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05/20/2002 Archived Entry: "5/1/02 May Day"

May Day was the holiday of the old left. It would be interesting to learn how such a delightfully pagan holiday became associated with the portentous somberness of the Communists.

When I was quite young I remember dancing around a May pole at school. Things must have been different then, as it would be hard to imagine schools being allowed to celebrate such a pagan affair these days.

What a contrast: On the one hand I see people dressed with garlands and flowers dancing around the May pole; On the other, I see lines and lines of troops marching through Red Square on a gray spring morning. What a coil we humans wind around ourselves. How bizarre the directions we go in.

The old left was made up of intellectuals trying to make the world a better place for humanity. They were really good people. However, there is such a great danger in allowing belief in ideology take precedence over love for one’s fellow human beings. I know the difference all too well. For much of my life, while I felt love for the collective theoretical humanity, I was not able to extend that love to individual actual human beings. I have met many activists over the years who inhabit that place.

The result was anger-based politics, the politics of self-righteousness and blame. Anger-based politics is not part of the solution, but the problem. We are all too ready as a species to give ourselves excuses to justify treating our opposition, the other, as less than fellow human beings.

In our country, we have reaped the bitter harvest of what we have collectively sown. For most of us, it has not been done so through intention, but rather, a lack of conscious intention. We have allowed ourselves to be lulled by our creature comforts and the abundance of our entertainment industry. That our government has been auctioned off lock, stock and barrel to the highest bidder has not registered, because we do not pay attention. That our abundance is to a large degree based on what is essentially slave labor all around the planet has not registered either. The result is the current rogue government, which is owned entirely by the oil industry. As it was written in the book "Shogun:" "Karma, neh?"

The thing is, those of us who perceive the problem, need to understand what it is we have to do to be able to effectively communicate with those who do not. Blame, anger, and self-righteousness, are not tools which will bring us any closer to effective communication.