{"id":469,"date":"2012-06-29T15:43:49","date_gmt":"2012-06-29T23:43:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=469"},"modified":"2012-06-29T15:44:57","modified_gmt":"2012-06-29T23:44:57","slug":"disney-getting-metaphysical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=469","title":{"rendered":"Disney Getting Metaphysical?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Walt Disney Corporation apparently has sponsored this song about the way we\u2019re all in this together<\/strong><\/em>, a song, \u201cOne Everything.\u201d (It is sung by the group, They Might be Giants<\/a>.\u201d The implications are significant: If it is indeed so that we are part of an \u201cEverything\u201d (and Spinoza equated this mind-boggling idea with God), then we need to shift from war-making to peace-making, and it won\u2019t be easy. But let\u2019s start by laying down the first layer\u2014that it may be a goal. I\u2019m reminded of a brief poem I learned as a teenager:
   He drew a circle that shut me out:
   Rebel, heretic, \u2018thing\u2019 to flout.
   But Love and I had the wit to win:
   We drew a circle that brought him \u2018in.\u2019<\/p>\n

Not that this paradigm shift of our era is altogether new; rather, few followers of Yeshua ben Yusuf (aka Jesus) got the message: When Jesus talked of \u2018loving your enemies,\u2019 He was not describing a submissive, wishy-washy ethos. On the contrary, one needs a good deal of courage and character to hang in there without feeling humiliated for being partly wrong (or even limited) or attributing less than positive motives to your \u201cenemy.\u201d An enemy might be simply an antagonist in a given conflict\u2014a wife or child or parent; it need not be an entrenched, murderous enemy. True maturity develops the skills of tact, diplomacy, persistence, patience, caring about the others\u2019 priorities. You need not agree with their proposed solutions, but neither should you become overly attached to your own earlier solutions. Give and take includes giving a bit, and doing this without submitting, but rather in the spirit of working out a compromise because you truly value the needs of others who don\u2019t share your scale of priorities.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut they should<\/em>?\u201d I can hear someone asking, and in a slightly defiant tone, adding, \u201cWhy?\u201d Below that I hear a not explicitly stated attitude-feeling, perhaps preconscious: \u201cIndeed, why? I don\u2019t feel as if my beliefs—shared by others—is anything less than \u2018in the right.\u2019\u201d The point I\u2019m making is that the unconscious mind has an ingenious capacity to come up with seemingly plausible reasons for whatever you want! That\u2019s what is meant by the term, rationalization<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For example, I recently saw the  movie \u201cThe Lorax,\u201d (inspired by Dr. Seuss), in which the protagonist not only becomes caught up in the ecological devastation caused by his economic ambitions, but rationalizes<\/em> it by the phrase, \u201cI\u2019m following my destiny!\u201d It turns out that every nasty ambition can be rationalized\u2014the unconscious mind is indeed that clever. So knowing this and being aware of the need to resist illusion, resist the sense of justification, and care about what the others feel and think\u2014this takes a particular kind of consciousness-expanding process. Loving your enemies in this view is nothing weak, but the height of strength, more than mere strength through brutality.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re in an era when it is becoming apparent that war  (or even intimidation under threat of violence) is untenable: Too many people have cheap and powerful weapons and communications devices, and control by tyrants or well-meaning (rationalization, remember) guardians of \u201claw and order\u201d is becoming almost untenable. Fighting over who\u2019s right isn\u2019t going to cut it: It\u2019s time to address how we can work it out without the terrible, terrible cultural disruption and breakdown, in addition to a host of sufferings that add to the loss of lives, that come with war.<\/p>\n

Anyway, this song, One Everything, echoes a coming sensibility that is written about by the Dalai Lama regarding religion and many other idealists. Us versus them may yet become subsumed as we mature as a species into a larger sense that we\u2019re all in this together, because in part there is only one everything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Walt Disney Corporation apparently has sponsored this song about the way we\u2019re all in this together, a song, \u201cOne Everything.\u201d (It is sung by the group, They Might be Giants.\u201d The implications are significant: If it is indeed so that we are part of an \u201cEverything\u201d (and Spinoza equated this mind-boggling idea with God), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,16,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-papers","category-spirituality-and-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}