The Promised Land Project: Transcending the Land of the Dead

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.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Transcending the Land of the Dead

"True Vision is never wholly personal and by its nature needs to be shared." -- Hopi Elders

The reader would be right to be skeptical. As we come to a precipice in the trail, if one can catch a glimpse of the Promised Land, one can also see obstacles that lie ahead even more clearly. Yet I feel compelled, at least on some level, to promote this poetic approach to human progress because, if in truth I have a gift for vision, it is something that needs to be shared.

It seems we've lost our way as a society and appears we've found ourselves in the land of the dead. While this analogy can refer to the environmental challenges that appear before us, it also makes reference to a certain death of the spirit. Individuals die but only the collective lives; to live for the pride of the self with disregard for the greater collective is to live a life of the walking dead. To be sure, it's a complex society and where we go from here is less clear.

As it appears to me, we can begin to transcend the consumer culture by turning our attention to our contribution. Each of us has a unique body, a unique personal experience, a unique perspective; consequently, each of us has a unique contribution. By providing a collective vision (i.e., "the Promised Land") we begin to move our consciousness from a culture of individual consumption and toward a culture of collective contribution.

We then provide a collective narrative, drawn from the mythos, to be promoted in various forms. By interjecting this narrative with the arts, with particular emphasis on the communal arts of music and dancing, we can then lend rhthym to action in the promotion of community spirit in the context of the human spirit. Simultaneously, we are transforming our consciousness towards the joys of our collective nature.

Because we're all in the process of unsocializing ourselves, we'll be in the somewhat odd situation of trying to win over others to our cause while trying to win over our own selves (including yours truly). But in such a dispostion, we can maintain our sense of humility. Because we're trying to restore faith in our human nature, we're essentially promoting others as we promote our selves.

“There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love.” -- Thornton Wilder