RECLAIMING POLITICS & PATRIOTISM

The word politics doesn't mean corruption, greed and vying for power. It means stewardship for the place you call home. Politics means rising up when you don’t agree with how the government is being run, and realizing your power is needed - as a member of the republic - to decide what happens next. 

We don’t have to choose the ‘lesser of two evils’ or ignore the glaring hypocrisy of the candidates we vote for. We don’t have to accept the hollow and corrupt national politics that we’ve been conditioned to believe is our only option. We don’t have to choose between accepting a corrupt government or disengaging entirely. There is another choice. People created government. People can transform it. 

We don’t need a revolution against government. We need a resurgence of a new kind of patriotism. A patriotism that reclaims the original promise of America as a beacon of justice; in service to all Americans, all people, and all life on earth. Together we can revolutionize the values that define our government. 

This is an invitation to reclaim politics and patriotism. We need you, and millions like you, to rise up. To not run away. The world is counting on us to be brave enough to go into the darkest parts of our nation and transform them through our love, maturity and vision for a new era. 

THE POLITICAL RISE

The political LEFT and RIGHT are not our only options. Thinking about everything in terms of one side or another divides us and keeps us fighting each other, enabling other powers to run the government behind the scenes. The political entertainment industry is intentionally deceptive; a deliberate mechanism of control designed to distract and divide the American people. 

Now there is a new choice. Instead of fighting one another, we can rise together. This is the political RISE. It’s not defined by more or less government, free markets or more social services. It’s a new domain of political organizing - distinct from the left or right - defined by integrating different perspectives, holistic considerations, effective process and a vision for a thriving quality of life for all people and nature.

Now is a moment to give up the fight of left vs right, but not to give up on our governments. As we each rise in our leadership, claim our responsibility for the place we call home, and extend our compassion and care for all life, we become the political rise.

SYSTEMIC CRISIS

We’re not just facing one crisis. Our political, financial, media, military, food, health and corporate systems are woven together; locked into a failing trajectory towards a looming collapse that is already resulting in mass human suffering and species extinction around the world. Together these systems are failing us, failing to deliver their promise of a world that is healthy and free, decreasing liberty and extracting life from society and nature to funnel power to few. 

We are complicit with, and responsible for these systems, when we accept the systemic failures as normal. Watching, purchasing, consuming and voting without thinking for ourselves about the impact of our choices. 

Our society’s biggest problems are interconnected in a web of corrupt systems. These systemic challenges may have previously felt too overwhelming, too big, too immovable to change. But now, as civilization collapse is more real than ever before, we have a new choice to rise up and take focused, strategic and consistent actions that accelerate systemic transformations. 

We can’t gradually reform our way out of this crisis. We have the responsibility to turn this systemic crisis into a re-birth of our civilization, enabling something new to emerge through the chaos and disruption. 

The tragic pain and loss of systems failure doesn’t need to be in vain. Out of the ashes of the dying era, a new civilization can emerge. If we choose to create it. 

ALL-WIN LEADERSHIP

Even the best intentioned leaders of our world have been driven by the dangerous and over-simplistic win/lose mindset that sees the whole world through the lens of us vs. them. Candidates have built support by pitting people against the ‘other.’ This form of leadership is constantly dividing, polarizing, fighting and appealing to fear. Win/lose leadership accepts hurting some, so others can gain.  

While the world has been defined by win/lose thinking, it doesn’t have to stay that way. There is another choice. 

All-win leadership invites support and partnership by showing a vision for a thriving future in which all can win. All-win leadership focuses on integrating multiple perspectives and uniting diverse groups to create something together they could never create on their own. 

All-win leadership does not tolerate the collateral damage of our existing systems. Preventable disease, addiction, suicide, homelessness, ecocide and state-sponsored murder are neither necessary, nor acceptable parts, of modern society. Like a concerned parent caring for their family, all-win leaders strive for all to be safe, dignified and included in creating our future.

CIVILIZATION REDESIGN

Quick fixes, half-measures, reforms and temporary solutions have proven insufficient to produce a world that is fair, just and free. This is our time to get to the root of why our civilization still produces so much suffering and destruction, and understand it so we can redesign it and integrate the best of modern technology, ancient wisdom and planetary stewardship.

In our future, how will we want to experience government, money, community, food, technology, energy and individual work? Like the Apollo project, a massive interdisciplinary undertaking to get a man to the moon and back, we can choose to create a Civilization Project to redesign the operating system of our world, experiment with new modes of organizing society, share what we are learning with each other, and begin to scale up the best of our human intelligence and creativity in a multi-decade journey of discovery in service to creating the most thriving human civilization imaginable. 

To design a world that works for all, we need everyone. We need local communities, states and nations to join forces in an unprecedented coordination of human creativity. As concerned citizens of our world, it is up to us to ensure our governments’ full participation in designing, implementing and stewarding our best possible future.

MOVEMENTS SHAPING HISTORY

There was a time when women couldn’t vote. Now they can. 

There was a time when explicit racial segregation was legal. Now it’s not. 

What we now understand as massive injustices were once normal.

How could such massive transformations take place? 

Social movements across history have organized the general public around a strategy to create structural change, implemented deliberate tactics designed to shift the system, and remained persistent in building mass social movements until the targeted societal transformations were achieved. 

Non-violent groups of well-organized citizens have liberated nations from colonization, replaced oppressive dictators with democracy, and transformed policies designed to subjugate one class under another.  

Movements with strategy, precision, and coordination have reliably transformed what was previously imagined to be impossible. 

We don’t have to settle for feeling stuck, powerless and incapable of breaking the cycles of systemic oppression. Every aspect of our world can be transformed if we choose to organize with courage and unrelenting passion; following those who have come before who showed us how to turn visions of a better world into reality.