The Flux of Human History: Between the Individual and the Collective

Human history appears to be in a flux between the individual and the collective. Humans evolved as social beings in a hunter and gathering society. The problem of our socialization into individual consciousness in the modern era, compounded by a consumer culture that incites the pride and passions of the self, may leave us in an unsustainable imbalance towards the individual self at the expense of the greater collective. Under this model, our society drifts toward spiritual crisis, if we're not there already. Here the working definition of a spiritual crisis is, simply, narrow interests that threaten the integrity of the greater collective.

The Promised Land Project, derived from the realm of poetry, provides a model of how this crisis can be met through a kind of bottom up spiritual movement towards the restoration of balance and harmony, that is, the individual acting freely in concert with the greater collective. The project seeks change through bottom up inspiration and revitalization of the moral cultural rather than through top down legislation, which is inherently coercive as laws have to be enforced. The poet Walt Whitman tried to achieve this through written poetry, such as is reflected in the poem "I Hear America Singing". The Promised Land Project, however, recognizes the limitations of poetry in written form, as Whitman did as well. Echoing Whitman, the project strives to create a poetry beyond paper and types towards poetry of bodies and souls.

Invidual freedom ultimately must be balance by love for the collective, or collective spirit; otherwise governments must lay down laws to achieve what's best of for the collective, which is inherently coercive. The reason we spend so much money on prisons, I argue, is because our moral culture has not kept up with the changes in society. But the problem is that love, or "spirit" is something one feels and there are legitimate obstacles toward that end. But I see no impasse.