"Each time a person stands for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he or she sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. And crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
— Robert Kennedy
— Robert Kennedy
Visual Activism
As a nation, we’re in a collective backslide of conscience. We have become so numb and self-absorbed, we are no longer bothered by what we perceive to be “other” people’s problems, especially if they threaten our pocketbook or security. Down deep, we know money isn’t everything but our collective behavior, attitudes, and social policies don’t reflect it. And because of our lack of courage, we’re standing at the threshold of extinction, or evolution if we choose to awaken. Believe it—as I now do—our species and the earth are at the point of no return. It’s far worse than our collective leaders will admit, though I’m not sure many of them have put it together for themselves. As Marianne Williamson says in The Healing of America, “it’s time we commit to evolve together.”
What Can We Do
Ultimately, I would like this conscious art movement to become an anecdote to helplessness. Paul Rogat Loeb, in his powerful book, Soul of a Citizen, reports that our culture, our world, has become so off-balance that it demeans idealism and enshrines cynicism. Society makes us feel naive and stupid for caring about our fellow human beings or the planet we inhabit. It puts us down if we believe in dreams of a future grounded in reverence for the earth and all its inhabitants. I have to ask—at what point in our history did it became normal for wealthy interests to buy and sell our elected officials, ultimately stripping them and us of our powers and rights? Politics in America has become just another business. [Marianne Williamson, The Healing of America, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997),43.] After Vietnam, Watergate, Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” and a score of other fundamental breaks with public trust, we have now come to doubt our ability to make a difference, any difference. Sadly, this stumbling malaise is our most dangerous threat.
Loeb tells us this is called “learned helplessness”. It’s a hand-me-down from a society that has systematically taught us to ignore the ills we see and leave them to others to handle. In our case, most of those “others” are people we elected but who secretly serve a private agenda. Now, we assume that all politicians lie and are only interested in taking care of their friends and getting re-elected, thus reinforcing their job security. True or not, the perception is pervasive and widespread, dispensing hopelessness its wake. Unfortunately, for us, this hopelessness is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Compounding the problem, Loeb tells us that rarely do we get a clear, unequivocal signal that things have gotten so bad that we must confront them now. As a result, by the time crises grow so big they can no longer be ignored, their sheer size intimidates us completely—even if we were inclined to help. Commentators now use the phrase “compassion fatigue” to describe this resulting hopelessness that comes with knowledge of our perilous condition. When we buy into this overwhelming fatigue, we conspire in our own defeat.
How It Could Play Out
Clearly, we first need to be roused morally to commit ourselves to the struggle for evolved consciousness, and only one thing can do that quickly and that’s a genuine awakening of the collective conscience. In order to do that, Americans need to be educated and made aware of their individual power, their spiritual power, because just as a snowball grows, so too does love which is the basis for all transformation.
How does one teach personal empowerment on a grand scale to millions of Americans at the same time? Books and talk shows are not enough on their own but they’re a start if aimed at the right people with the right message. Ultimately, what is needed is a multi-faceted communications campaign that targets all Americans through a variety of media. A campaign that can create plausible venues for a mass infusion of concepts into the public arena in a controlled and timely manner. A plan that activates an already aware constituency to the timely need for change. A plan that can trigger a mass-market transition from a materialistic system to a spiritual system by a re-alignment of consciousness. As Barbara Marx Hubbard says in her book Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential, we need to create vast celebrations that catalyze a critical mass of people to experience a sense of oneness and empathy toward one another. In short, we need an integrated plan for evolved social consciousness.
That’s something we can do. That’s Spiritual Marketing. And that's my ultimate goal.
Williamson writes, and I agree, that what we lack in America is less a visionary leader than a visionary constituency. Although a yearning for evolution is emerging that has inspired many to creative action, so far it’s not been pieced together and told with the power required to awaken the social potential within each of us. [Hubbard, Conscious Evolution, 24.] Just as Gandhi and Martin Luther King did not seek to use spirituality to achieve a political end, my goal is to exalt consciousness as a state of being in which political and social healing would result naturally.
Do not accept conventional wisdom. Do not accept that something can’t be done. Trust your instincts, your intuition. Because sacred power is the greatest power in the universe. It’s a power that can make heroes of us all.
What Can We Do
Ultimately, I would like this conscious art movement to become an anecdote to helplessness. Paul Rogat Loeb, in his powerful book, Soul of a Citizen, reports that our culture, our world, has become so off-balance that it demeans idealism and enshrines cynicism. Society makes us feel naive and stupid for caring about our fellow human beings or the planet we inhabit. It puts us down if we believe in dreams of a future grounded in reverence for the earth and all its inhabitants. I have to ask—at what point in our history did it became normal for wealthy interests to buy and sell our elected officials, ultimately stripping them and us of our powers and rights? Politics in America has become just another business. [Marianne Williamson, The Healing of America, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997),43.] After Vietnam, Watergate, Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” and a score of other fundamental breaks with public trust, we have now come to doubt our ability to make a difference, any difference. Sadly, this stumbling malaise is our most dangerous threat.
Loeb tells us this is called “learned helplessness”. It’s a hand-me-down from a society that has systematically taught us to ignore the ills we see and leave them to others to handle. In our case, most of those “others” are people we elected but who secretly serve a private agenda. Now, we assume that all politicians lie and are only interested in taking care of their friends and getting re-elected, thus reinforcing their job security. True or not, the perception is pervasive and widespread, dispensing hopelessness its wake. Unfortunately, for us, this hopelessness is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Compounding the problem, Loeb tells us that rarely do we get a clear, unequivocal signal that things have gotten so bad that we must confront them now. As a result, by the time crises grow so big they can no longer be ignored, their sheer size intimidates us completely—even if we were inclined to help. Commentators now use the phrase “compassion fatigue” to describe this resulting hopelessness that comes with knowledge of our perilous condition. When we buy into this overwhelming fatigue, we conspire in our own defeat.
How It Could Play Out
Clearly, we first need to be roused morally to commit ourselves to the struggle for evolved consciousness, and only one thing can do that quickly and that’s a genuine awakening of the collective conscience. In order to do that, Americans need to be educated and made aware of their individual power, their spiritual power, because just as a snowball grows, so too does love which is the basis for all transformation.
How does one teach personal empowerment on a grand scale to millions of Americans at the same time? Books and talk shows are not enough on their own but they’re a start if aimed at the right people with the right message. Ultimately, what is needed is a multi-faceted communications campaign that targets all Americans through a variety of media. A campaign that can create plausible venues for a mass infusion of concepts into the public arena in a controlled and timely manner. A plan that activates an already aware constituency to the timely need for change. A plan that can trigger a mass-market transition from a materialistic system to a spiritual system by a re-alignment of consciousness. As Barbara Marx Hubbard says in her book Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential, we need to create vast celebrations that catalyze a critical mass of people to experience a sense of oneness and empathy toward one another. In short, we need an integrated plan for evolved social consciousness.
That’s something we can do. That’s Spiritual Marketing. And that's my ultimate goal.
Williamson writes, and I agree, that what we lack in America is less a visionary leader than a visionary constituency. Although a yearning for evolution is emerging that has inspired many to creative action, so far it’s not been pieced together and told with the power required to awaken the social potential within each of us. [Hubbard, Conscious Evolution, 24.] Just as Gandhi and Martin Luther King did not seek to use spirituality to achieve a political end, my goal is to exalt consciousness as a state of being in which political and social healing would result naturally.
Do not accept conventional wisdom. Do not accept that something can’t be done. Trust your instincts, your intuition. Because sacred power is the greatest power in the universe. It’s a power that can make heroes of us all.