HI Bruce,
Great ideas here. I would also recommend contacts in Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy, Religious and Global Studies Depts. etc. as well as University Student organizations and government. However, I would also offer this caveat - that there are people in these Departments that are nominally "liberal" and "progressive" etc., but who don't support Obama for various reasons and resist efforts that might be supportive (obviously, the more conservative elements are even more resistant). I'd also suggest that a new interspirit politics be based on empathy, compassion, and connectedness, i.e., one based on the ethic/ethos of: "I am because we are, and since we are, therefore, I am."
I believe this is especially important now because aspects of the "new-age" religious/self-empowerment movement (including Scientology/Landmark Forum etc.) run directly counter to this ethic. Yet, they have attracted many people who consider themselves liberals and Obama supporters. The roots and foundations of this movement are Ayn Rand/L.Ron Hubbard/Werner Earhardt/Rupert Murdoch etc. and are hyper individualistic, self oriented, and based on classic Eurologic psychoanalytic foundations that have the potential of derailing Obama's agenda and turning it into a more conservative, "blame the victim" approach to addressing socially and historically structured problems that disproportionately affect certain groups.
I applaud your efforts and hope to be able to positively contribute to them.
Best, Ron
--- On Mon, May 18, 2009, in msg267972, Bruce Schuman wrote ---
Dear Interspirit --
Hello from Santa Barbara -- and thanks for being there.
I wanted to mention a new project that has been emerging for the past month or six weeks -- a new political action system that is generally intended to dovetail with the Obama administration and the emerging "Organizing for America" network project ("OFA") that is growing out of the big "MyBO" (http://my.barackobama.com) web system that helped elect our president.
There is a lot to say about this project, and how it fits in to this evolving Interspirit concept. Yesterday, President Obama delivered another remarkable speech, at Notre Dame, and we could discuss in some detail how his vision combines the deepest sort of interfaith wisdom with the realities of an applied real-world political philosophy. You can view the transcript here:
http://lightpages.net/lp/message.cfm?login=463443&messageid=267963&mo=1&bt=100074
Our new project is called "USA.CAN" -- and it's still in a very early stage, as it emerges from its initial development in MyBO.
So, we're still shaking out the details, and exactly how this project will unfold is not yet entirely clear. But generally, I am expecting that we will be working on a "new politics", that is inherently driven by universal spiritual values and a sense of national community.
We now have about 2,000 members in our network, and are getting ready to start moving it into the world. Most basic network features run on the LightPages system, but we are also developing a dedicated web site, where I expect to build a series of organizing tools intended to support and strengthen this vision. A couple of things I would like to see would include a database of contacts at university political science departments around the country, and a database of media contacts, probably organized by locale.
For now, just to introduce this project, here is most of a message I posted yesterday, to another group called "Dawn's Early Light" -- intended as a harbinger of a new spirit-guided politics.
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The USA.CAN network continues its steady and interesting growth, as we continue to expand the concept of "spiritual activism" into the mainstream roots of real-world political activism.
We have over 2,000 members now, and our dedicated web platform is growing, as we add new features, such as "My Friends" (a common social network feature, that allows participants to create their own network of contacts and mailing list).
The core of the USA.CAN network is intended to support on-the-ground political action in local communities.
http://usa-can.net/usa.cfm
It's true, of course, that as a political action network, this project is but a barest beginning, an organizational shell for a promise to be kept. But it feels important to me, because the project is conceptualized in a way that feels very powerful, and because it connects in one integral design so many critical elements in this emerging "Shift" concept that is driving so much social change.
One recent book that reviews this process of change:
The concepts of sacred activism and spiritual democracy are central to a conference being held soon, that includes Barbara Marx Hubbard and Andrew Harvey. This video from Andrew Harvey reviews some of these critical elements, and describes sacred activism as the core force that is motivating the shift. This understanding feels powerful and fascinating, and is right at the core of the energy driving our USA.CAN project, and an expression of my own personal motivation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgK_pywP-84
Given the great diversity and social fragmentation that we see in the world today, where almost everyone has become some kind of narrow specialist, with a limited ability to understand what is going on in other sectors of human mind-space, it's not so easy to pull all these pieces together into one integral framework. Through our networking system, we ARE doing that, in a way that feels highly coherent and well-ordered -- but there are not many people out there prepared to digest and comprehend how these pieces come together or why this is so important and powerful. So, for that reason, it still makes more sense to build aspects of this work in separate but interrelated networks -- rather than attempt to pull them all together in one blindingly integrated system that almost no-one can understand.
But it is happening, and the pieces are coming together. For me personally, the USA.CAN framework seems essential, a basic grounding for all the transformative and cocreative/collaborative spiritual work we have been doing together for the past ten or twenty years. It all fits into the matrix, in a way that feels graceful, organic, and natural.
http://lightpages.net/usacan.cfm
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