IS THE TRANSPARTISAN MOVEMENT A THIRD PARTY?
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From: Tom A.
Date: Friday, May 29, 2009, 6:29 PM
Subject: Is the Transpartisan Movement a Third Party?
Reply to: 268184
ID: 268189

Great message, Bruce.

But "we're all on the same team" has so far been used to attract people to a partisan side.

The real revolution, it seems to me, will be when we use our knowledge of integral PROCESS to create a party that can legitimately say it represents the whole, because its policies and platform were crafted by people from across the political spectrum working together toward common ground and/or towards respectfully diverse parallel activities.

The big tent that is so far missing is how to create coherence out of difference and dissonance. On the one hand, we have a lot of know-how about that. On the other, I believe we are at Kitty Hawk on it. We are at the stage of competing ideologies and methodologies without yet any agreed-on process for using all that diversity to deepen our understanding of how to actually usefully integrate diversity!! So before an integral-process political PARTY could be formed, there would have to be a political MOVEMENT to get more sophisticated in this essential skill. We'd admit we didn't know, that we have a lot of things to try, and that we're doing lots of experiments to learn more. "So come join us in the experiment." (This is, incidentally, the spirit of the rapidly-growing "Transition Towns" movement.)

People who were part of that political movement could run for political office as independents who were explicitly part of that political movement. One vision of how such a political campaign would be run is offered in an "imagineering" story I wrote several years ago, at

http://co-intelligence.org/S-PatandPat.html.

Also, an article on integral politics as process may be coming out in the next Integral Review.

At the point we can ACTUALLY manifest "we're all on the same team" of policy makers and community revitalizers, we'll be ready to have a "People's Wisdom Party" or something like that, worthy of the name.

Until then, I'm wary of partisan use of "we're all on the same team" because it runs the risk of pretense or claiming a universality that STILL has significant people outside of the tent. This will always be true to the extent that insiders (no matter how wise and transpartisan) are making the policy decisions that represent the whole.

Coheartedly, Tom

--- On Fri, May 29, 2009, in msg268184, Bruce Schuman wrote ---

I was watching MSNBC the other day -- I think it was Hardball with Chris Matthews -- and the two guests were Bill Press and Pat Buchanan.  I like Hardball and I like Chris Matthews -- I get a lot out of that show.  I like MSNBC in general -- though I think it has declined a bit since the loss of Tim Russert.

Bill Press said something striking, something that has been buzzing around in the back of my brain...

He simply said that he would love to see the emergence of a third party.

I have never really been a believer in third parties -- though neither am I fond of the dualistic either/or "my team will beat your team" approach we seem compelled to follow in today's environment.  Ralph Nader, or the Greens, or the Libertarians, or the very fringe parties, seem like little more than interesting but near-meaningless static around the periphery of our real conversation.   And a third party, conceived as a traditional party, "another team" -- seems like a weak concept to me.

But this new idea -- "we are all on the same team" -- that seems to be the message America wants to hear.  Yes, we are polarized, and we don't understand each other very well -- but there is this grassroots call, this sense that down at the local level, people do like each other, and can work together -- and they are tired of -- exhausted by -- the incessant battling of our leadership around categories that do not seem true.

So -- enter the Transpartisan movement -- a solution looking for a voice...

I had this little vision last night, as I was hiking up Painted Cave Road at sunset.  My idea was -- Joseph McCormick goes on tour -- going from city to city, from state to state, campaigning as he said yesterday he loves to do -- sitting in the coffee shops with the people of the towns as they come in for breakfast -- and just -- bringing this message everywhere.  We can work together.  We can be friends.  We need each other, and there is a better way...

I think that message can be made simple, and very marketable.  I think the essence can be communicated very quickly.  In my own experience, when I start putting this idea on the table, people tend to light up.  This is what they want to hear.  Obama talked like this, and got millions of people excited.  And now he's stuck up at the top of the wedding cake like a perfect cherry -- and it's getting tougher for him to stay fully in resonance with the people...

He needs some advocates -- not Obama advocates -- but Transpartisan advocates -- people who resonate to the universal message of trust, cooperation, collective intelligence and community genius.  Obama was a "community organizer" -- and though some may see him differently, in my eyes, every move he makes carries that resonance, that refreshing honesty, that message of universal simplicity and humanity.  We need this kind of "community organizing" going on everywhere. 

I think I heard Bill O'Reilly the other night say that the Republican party is in serious danger of total atrophy.  It's drying up like the empty ideological shell of of a dying world view -- a world view no longer tuned to realities of today -- the incredible teeming diversity of the American (and indeed global) melting pot...

But this is not to say -- that the Dems have now got the territory to themselves.  They are still deeply wedded to mutually-exclusive either/or thinking, it's still totally about our team winning -- beating their team...

What America wants to hear, it seems to me -- what the world wants to hear -- is that we are all on the same team -- and everybody is invited to play.

This message is simple, and big.  It flows easily.  People get it. 

But still -- it needs advocates, it needs voices -- it needs clarification.

My little thought last night -- my "5-cent vision" as I was going to call it -- was something like -- Joseph (and others) come into a town -- and don't leave until somebody in that town has bonded to this action, and agrees to anchor our radiating network at their locale.

Of course, all of this is organized and integrated over the internet.  We build cohesion in every direction, inviting involvement from every sector, from every person.  It's a big movement -- a big tent, as they like to say.  It includes everybody -- everybody who cares about community, everybody who cares about their neighbors, everybody who cares about life on one small planet.

Just stay there until the flag is planted and waving sweetly and secure.  Then move on to the next point in the grid, and plant the next flag.  We'll keep all of that hooked together, in a hundred other ways, influencing every voice and opinion in the American conversation...

For me -- this doesn't seem like a grand ambition, a utopian fantasy, a wild hope.  It's more like -- America waiting to exhale...

This movement -- can be driven by natural human tendencies -- to be happy, to be kind, to be centered, to be healthy.  It can make friends in every direction, and build bridges in every direction.  A thousand points of light, a million points of light -- all simply driven by natural human instincts to love, to kindness, to basic human decency.

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