Aroha.
November 28, 2018
Spirit of justice creator Spirit;
help us to make and keep this country
a home for all its different peoples,
and grant to our government and all its representatives
imagination, skill and energy
that there may grow amongst us Aroha and peace.
-New Zealand Prayer Book
[Aroha is the creative force behind all dreams.]
︶⁀°••°⁀︶
“The age of nations has passed.
Now unless we wish to perish, we
must shake off our old prejudices and build the earth.”
-Teilhard de Chardin:
Thoughts.
[Childe Hassam, 1917]
Intrigued by a statement from one of my students, the statement “politics of locations.” I finished listening to Serial Season #3: “Serial is heading back to court. This time, in Cleveland. A year inside a typical American courthouse. This season we tell you the extraordinary stories of ordinary cases. One courthouse, told week by week.” The season is centered in Cleveland, so as the host and writers focus on the criminal justice system, the listener also tours the neighborhoods of Cleveland, meeting people struggling with economics and oppression.
Hidden Brain, an NPR radio program, focused recently on how zip codes determine destiny. The name of the broadcast is titled, “Zipcode Destiny: The Persistent Power of Place and Education.”
https://www.npr.org/2018/11/12/666993130/zipcode-destiny-the-persistent-power-of-place-and-education
“People ask… is the American dream alive or not today? And I actually think the question itself is sort of ill-posed. The term ‘the American Dream’ — really we should think of it as ‘the Iowa Dream’ or ‘the Atlanta Dream’ or ‘the California Dream’ because there’s so much variation within this country.”
https://www.npr.org/2018/11/12/666993130/zipcode-destiny-the-persistent-power-of-place-and-education
And MSNBC host Chris Hayes recently discussing implicit racism and politics on his podcast, “Why Is This Happening?”, the DNA of racism, literally in the soil of America’s South.
“Hayes speaks with Maya Sen and Matthew Blackwell as they trace southern racial conservatism all the way back to glacial deposits.”
Particularly fascinating in context of the GOP Senate outcome in Mississippi.
From all of this the imprint of Impressionism…the human impressionism of the environment on personality and behavior: good begets good, bad begets bad.
Yes. Absolutely. “Human virtue vs. capitalism.”
Thinking of Elon Musk and his ‘neural lace’ project which is completely focused on the future and humans, “needing to become one with machines.” How about now? Can we fix ‘now?’
One of the final statement’s in season #3 of Serial continues to loop in my mind:
“Let’s all accept something’s gone wrong and work from that premise.”
Indeed.