{"id":2035,"date":"2010-04-21T08:45:54","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T15:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/?p=2035"},"modified":"2010-04-21T08:45:54","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T15:45:54","slug":"the-politics-of-half-full-or-half-empty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/21\/the-politics-of-half-full-or-half-empty\/","title":{"rendered":"The Politics of Half-Full or Half-Empty"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It seems to me that any discussion about what it\u2019s going to take to move the human race forward on its evolutionary path (which is what life is all about as far as I can see) needs to start with a basic question. Is our glass half-full or half-empty; do we live in a world of abundance or scarcity? For 5000 years (at least according to Riane Eisler\u2019s book The Chalice and the Blade<\/em><\/a>) we have framed the world in terms of scarcity. Not enough food to feed everybody. Not enough of the superior \u201cus\u201d to resist and\/or control all of the inferior \u201cthem\u201d (however \u201cthem\u201d is defined in any locale in any given moment in history). This has led to what, by conventional wisdom, is generally framed as an imperative (but I think is a choice) to adopt a human society based on a hierarchy of control that is often described as Patriarchy<\/a>, rather than the profoundly different societal model called Partnership.
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\nAs you can see by all the embedded hyperlinks, this piece is an attempt to get at an underlying axiom of how our society is modeled, and in the process connect various pieces I have written about that society. Forgive me if I am trying to cover too much ground too quickly and maybe with not enough filling in of the gaps and polishing the rough edges. Anyway… here goes…
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\nWe human beings are very adaptable creatures, maybe too adaptable at times. If we look around us and see the glass as half-empty, that there are not enough resources for everyone to thrive, then we tend to adopt an approach of fear, \u201ccircling the wagons\u201d and taking care of our own family, tribe or nation (however we define \u201cus\u201d) at the expense of others (\u201cthem\u201d). If, on the other hand, we see the glass as half-full, that there is enough to go around if we are thrifty and prudent, then we operate instead from love and share towards building an encompassing \u201cus\u201d.
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\nMany people argue persuasively that there is not enough food to feed the burgeoning population of the world, and there is merit in their argument because of two key choices some of us have made. But that said, about a billion of us (of the total six to seven billion) have chosen to adopt a meat-based diet that depletes the world of grain (at least six pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat) that could otherwise feed everyone.
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\nWe (among that billion) have also chosen a lifestyle involving excessive consumption of energy and riddled with other practices that waste a range of other resources. We celebrate our lifestyle in our cultural presentations (movie, television, etc) and put it forward to the rest of the world as a model to be strived for. Yet if even another one or two billion of the world\u2019s people adopt it, the strain on resources and the biosphere could well lead to mass starvation, fuel tans lacking gasoline, and air and water choked with toxic waste.
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\nThis celebration of excess puts pressure on the people among us that we have designated as our political and economic leaders to see the world\u2019s glass as half-empty and implement hierarchies of control through military and economic policies that protect \u201cus\u201d and our channels to all these resources from \u201cthem\u201d, those that might challenge us for access to those resources.
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\nAt a much more micro level within a single family, parents scan their community and societal landscape and see that good jobs are hard to find and that many people live difficult lives without enough. They make the choice (easy enough to do) to see the prospects for their children as half-empty, and through the resulting fear, adopt hierarchies of control to program their kid\u2019s lives to be the lucky\/smart ones who achieve \u201csuccess\u201d.
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\nThis puts pressure on our political and educational leaders to maintain an OSFA (one-size-fits-all) educational system, (the best possible system designed by the nation\u2019s best possible experts) that creates a programmed path through K-12 and university to the best jobs and that \u201csuccess\u201d. The path that has been designed by these experts is an increasingly structured and regimented \u201cschooling\u201d that provides for maximum control of the teachers and students by administrators and other \u201ceducrats\u201d that have to answer to parents.
