Consciousness is the way it is because of people in government and journalism. These people in government and journalism participate in a charade. They don’t need fundamental transformation.
That led me to embark on a somewhat longer, more complex excursion into the nature and sources of this macho dimension of the American consciousness, and on the limits of outrage as a constructive response to it. It delves into a variety of fundamental issues. It bears upon two subjects that have been at the core of my work for almost forty years --the problem of power in social evolution, and the damage wrought upon human consciousness by the dangers of a world ruled by power-- as well as on on how best to deal with the sicknesses of the world.
It's an exploration I thought worth presenting here as an essay on its own.
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I think maybe I can see the problem here.
When you write, "Consciousness is the way it is because of people in government and journalism. These people in government and journalism participate in a charade," it would appear that you believe this aspect of American consciousness is something new, something created by a couple of powerful institutions, and inculcated into a manipulable public. Maybe that's why you think it suitable for us to respond with outrage to the way American people look for such signs of toughness in their leaders.
Actually, there’s an aspect of this that IS, as you suspect, a recent thing fostered by propagandists. There is, in other words, a Bushite element in this macho political requirement whereby the forces of evil have deliberately accentuated and distorted that aspect of the American consciousness, fostering in the American people fear on the one hand and a bullying attitude toward the world on the other.
But there's another, bigger piece of this that has been part of American civilization all the way from its beginnings. We Americans are a people who came into being admiring –more than anyone else-- our great general, George Washington. Not just for his nobility and self-restraint and trustworthiness but also because he had the guts to get through Valley Forge and go on to defeat the British Empire.
And, as that example suggests, there are among the REASONS for a nation to value the virtues of a warrior in their leaders SOME that are actually appropriate and adaptive. Throughout history, societies in a danger world have needed to have, among their leaders qualities, some spine. Those led by wimps did not last very long, or at least did not fare very well.
But reason and adaptation are not the whole of the picture.
My book OUT OF WEAKNESS is about what I call "the EXCESS of the warrior spirit," i.e about that component of the warrior nature that derives from trauma, and denial, and overcompensation, and fear. Nonetheless, that book begins by acknowleding that there are good reasons why societies have, throughout history, found many of their heroes among their warriors. In a dangerous world, people have understood, it is important that one should understand and be skilled in the wielding of power, including the raw power of military force.
The challenge is to separate the wise elements from the crazy ones in this ethic. Too often, in our polarized society, neither the right nor the left meet this challenge.
The problem with the people of the right is that they are not sensitized to the ways in which this warrior business can be taken to excess. That’s part of why they fall for Bush's "Mission Accomplished" Top Gun posturing. That’s part of why they do not notice when their leader is a bully.
But there's a problem with many on the left, too. I’m speaking of those who do not recognize the sad but true reality that in this world there is a need for certain warrior virtues.
The proof of this can be found in recent American history.
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