The Constitution of the United States was crafted in a vibrant milieu that is succinctly described by Descartes’s phrase, “I think, therefore I am.” This phrase has traditionally been taught as one that empowers individuals to reclaim self-worth and political power against another era of government described by Louis XIV’s “I am the State,” an era in which too many people were disposable and starved by the policies of their own government.
This year, we seem to be on the precipice of a return to tyranny that I believe is describe thusly: “I fear, therefore I hate.” World-systems historians and economists are not surprised to see a resurgence of hate-speech roughly 75 years since the fascist era in which Europeans nearly self-annihilated through genocide. We can chalk this up to Kondratieff cycles in objective, quantitative analyses. Philosophers and political scientists can do the same using Hegelian dialectic. The danger is that, while we write, the ink in our pens and printers may turn from black to the macabre iron oxide red of spilled human blood.
One of the tragedies of the 2016 presidential election discourse is the inward focused, navel-gazing that blinds too many from the positive achievements of the United Nations Millennium Development campaign. There is a beautiful movement in the world in which those who ascribe to “I think, therefore I am” are working collectively to use laboratory and indigenous scientific knowledge to find and implement sustainable solutions to climate change. http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sdgoverview/
“We are, therefore we will” is the zeitgeist of the planet now. The human family has decided that we will live and we have a collective will to do so with dignity. Many of us will still be poor in terms of material goods but we will not live in poverty. We will not be poor in spirit.
Ironically, it is the spirit of the U.S. Constitution, that document that secured and stabilized the first nation to throw off the chains of colonialism, that catalyzes the global evolution from “I think, therefore I am” toward “We are, therefore we will.”
Please, as you encounter those who suffer from and succumb to “I fear, therefore I hate,” inoculate them with love and kindness and knowledge that humankind, people of all colors, religions, genders and creeds, has decided to work to help them transcend the poverty of body or soul that ails them. They have no need to hate anyone or anything but fear, itself.
profmrobinson 