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\nThis expertly designed path increasingly rewards those kids who can jump successfully through all the hoops of testing, ranking and graduation and best \u201cwork the system\u201d, assuming that they will learn what they need along the way and successfully plug into jobs in that \u201csystem\u201d. It also increasingly rewards those teachers that are willing focus their efforts on helping those kids \u201cwork the system\u201d.
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\nBut like any hierarchical system of control (see my piece on \u201cPower-Over Corrupts\u201d<\/a>), it tends toward corruption. It favors those parents, particularly the well-to-do ones with the time, wisdom, and resources to work the system to their kids\u2019 advantage. They can best ensure that their kids\u2019 have the more well endowed schools and necessary test preparation to best get to the finish line with the highest ranking (see my piece on \u201cA System Rank with Ranking\u201d<\/a>), and the best chance at those scarce good jobs.
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\nThis system tends to be perpetuated because it works at many levels, powering a consumer economy by driving families to over-consume educational (including test-prep) resources to assuage their fear and anxiety that they have done all that they can for their children. In a system featuring a hierarchy of control (in this case parents being responsible for their children\u2019s success) the \u201csuperiors\u201d (parents) are judged by how well their \u201cinferiors\u201d (their children) do in fulfilling these externally defined goals.
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\nI had my original epiphany watching Michael Moore\u2019s documentary \u201cBowling for Columbine\u201d, and realizing how much of American over-consumption is driven by fear and anxiety, and how much this viewing the world as half-empty feeds that fear and anxiety. Since watching Moore\u2019s provocative film, I cannot walk into a shopping mall without my skin crawling!
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\nThe alternative to all this ratcheting up of half-empty fear and anxiety (and the hierarchical societal structures it pushes us towards) is seeing (yes, choosing to see) the glass as half-full instead, framing the world in terms of abundance. If we relax, celebrate joy, lead with love, we have the resources, skill and wisdom to develop sustainable lifestyles that could be adopted by all six or seven billion Earthlings for one grand \u201cus\u201d. As the Police sang in their early 80s song \u201cOne World is Enough for All of Us\u201d, \u201cWe can all sink or we can float… \u2018cause we\u2019re all on this same big boat\u201d.
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\nRather than increasing hierarchies of control, putting their tentacles into increasing aspects of our lives to try to \u201cengineer\u201d success in difficult circumstance, instead we can develop hierarchies of facilitation, of power with, and celebrate our common \u201cus-ness\u201d. In this half-full framing, education can become the facilitation of the flowering of the unique gifts of every individual, rather than high-stakes programming and ranking towards an externally defined OSFA \u201csuccess\u201d. It\u2019s that contemporary gospel of \u201cDo what you love and the money will follow\u201d.
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\nInternational politics and economics can be about power-with and facilitation as well, minimizing the \u201cthem\u201d that we spend so much of our nation\u2019s treasury defending \u201cus\u201d against. As Tom Friedman writes in The World is Flat<\/em><\/a>, we can reframe…<\/p>\n

…the world as a level playing field in terms of commerce, where all competitors have an equal opportunity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We can gradually lose the corruption inherent in inequality and slowly save the resources we devote to defending ourselves against our own species, against the rest of \u201cus\u201d that are \u201con this same big boat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems to me that any discussion about what it\u2019s going to take to move the human race forward on its evolutionary path (which is what life is all about as far as I can see) needs to start with a basic question. Is our glass half-full or half-empty; do we live in a world […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[285,803,804,805,727,758,742,741,802,710,807,806],"class_list":["post-2035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-context","tag-chalice-and-the-blade","tag-defining-patriarchy","tag-hierarchies-of-control","tag-hierarchies-of-facilitation","tag-patriarchy-versus-partnership","tag-power-corrupts","tag-power-over","tag-power-with","tag-the-world-is-flat","tag-transforming-education","tag-transforming-institutions","tag-transforming-society"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2035"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2039,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035\/revisions\/2039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leftyparent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}