Life, liberty, and the pursuit of dignity…
Experience the fullness and wholeness of life… that is what America is for – a place for that.
Liberty – the freedom to choose the process by which I develop my soul, realize my potential, and surrender to my instrumentality.
Pursuit of dignity – become fully and truly human in the dignified image that was intended.
We began our Wisdom Writers work that day with the subject of enabling one of the four purposeful cycles of life – making life real (ref. “Work for All Children,” p. 11), the other three being making life whole, making life fruitful and making life wise. This subject was brought up at our previous gathering with the closing reflection that more and more, the young people of this country and of our community are consumed with artificial experiences of life, “living life” through various forms of entertainment and electronic media, many of which requiring no being-to-being interaction, nor the experiencing of vitalizing and replenishing life processes of nature just outside the door. They are not experiencing life – experiencing the fullness and wholeness of life.
Reflecting now on our unfolding dialogue, I see what a dream it is to work from the philosophy of potential. One does not have to stick to some planned flow; the “whole” shows itself if we maintain a reflective state and do not lose sight of intent and intended ways of working. Remembering our Wisdom Writers work of bringing into being a work for all children culture and life of the whole approaches, we organized our thinking by taking a few moments to reflect on the anchor triad of virtue, intentional ethics and potential. We began with virtue – with overall essential virtues: the essential virtue of humanity at this time – compassion of equality – and the essence virtue of the Gulf Coast estuarial energy field in which we live – rhythmic soothing, life replenishing, intentional reminding. The reflective “trip” we took, the weaving of images and thoughts, was amazing. Along the way, we took one short turn through the anchors of virtue, potential and intentional ethics as they relate to the issue of human trafficking, keeping making life real in mind… human trafficking being an issue of significance to one of the wisdom writers present that day… human trafficking most often involving young people, the age when making life real is of significance to their becoming fully and truly human. As a bit of background, young people are paying to come to this country to work, mostly in the hospitality industry; many trying to round out their college education with work experience in the United States. Unknowingly, they are actually paying traffickers for their trip, for their “opportunity.” Arriving here, they find themselves controlled by the traffickers, through the taking of their passports and the using of oppression; what these young people learn about this country through this experience is that America is a place of oppression and extraction – physical, psychological and economic.
Coming from the perspective of potential, we know community is the smallest whole. If a problem is to ever “go away” permanently, the smallest whole in which to make true and lasting change is community. So, as we look at intentional ethics for the whole community, we see the virtues of America – compassion of equality, life, liberty and pursuit of dignity – are not present in the process… the virtues America is built on, and we the people are striving to live from, are not present in the process, hence not present in the outcome. The presence of this issue in community is interfering with the whole of the community becoming ever more human.
Our reflecting led to a seeing of the way the living philosophy of potential works to develop ethics, intentional ethics that are right for the community and good for the whole. The work shifts from “reducing human trafficking” to “enabling the purposeful cycles of life within our community”; our interest in youth leads us to the particular cycle of making life real. We began with a problem, an issue, and coming from potential were led to intentional ethics for the community as a whole in relation to enabling the process of making life real. When community becomes ethical with regard to making life real, people coming here for an educational experience are enabled by the community to experience life, liberty and dignity enveloped by compassion of equality. We are becoming a community moving towards wholeness in ways that work for ALL children. Anything less than that would be merely “band-aiding” our problems.
This little piece of beginning work at our recent gathering was very energizing, particularly recognizing the dilemma of those currently working on the cause of eliminating trafficking. As often is true when we take on causes, we find ourselves in a problem solving mode… and soon see that we can problem solve forever. This is not to say problem solving should stop. Yet, the truth is we as a people are out of balance (ref. “Work for All Children, “pp. 15-20). We are spending most of our effort working to arrest run-down while giving little effort and attention to enabling run-up of the life of the whole. Work of reducing human trafficking is one example. The reducing run-down pattern is a familiar one: The focus of our work often begins with creating awareness of an issue, leading to a heightened sensitivity to what is taking place around us; but having no whole – no intentional whole – through which we can see what to do. Hence, leaving a void. The doing tends to be segmented, not elevating the community as a whole… not truly moving to the heart of becoming an intentionally working community – a community working in harmony with intentionality, a community becoming fully and truly human. In the case of human trafficking, intuitive wisdom tells us that with community being the smallest whole in which a real change can be made, what we can do is begin from the perspective of the whole of community, focusing on enabling making life real, developing processes – sourced in the compassion of equality, in harmony with the virtue of our land – through which each and all, are able to experience life, liberty and pursuit of dignity. Developing serious intent in regard to any issue of significance calls for our coming from a life of the whole-perspective. In this case, the smallest whole being our community… a community not unlike most others in this country, where our children spend an inordinate amount of time experiencing life artificially, while at the same time, there are other problems – human trafficking, violence and addiction, to name a few – that call for each and all tapping into and living from the unfolding founding virtues of the country, the most essential at this time being the compassion of equality.
As our interaction came to a close, one of those present reflected that when we first began Wisdom Writers, she would feel impatient when subjects that she was not working on were brought into the dialogue, feeling that she wanted to get on with her doing, with working on subjects close to her heart. But now she sees that when she can look at other subjects from the whole and with wisdom, she gains insight into her own work, her ways of working, and sees where she is stuck, needs to reflect more, deepen/change where she is starting her thinking from. With that as backdrop, she expressed interest in reading and processing the “wholistic country strategy” papers which were shared (see attached), to be used for future Wisdom Writers reflective dialogues this summer.
And then the question came to the fore: Why is it that so few people wish to work on wisdom, wholeness? Why so few wish to think about their thinking? Or even to think more deeply about what they are working on? Why do we avoid wisdom? …We all know in our heart of hearts that wisdom guiding reason is our only true hope.
All for now… Sandra
Sandra Maslow Smith, Philosopher of Potential
