New Year's Questions

Happy New Year.

This time next year we'll be preparing to swear in (and at) a new leader of the free world, so to speak, and this begs the question, "Can a new temporary resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have any true impact on the damage done to and by this country during the past eight years?" Feel free to adjust that eight according to your own individual biases.

Whether this prospective tenant happens to be another white, Christian male, or a black or a woman, he or she will only get elected/selected/ appointed as a result of a perceived image that appeals to a majority of voters, regardless of party affiliation or lack thereof, and this guarantees that he or she will either truly live on the cutting edge--able to speak to diverse cultures, ethnicities, income levels, genders, sexual orientations and developmental worldviews with integrity and in a language that each recognizes and understands, or that he or she literally embraces and lives in the worldview that the majority of Americans inhabit, as does the current tenant, who despite some requisite postmodern rhetoric, behaves through the mythic-rational perspective that has caused most of our major problems, and which is incapable of resolving them.

As our late, quintessential minority, Audre Lorde, so insightfully pointed out, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house," or as virtually every developmental researcher discovers, each subsequent stage of development resolves some issues created by the preceding stage, and creates new issues of its own.

I've been asking myself too many questions for years now, and since I suffer from a belief that suggests that many issues become more pressing at real or imagined transition points such as the beginning of a new year or a change (or the appearance thereof) in leadership, I thought I'd share some of these questions with you.

Are you tired of all those programs that offer the secret to generating income beyond your wildest dreams, and is what you truly desire, as you move from one substitute gratification or substitute sacrifice to another, an experience that instead generates ongoing insight into who you truly are, whether or not you have or remember wild dreams?

How much do you identify with yourself as male or female; gay, straight, trans- or bisexual; tall, short, broad or narrow?

Are you defined by your skin pigmentation, hair texture, eye shape, or first language? Does your personality really exist, and if it does, are you aware of it?

Do you see yourself as a fundamentalist, moderate, liberal, agnostic or atheistic believer, and are you determined to convert the rest of us? Along these same lines, do you embrace Creation, Intelligent Design, Evolution or some politically correct, bland blend of them all, and if so, why? Do you believe literally, metaphorically, or allegorically, and can you see the value of each?

Do you learn best through a visual, auditory or kinesthetic approach? Are you hooked on phonics or whole language? An can you imbrase the long-turn value of invented speling?

Whether you're a dyed-in-the-wool, dead-in-the-water, or temporarily tatooed Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian, Socialist, Independent or Other, who is really the cause of all this suffering?

Do you feel that the answer to all our problems is for every child, woman and man to pull her- or himself up by the bootstraps or velcro fasteners and take responsibility for life; or is it the institutionalized racism, sexism, bigotry and poverty that keep us down, and that must themselves be taken down?

Were you victimized decades ago by a school system that recognized linguistic and rational-mathematical competence, but ignored your artistic gifts? Or have you been victimized more recently by progressive educators who let students discover their own gifts at their own pace, and never challenged your linguistic skills and rational abilities?

Do you think sustainability is a legitimate planetary issue? Is the globe warming? Are our natural resources polluted and on their way to depletion? Is fossil fuel finite? Is there a population crisis? Or are all these "issues" subtle strageties in an anti-capitalist plot?

In the feeling-thinking wars, where do you reside? Have you jettisoned your intellect in order to feel more fully? Do you think that feeling is just too touchy-feely in this post-9/11 world? What do you think about how you feel, and does it matter? How do you feel about your thoughts?

These will suffice now to scratch the surface of some general areas of concern as we count down to what may be the end or the continuation of the Project for the New American Century as our national worldview.

We get to choose. More questions to follow.

Happy New Year, again.