well. i am depressed. i'm still in bed but i have to get up and prepare for oliver's return tonight. he is very sad. i am very sad. i know that liberal values will continue to exist, especially here in san francisco, but i am worried and this is a huge setback. i am especially disgusted at the states which voted to ban gay marriage, and especially terrified at the possibility of what bush's supreme court judges will do.
i'd like to urge all deviants to be especially deviant today as self affirmation. that's right: please have vast amounts of beautiful gay sex on this day! tattoos: yes! if you are on welfare, please, go buy yourself something nice with my tax money. and for heaven's sake if you have an arts grant, please use it to do completely genius and utterly obscure performance art. don't give up. raise weird children. and get yourself strong because there is a lot to do.
i love you, california and new york.
and here is a message from alex grey:
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 16:54:49 -0500
From: Alex Grey
To: COSM5
Subject: post-election pep talk
Dear CoSM family,
Allyson and I wanted to share a reflection from J.P. Harpignies, a good
friend of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors project and organizer of Bioneers (San Fran) and Open Center (NYC) events. As we ponder our paths through
Samsara, J.P. offers us a long view.
With love,
Alex and Allyson
**************
Dear friends,
The election results have been bleak indeed, and I am certainly as
disheartened and depressed about it as I suspect many of you are. We
"progressives" will certainly need to be far more creative and nimble
in coming years to defend our values and make any headway at all,
given the harsh reality of the current US socio-political landscape,
and I'm sure a lot of thought and debate will occur in coming months,
once the shock and disbelief pass. (Secession of the Northeast and
West to join Canada?, etc)
But I am writing to you now just to try and ease the pain a little by
urging you to take a long view. The struggles we are involved in are
profound, long-term battles for the soul of human civilization. It is
never easy for those seeking to bring forth new, more expansive and
generous social forms and cultural values. In the short and medium
term, fear and greed tend to trump compassion. But a long look at the
last few centuries reveals that, despite gruesome violence, more
equitable, inclusive and humane worldviews slowly triumphed and
became norms. Progress is never linear. Periods of retreat and
reaction (such as this one) are inevitable. The most important
movements for social justice (the abolition of slavery, women's
suffrage, civil rights, etc) have often taken hundreds of years to
win even partial victories. Still, outright, unapologetic racism,
once the norm in our culture, is now a taboo; blatant sexism as well.
Progress often continues to occur at the deep level of shared social
values (if painfully slowly at times), regardless of who is in power.
All empires fade away. Beauty and truth have much longer shelf lives.
Globally, authentic eco-awareness is spreading. It certainly won't be
sufficient to prevent some devastating environmental crises (massive
extinctions, climatic disruptions, etc) which are inevitable at this
point, but it may permit humanity to regroup sufficiently to protect
enough biodiversity and ecosystems to transition at some point to
more sustainable economies and avoid the worst apocalyptic scenarios.
Even that will require decades of painful struggle, but saving at
least some of a wondrous planetary biosphere and some of its dazzling
sentient beings, perhaps unique in the universe, seems worth whatever
struggle we can muster.
The main point is that we must not lose hope. It is in the domain of
deep culture, not political power, that lasting change really takes
root. Let us all, whatever our niches and areas of expertise,
continue to pollinate saner worldviews. We in the US may have to do
it more modestly and cleverly for a while, at local or regional
rather than national levels in some cases, perhaps, but we can find
ways to win some victories, lay foundations for future changes in the
political "weather" and spread our values in the deep strata of the
collective unconscious, like the mycelia below the forest floor that
grow hidden from obvious sight, and emerge when the conditions are
propitious. One of the best ways to do that is to live joyously and
generously (if you can), as that communicates better than anything
the real value of your worldview.
One advantage of a period such as this is that it should help us
clear away pipe dreams and expectations of sudden magical change.
Whatever work we do will have to be time-tested, realistic and
centered. Many of us will be pondering new directions and new ideas,
but for now, my advice, whether you work alone at a desk, in your
community garden or in an activist organization, or wherever, is to
keep on keeping on, despite the current darkness, and enjoy life to
the fullest....
in solidarity, jp
J.P. Harpignies
