Opinion
The King Center describes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Beloved Community as, “a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.”
With the tools of mindfulness and compassion, civil discourse, and mindful governing, it is possible to usher in an era reflective of the Beloved Community.
We are passing through a historic moment in US history: the election of the first black woman to Vice President of the United States and the insurrection and attack on the US Capitol during a pandemic.
A transfer of power, historically, can be a critical juncture during which governments may collapse and fall, dictatorships seize power and rise to action, as well as when massive political, financial, and socioeconomic disruptions can occur throughout a nation. Global disruptions like a pandemic, food insecurity, insufficient or non-existent healthcare, and cataclysmic environmental events (such as massive wildfires, earthquakes, 1000-year flood events, climate change) can exacerbate conditions for dramatic social, political, or economic upheavals.
The United States could be on the brink of becoming a failed state.
A failed state is defined in Brittanica in part as follows: “The governing capacity of a failed state is attenuated such that it is unable to fulfill the administrative and organizational tasks required to control people and resources and can provide only minimal public services. Its citizens no longer believe that their government is legitimate, and the state becomes illegitimate in the eyes of the international community.”
The world has been in a global pandemic for well over one year. With regards to the pandemic, the US government has been, “unable to fulfill the administrative and organizational tasks required to control people and resources and can provide only minimal public services.” This definition as written also applies to the US government and its response to terrorism by white supremacists, global climate change, and a national economic recession which is also being felt like an economic depression by some communities, industries, and business owners. This definition applies to the US government regarding the overall economic and financial stability of institutions and individuals as well as the capacity of this body politic to govern while utilizing a shared sense of responsibility and duty to the US Constitution and a shared, agreed-upon sense of facts as well as accountability.
The conditions are set for a very difficult period that could lead to a collapsed US society.
Historically, nations and nation-states have experienced widespread disruption when a transfer of power occurs in a climate of political unrest, economic and social instability, changes in climate or environmental stability, destabilizing of public safety, when large groups of marginalized people are publicly classified as enemies of the state by powerful voices, and in political climates in which leaders and large groups of people have amplified the message that, despite all evidence to the contrary, an election was somehow compromised and should be disregarded.
What we are witnessing in the US is economic, social, and political upheaval which could lead to the collapse of a superpower.
Within this perilous moment is the possibility for the US to mindfully rebuild its infrastructure, the legislation of the rule of law, and its elected-body consciousness in ways that support the livelihood and thriving of all beings, in ways that are driven by legislating and acting with compassion for all beings. This requires elected officials, community leaders, and the citizenry to practice deep introspection, discipline, cultivation of empathy and compassion. One tool to do this is through the use of compassion-based, insight mindfulness tools. Mindfulness skills and teachings may be applied to model a compassion-based society in which the suffering of all beings is seen, empathized with, acknowledged, and resolved skillfully.
Ways to do this are by seeking out specific training. Meditation teacher Ruth King leads a “Mindful of Race Training” program. She also cultivated a “Racial Affinity Group Development Program.” King’s services allow participants to learn and apply mindfulness skills to increase racial awareness, to build compassion-based communities, and to help co-create a just, equitable world.
Consider working with author and meditation leader Dr. Hugh Byrne. Byrne has cultivated mindfulness tools to address habit change and to build compassion-based social transformation. Byrne and others built mindful politics tools centered around the 2016 and 2020 U.S. elections for use by communities in multiple geographic areas and online.
To begin to learn general mindfulness practice skills, InsightLA is a non-profit meditation community offering a wide variety of online meditation classes and online teachings to learn compassion-based wellness practices. Its teachers and visiting instructors include Dr. Trudy Goodman, Oren Jay Sofer, Kaira Jewel Lingo, Dr. Kristin Neff, Tuere Sala, Jack Kornfield, Konda Mason, Lama Rod Owens, Sharon Salzberg, and Phillip Moffitt.
In “Coming to Our Senses,” Jon Kabat-Zinn, a pioneer in mindfulness, writes: “I don’t know about you, but for myself, it feels like we are at a critical juncture of life on this planet. It could go any number of different ways. It seems that the world is on fire and so are our hearts, inflamed with fear and uncertainty, lacking all conviction, and often filled with passionate but unwise intensity. How we manage to see ourselves and the world at this juncture will make a huge difference in the way things unfold. What emerges for us as individuals and as a society in future moments will be shaped in a large measure by whether and how we use our innate and incomparable capacity for awareness in this moment. It will be shaped by what we choose to do to hear the underlying distress, dissatisfaction, and outright dis-ease of our lives and of our times, even as we nourish and protect all that is good and beautiful and healthy in ourselves and in the world.”
This is a somber moment. Let us not move lightly through it. Let us process it with consciousness so we are fully awake and aware of the steps we are choosing, the paths we are paving, as well as the precedent and legacy we are establishing as we collectively move forward.
