Many Worldviews

This essay is focusing upon the current-day U.S. economy, the loss of good-paying jobs here, the continuing erosion of the U.S. middle class, and the forthcoming U.S. midterm elections.

In early October 2008, Jim and I drove to mid Pennsylvania to visit my daughter, Kim, and her partner, Bob. During our trip we saw mile after mile of the decaying U.S. industrial infrastructure, a system Jim had been part of during its vibrant years in the 1950s and 1960s. When he graduated from Michigan State University in 1956 with a degree in industrial engineering, his first job was with a Michigan company that designed and built conveyor systems. From there, in the later 1950s he had been a plant engineer in Pennsylvania, and then in the 1960s a sales engineer and sales manager with a large automotive parts manufacturer and supplier in Michigan. The big three U.S. automobile companies—Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler—had been some of his customers. He also had many customers in other states.

During our fall 2008 trip Jim and I had ongoing conversations, where he described his experiences amidst America‘s industrial and manufacturing heyday when we were an industrialized nation that hadn‘t been directly involved in the destructions of World War II that other industrialized nations had experienced. Adding to Jim‘s industrial engineering education and 1950s-1960s experiences, there were also the individual and combined studies we did when we lived in the Sierra mountain foothills from 1975 to early 1986. And then when we cashed out our northern California lives and came to Michigan, Jim directly updated himself and me, from when he left the state in 1970 to join with me in southern California. Over the years, in our own ways, he and I have continued to build upon our past experiences, studies, and Understandings—so the picture he has today is one he has given a lot of considered thought to.

Currently Jim sees energies in motion by many spirit-being humans here in the U.S., who together share worldviews wherein they believe that if the American free enterprise system is unshackled, removing government restrictions and financial burdens upon personal creativity and ingenuity, our American culture will be able to ascend to its former glory. As Jim and I both see our economic situation currently in the U.S., that‘s a simplistic picture that won‘t work in today‘s world. But nevertheless Jim thinks the people who share that worldview need to play their scenarios out in the real world, and experience its impracticality and unrealistic assumptions.

Why do he and I both think the implementation of a restructured American free enterprise worldview is impractical, unrealistic, and won‘t work today? Because it‘s based upon an erroneous picture to start with of the Earth system itself and who/what we are as human Beings, including our human place within that system.

One of the differences between Jim and my perspectives has been and is that I do not believe these energies that are in motion for a revamped American free enterprise system need to be played out in the present or future. I think there are enough U.S. citizens who also passionately care about our country, who are not into extreme and simplistic positions, and who are truly Understanding that neither one of our two major political parties and their worldviews are currently able to set forth an economic plan and implement it effectively, that will work in today‘s world. (So of course many Americans are currently feeling a lot of anxiety.)

I hear a generalized anger and frustration across our land, that is not just limited to Tea Party people. And I think what one woman expressed at a town hall meeting recently was well-stated: She had thought Obama had some secret, that he was going to wave a magic wand and it would all be better. In other words, for many of us our hopes were high when Obama was elected—I had hoped the country would become less confrontational and less partisan, where there would be a bipartisan unity of purpose. What has really happened is that currently we are fast approaching midterm elections, where there has been more money spent than ever before in attempts to defeat the opposition, sometimes in increasingly vicious ways.

Throughout my Life, as an encultured spirit-being with a female body organism, I felt varying degrees of impotence. So by no longer using any of my personally constructed previous limitations, and with Jim‘s most recent encouragement, I'm stating as clearly as I can my perspective about the United States of America today. In my opinion, trying to bring back what we as a culture were able to experience in one period of time, in one specific national/global context, is impossible in today‘s world … and is a waste of our current-day national time, attention, and other valuable resources.

Thus far I haven‘t heard anyone with enough cultural stature clearly state: The days of U.S. economic superiority and supremacy, of being Number One, have already been experienced … IT‘S OVER … and now we‘re all amidst a new era. Many of the good-paying industrial jobs with benefits that built much of the American middle class and our Life styles after World War II are gone now, and they won‘t be recovered in terms of the numbers of people and pay scales of earlier years.

What about American workers being competitive with the rest of the world‘s workers? In the first place, look at many other countries‘ pay scales, contrasted with what it takes to monthly pay for our middle class American living standards. This contrast isn‘t just in manufacturing, but includes white-collar jobs, which via the Internet, can be filled by competent workers in other countries at far less costs. What about our advanced U.S. innovative abilities? Other countries have been training their own skilled innovators, scientists, and engineers. And even more significantly, in my opinion other countries are also basing their economic growth and development, their hopes and dreams, upon erroneous and unsustainable assumptions, such as the U.S. has done. I think the global competition race is over because it depends upon the continued exploitation and destruction of this current-day Earth, the Life-support system for all species, including humans.

And what about the influence money is having here on elections? I think the U.S. Supreme Court‘s 5-4 decision in the Citizens United case this past January was a temporary cultural game-changer when it said corporations had the same free-speech rights as ordinary citizens, allowing unlimited campaign spending by corporations and unions. As an aftermath of the ruling, additional organizations have sprung up along with updated past ones, to collect and funnel money from wealthy individuals and businesses who want to control the 2010 election results in state and national races. Well, from my point of view this too is all part of spirit-being people using their personal creativity and power from within the belief-construction matrixes they are amidst. And even though we here in the U.S. are experiencing a barrage of TV ads and postal mailings, I think the current use of huge sums of money will ultimately not work either, because it too is not grounded in the basic reality of this Earth system.

To my way of thinking, even though the past is over it can be used in the present for Understandings of why what has happened has happened. So that‘s mainly the reason I‘m doing the blog postings I‘m doing lately, to add my voice to those of others who are also emphasizing certain versions of common sense and sanity for the present and future.

Postscript. Because Jim and I are senior citizens, we have already voted by absentee ballot. As previously stated, neither one of us think either the Democrats or Republicans have a plan that is realistic for today‘s world; but with the alternatives we had, we both voted a straight Democratic ticket. I voted that way because I think the Democrats will more than likely do less harm than the Republicans would do with their agendas. Jim voted as he did because he doesn‘t feel personally good about supporting the Republican agenda, even though he thinks it may have to be implemented in some ways to show it won‘t work either, opening the door to other ideas and ways of Being. Also, we both voted no to all local mileages, that is to not expand the existing reality and put a stop to the expansion of the existing system, with the exception of voting yes on one fee for recycling. We concluded this was the best we each could do as deeply caring U.S. citizens at this moment in our country‘s ongoing story.

With More Love, J.