Evolution of Consciousness

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

That was Martin Luther King in 1967. 42 years later, I would say the approaching part is over. America is not only at spiritual death’s door, we’ve let ourselves in, gotten comfortable on the couch, helped ourselves to beer and pretzels, and have that glazed-over look we get when the Superbowl goes on too long.

At the time, King was addressing not only the Vietnam War but also the underlying reasons for America’s misguided foreign policy. He recognized that unless we grappled with these deeper motivations, there would be many more Vietnams to come. And he wondered whether America was mature enough to do it.

Well, the good news is that America is finally mature enough to elect itself a black president. This is certainly cause for celebration, but racism was only part of the problem King spoke of. He also identified materialism and militarism, and noted how America’s violence-prone foreign policy was often guided by naked concerns of wealth and investment. 

Naomi Klein’s recent book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism does an excellent job of looking at America’s international meddlings and illuminating their base economic interests. Assimilating the truths of her work will be America’s first step away from the spiritual death that King warned us of so many years ago.

Here’s a sad/fun thing to do: read the book Nineteen Eighty-Four and see how close we’ve come to living this Orwellian nightmare. Brutal interrogation and torture, perpetual wars and arms production, extensive monitoring and surveillance, widespread fear and propaganda…it’s amazing how prescient the author was, way back in 1949.

The thing that got me interested in rereading the book was the overtly manipulative abuse of language and logic that we’ve been subjected to lately. When I hear names like the “Clear Skies Act” or “Healthy Forests Initiative” I’ve learned to expect the opposite (how about “Happy Corporations Giveaway”). It’s been like dealing with a sleazy salesperson or a desperate junkie who has an ulterior motive and will say anything to try and get it.

Here’s hoping we’ve reached a nadir, and our “leaders” begin to respect the language, our intelligence, and the truth a little more.