaries, poets, and writers with the objective of making a credible argument. Ultimately, it is a certain feeling the project strives to inspire and sustain on a certain level, making more vital use of poetry and the arts; consequently whether one agrees or not is less important than whether one senses it and feels it over time.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Coming Down off the Precipice: My Essential Message

“The condition of men is the result of their disunion.” – Tolstoy (from The Kingdom of God is Within You).

As we come down off the precipice where I'd strived to provide you with a view of the Promised Land and how we can get there, I realize it's a lot to take in. But to intone the concluding lines of "Song of Myself", if you didn't catch it there, keep encouraged, some where it should make common sense.

When neuroscientists demonstrated the ability to reason is inseparable from emotion, it's as though the mask had been ripped off the the so called "Age of Reason" and revealed the ugly face of pride. After that we began to move into the realm of the prophets (who've been contending with human passions through the centuries) and so began a race to connect the dots and the question of freedom or slavery may be in the balance.

Whitman had attempted to put us on track: Of physiology from top to toe I sing,/ Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the/ Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far. In 2002, I'd cracked the Whitman code, so to speak, and since then the Muse of ectatic imagination and creative inspiration enabled the creation of a hypothetical basis for a spiritual movement to get the country back on track. This I tried to articulate in the past blog entries beginning May 17 through July 4.

Herein lies the danger. One can be sympathetic to human nature but not human freedom. Humans evolved in a hunting and gathering society where they could feel as a collective that enables to keep individual passions in check. Since then societies have become increasingly complex leaving the individual feeling isolated. One may use sound reason and say, poor human, he can't help but follow his destructive passions, he needs a set of chains.

My essential message is that by way of the arts and the imagination, humans can feel as being part of a collective by way of the human spirit to enable individual passions to be kept in check. To date, Americans have sustained a certain degree of freedom but with the jails overcrowding and the limits of economic expansion called into question, the future is dubious. In times of fear and insecurity, often the tendency of human nature is to court authoritarian regimes, which can come from either the political left or right, to lay down the law in coercive measures. Yet I do not wish to cause any unnecessary alarm as these are models and projections of human nature relative to society in all its complexities.