To Unite a Divided America, Make People Work for It

By Jonathan Holloway

If we Americans listened to one another, perhaps we would recognize how absurd our discourse has become. It is our own fault that political discussions today are hotheaded arguments over whether the hooligans storming the halls of the Capitol were taking a tour or fomenting an insurrection; if we broadened our audiences, perhaps we would see the fallacy of claims that all Republicans are committed to voter suppression and that all Democrats are committed to voter fraud.

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multi-sectorWade Lee Hudsonpolitics, community, patriotismComment
Who Can Win America’s Politics of Humiliation?

By Thomas L. Friedman

…It has been obvious ever since Trump first ran for president that many of his core supporters actually hate the people who hate Trump, more than they care about Trump or any particular action he takes, no matter how awful.

The media feed Trump’s supporters a daily diet of how outrageous this or that Trump action is — but none of it diminishes their support. Because many Trump supporters are not attracted to his policies. They’re attracted to his attitude — his willingness and evident delight in skewering the people they hate and who they feel look down on them.

Humiliation, in my view, is the most underestimated force in politics and international relations. The poverty of dignity explains so much more behavior than the poverty of money….

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SystemicWade Lee Hudsonmeritocracy, class, politicsComment
Trumpism Without Borders

By Thomas B. Edsall

America is embedded in a world that is troubled by insidious parallel variants of the same structural problems — anti-immigrant fervor, political tribalism, racism, ethnic tension, authoritarianism and inequality — that led to a right-wing takeover of the federal government by Donald Trump.

The peculiarly American characteristics of the Trump years have blinded us to the spread of this radical disorder worldwide — even as some prescient scholars and analysts have seen the connections all along and have been trying to make the public aware of them.

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multi-sectorWade Lee Hudsonclass, inequality, politics, economicsComment
Democracy Is Weakening Right in Front of Us

Is technopessimism our new future?

By Thomas B. Edsall

A decade ago, the consensus was that the digital revolution would give effective voice to millions of previously unheard citizens. Now, in the aftermath of the Trump presidency, the consensus has shifted to anxiety that online behemoths like Twitter, Google, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook have created a crisis of knowledge — confounding what is true and what is untrue — eroding the foundations of democracy.

These worries have intensified in response to the violence of Jan. 6, and the widespread acceptance among Republican voters of the conspicuously false claim that Democrats stole the election.

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EconomicWade Lee HudsonBig TechComment
East Point Peace Academy: Close but Not Quite?

By Wade Lee Hudson

Thus far, the activist organization that comes closest to fulfilling Systemopedia’s vision is East Point Peace Academy. The progress they’ve made organizing a national network of like-minded small teams is particularly encouraging.

However, ambiguities in their website content raise two questions: 1) East Point, might you clarify your written commitments to more fully affirm everyone’s essential equality? 2) Might you invite your supporters to collaboratively plan and convene a workshop to explore how to advance your principles, with the understanding that the participants will be invited to plan and convene the next workshop?

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Wade Lee Hudsoncompassion, democracy, domination, equality, holistic democracy, meritocracy, power, racism, environmental, tribalism, the system Comment
Talk With Your Enemy? Dialogue about Dialogue

By Alan Levin

…I have to admit to being a slow learner in being able to talk with people who disagree with me politically, especially if they are conservative or right-wing. A helpful teaching for me is that we are not our ideas. I am not my beliefs and therefore neither is anyone else. People are far more than any particular idea that they happen to believe. This is especially true of political thinking involving abstractions, complex sets of ideas that often have little to do with the deeper values and intentions that move a person through life….

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SocialWade Lee Hudsonrelationships, compassion, politicsComment
Recasting ‘Riots’ as Black Rebellions

By Peniel E. Joseph

…“America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s,” by Elizabeth Hinton, a Yale University professor of law, history and African-American studies, and one of the country’s leading scholars of mass incarceration, offers a groundbreaking, deeply researched and profoundly heart-rending account of the origins of our national crisis of police violence against Black America….

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politicalWade Lee Hudsonracism, criminal justiceComment
Howard Thurman on Nonviolence

By Wade Lee Hudson

In “Reconciliation,” the last chapter of Disciplines of the Spirit, the esteemed theologian, Howard Thurman, one of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s main mentors, presents a case for nonviolence as a way of life, not merely a tactic.

In the opening to the chapter, Thurman acknowledges that personal growth needs to develop within a structure and humans need to be cared for and understood “in general” as well as by others “in particular.” And he discusses “the need to be needed beyond the limits of her family.” In this way, with troubled souls, “the wildness (can be) gentled out of a personality at war with itself.”

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politicalWade Lee HudsonnonviolenceComment
John Dewey and Citizen Politics

John Dewey and Citizen Politics

How Democracy Can Survive Artificial Intelligence and the Credo of Efficiency

Harry C. Boyte, 2017 John Dewey Society Lecture

San Antonio, April 27 2017

“Without some kind of oversight, the golem, not God, might emerge from machines…it is naïve to believe that government is competent, let alone in a position to control the development and deployment of robots, self-generating algorithms, and artificial intelligence. Business is self-interested and resists regulation. We, the people, are on our own here…”

Sue Halpern, “How Robots & Algorithms Are Taking Over”

“In the past the man has been first. In the future the System must be first.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor, Principles of Scientific Management

“I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”

From “Invictus,” Nelson Mandela’s favorite poem

Citizen politics, John Dewey, and the crisis in “modernity”

Can we become masters of our fate in an age of smart machines governed by an efficiency creed, with its conviction that “the system is the solution”? In this 2017 Dewey lecture I answer affirmatively the question raised by nine scientists in a Scientific American essay, “Will Democracy Survive Big Data and Artificial Intelligence?” I argue that we need a different kind of politics, citizen-centered, educative, and empowering, as well as places to learn such politics and put it into practice. Drawing on Dewey, I use schools embedded in communities as a case study for developing civic power….

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politicalWade Lee Hudsoncivics, boyte, dewey, pragmatismComment
Valarie Kaur with Baratunde on "How to Citizen"
Valarie Kaur with Baratunde on "How to Citizen"

On the opening episode of this “How to Citizen” podcast, Baratunde conducts a remarkable interview with Valarie Kaur, author of See No Stranger,. Kaur clearly articulates the spirit that drives the Systemopedia with her holistic worldview and her affirmation of mutual support for self-development..

With her Revolutionary Love Project, Kaur’s addresses our relationships with ourselves as well as our relationship with others. She examines internal changes we must make to our minds and hearts as well as institutional reforms. In response to whether we are experiencing the darkness of the womb or the darkness of the tomb, she replies, “It’s both” because we see the “dying of the nation we thought we were” as well as the emergence of transformation. Large numbers of whites joining in Black Lives Matter demonstrations was particularly encouraging.

External work such as getting to know our neighbors with an open heart is critical. The founder of the Sikh faith affirmed “I see no enemy.”

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systemicWade Lee Hudsonbeloved community, deep nonviolence, eolutionary revolution, racism, self-centeredness, spirituality, structures, white privilegeComment