Political Dance Moves: The Hokey-Pokey in Action
I think there are times when we put too much importance on what we believe. I know I’ve done that over the course of my life. There are lots of things for which I thought I was using a belief structure that was the apex of belief structures only to find a minute detail I had overlooked which changed the entire way the structure had to be constructed. I thought for a long time that it was just me but I’ve come to discover that overlooking a minute but vital part to a belief usually results in any woman in my life explaining the myriad errors of my ways, with reason. Had I not been such a bull in the china shop it would not have been that costly.
I see this behavior in politicians from time to time. They get caught with their hand in some cookie jar and rather than say, yep, they didn’t think anyone noticed, but it is indeed their hand, they opt to make it worse by defending a thing even if the thing is defined by its stupidity. I’ve come to understand that lots of people do things in their life because they believe the reality they want to exist, and they’ve proven the reality to be valid by a series of experiences in their lives. However, that reality they want to believe is merely a malnourished perception that they used to construct a reality that can exist only in their mind but not in the universe. I have to tell you that I was quite relieved to discover that piece of information. I realized at that moment that I was not alone.
The way I heard it was that you listen to what a man does, not what he says. If what he says matches what he does then you can believe him. Considering these various thoughts I’ve come to the conclusion that someone like Ms. Lake, the one who ran for governor of Arizona, said she did not trust elections as she ran to get elected. Does anyone think that had she won the election she’d refuse the office she was elected to? Of course she wouldn’t have. The only way she’d complain about the election is when she’s lost. That’s the foolishness half the Republican Party is pretending to embrace. I have to think that if you’re a republican candidate you consider yourself to be smarter and more righteous than the rest of humanity. I suppose there are people who will want republicans to represent them but I don’t want such people representing me. I think you folks who say one thing and do another are way less than honest. I have yet to hear of a single republican who will admit that what they are saying out loud about elections and people of color and women’s rights is not what they’re doing when they pass laws. These folks act like God himself is whispering in their ears. What a crock of bull.
Here’s the rub. Conservative thinking is not logical. Neither is liberal thinking. Both lines of thought are based in a belief structure. There should be a modicum of understanding of this fact by any politician of any stripe before they run for office. I think we’ve all been told not to throw stones when living in a glass house. No matter what conservative pundits say, conservative thinking is not God-given. There is no political thinking that is God-given. By their very nature, political concepts address only a facet of a whole. By considering politics from this perspective it makes good sense to have political parties. It is precisely at this point that I start to begin to wonder what it is that I’m looking at with Republican calls to violence. I have a hard time understanding how any part of, “violence is the last refuge of the incompetent,” could be beyond the computational abilities of a conservatively-trained mind. In case the conservatively challenged missed it, I’ll say it more clearly: if you were to think violence is the answer to any political problems or even electoral problems, I’d be inclined to think of you as incompetent.
Think about that for a moment, please. The Republican Party leader is about as incompetent as he can possibly be. He could only hold infrastructure together for weeks, if you will remember. He never got that bill passed. He couldn’t admit that covid was a global pandemic. He denied that it was even dangerous as his own people died by the thousands. It doesn’t get any more incompetent than that (unless you count the events on Jan 6th.) That was supposed to keep the Leader in power. But due to incompetence, the best he could muster is to watch it on television. The list of the man’s incompetence goes on and on. But then you all know all the painful reminders on that list.
Political positions on the far right or the far left are not ever going to be sustainable. If you’ve ever moved something heavy I think you probably came to the conclusion that moving it on one side and then the other side is much easier than moving all of it at once. In other words, walking forward requires two sides to move independently while moving together in a direction. Liberals move and understand a facet of our collective movement forward and conservatives understand a facet of our movement as well. The idea is to move the whole forward not to determine where forward is as the idea relates to only one facet of the total movement. It seems as though the conservative facet of our collective movement is frustrated that it has to depend on the liberal facet to advance ideas or even the economy and because it is so incompetent it can only resort to violence to support it’s aversion to reaching Agreement. When we pick Agreements we do not pick my way or pick your way, we pick the way which is best for everyone. If we are all going in the same direction then it really will not change anything if we include drift to the left from time to time then drift to the right from time to time. Where the error lives is when we put so much importance in our belief that we are righteous in our violent insistence that our way is the one and only way. Maybe we should take the wisdom of Ray Anthony so we can do the Hokey-Pokey and shake it all about.
It appears to be true that liberals need conservatives as much as conservatives need liberals, much the same way as trees which need fungus networks to sustain forests. The fungal networks in a forest can pass nutrients along to other trees lacking resources through the fungal networks. The same kind of thing happens when liberals fund programs to help people live. It’s the conservatives who keep the help within helpful limits just as the liberals keep conservatives from forgetting that they have obligations to support the health and well-being of their constituents. It’s almost as though liberals are the heart of the nation and conservatives are the head. Both are required to sustain life. That’s why I like to consider my belief structures to be necessary for me but at the same time there are many other belief structures which work extremely well for those who live within them. It is indeed the differences in belief structures which provides some of the more exquisite enjoyment found in life. No one wants to be considered incompetent just because their belief structure doesn’t fit someone else. But for heaven’s sake, it isn’t productive to resort to violence to reach Agreement with another belief structure. All belief structures are about the same universe after all.
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Forging Agreement’s newest on-demand workshop is coming to Teachable November 16. Learn more about the ideas that John introduces in his blogs in the Program Theory On-Demand Workshop!
One way to think about how your mind works is to consider it as a biocomputer. It has an operating system and different types of applications and programs that run when called, in similar fashion to a regular computer. The results of this workshop will give you new ways to consider your own beliefs, emotions, feelings and logical thoughts and how you can choose to modify them to meet your own requirements.
The workshop combines a series of on-demand videos with group discussions. Program Theory is taught by John Worthington and Paul Grenci. Stay tuned for the launch November 16, and contact @forgingagreement on Facebook or Instagram, @forgeagreement on Twitter, or email [email protected] for more information!
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The most recent online Reality Creation Through the Dyad Workshop has just wrapped up. The Dyad workshop is an exploration into the relationship that exists between two people- any two people. A Dyadic relationship can be with a spouse, significant other, business partner, co-workers, family members, etc. These relationships can be wonderful and challenging all at the same time, but that is the beauty of relationships; traversing the good, the bad and everything in between.
In this interactive workshop, couples/individuals are afforded the opportunity to examine ever so common problems and tried and true solutions that guarantee an ongoing relationship if one is warranted.
This workshop will be happening on a monthly basis and runs over 2 weeks of 4 consecutive evenings. Contact @forgingagreement on Facebook or Instagram, @forgeagreement on Twitter, or email [email protected] for more information!
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