The small us

Sometimes I have to catch myself trying to be clever. I was attempting that this morning. I felt the burning need to say something about the situation in Syria. Something profound. You know what, I got nothing. The situation in the Middle East is fucked…pure and simple. I certainly have no solutions. I don’t believe Obama has them either. Maybe the truth is, there aren’t any.

But as I was taking a long meditation walk this morning it did dawn on me that all this shit is nothing more than the product of the “small us” mindset. The same one that shows up frequently…

– in religious jihad
– and corporate boardrooms
– and school yards
– and local churches
– in the United Nations
– in local town council meetings
– in PTA conferences
– at sporting events
– in books
– movies
– ideologies
– anywhere people gather…

this arch-enemy of the absolute good tends to rear its ugly head.

Here’s a video clip of a very smart small us proponent being surprisingly honest and frank about what motivates the “small us”…

I couldn’t agree more…greed and selfish interest are at the heart of the small us. And greed and selfish interest are what allow a dictator like…

to cause this…

I believe the solution is not going to be with government, but with people. That is, getting people to think “big US” rather than the small one. Sure there was a time, not too long ago, when that kind of talk would be overly idealistic and impractical. But that was before connectivity. Now we live in a hyper-connected world. A world in which the “small us” mindset is losing its popularity. We can see its effects on a world-wide scale like never before. It gets harder for small us proponents to hide them. They show up in videos on YouTube recorded by kids with Iphones.

Impact Mindfulness is all about adopting the mindset of the big US. It is recognizing that no one has the right to bully, disrespect, nor denigrate a fellow human, nor harm our planet,  just because doing so somehow perpetuates their greed and selfish interest. That should be simple enough to understand, but for some reason, there are those who just don’t get it.

We need to help them.

Where do we find “these angels” that will “organize society”?

Well, there’s really only one practical place to begin that search…inside yourself.