Out with the old, in with the Great Conjunction
As above, so below. How to facilitate peace and harmony throughout our land
vol. 2 issue 60
Greetings,
It’s the third week of the docu-mental membership drive.
For my new patron level subscribers, I would hug you in welcome, but covid, so, instead, I say thank you and send you a warm smile from behind my face mask.
I always feel a tingle of gratitude when I get the reports showing me how docu-mental has grown and continues to grow. I am especially touched by those of you who believe in the value of this publication enough to give it as a gift subscription. I am committed to making your choice a good one.
Because I have the attention of people in pockets all across America, and because I love this country so much, I have been wondering how to direct this power you all continue to invest in me toward achieving something worthwhile, something that you can take from here and apply elsewhere. After all, you could always find something – anything! – else to read on the Internet.
Our starting point at the start of 2019 was mapping our shared states of mind, which I identified pre-covid as being anxious. Then we moved on to healing our states of mind, which has focused in part on identifying the components of our national soul and addressing what is oppressing it, but really, has been about calling out the anti-democratic forces that directly fan our anxieties and depression.
And all along, with my nifty little trademark in my back pocket, I have been soft-peddling the idea of creating herd immunity to anxiety and depression ™ by illuminating how our economic and social policies are themselves as much or more public health threats than any infectious disease.
But then during this pandemic, the out-going administration went and tainted the true meaning of herd immunity by taking a passive approach to creating it, rather than an active one, and if I am going to wave the flag of herd immunity, I have damage control to undertake, even if it’s not of my own making.
In 2021, I still plan to keep showing the ironic correlations between bad policy and bad mental health outcomes – namely, that as long as we don’t take care of our people with sensible infrastructure, healthy anti-trust laws, and equitable social safety nets, we will always have public mental health crises – but is that enough?
What’s been both energizing, if not somewhat puzzling, is that docu-mental readership seems to be growing in two distinct kinds of places: progressive bastions like Portland, OR, but also in places where MAGA is prevalent, such as in southwestern Florida. I’ve been wondering how to best serve both demographics.
One obvious conclusion might be that I already am communicating a message that appeals to people who are not centrist. If so, phew, but if so, it might be interesting for you to know how I see myself. Regardless of how you classify my take on things, from my perspective, even when I flare up in anger at this current administration and especially the Republicans on Capitol Hill, I see myself as socially liberal, but fiscally conservative. I am not thrilled by mobs in the streets, no matter what brought them out, and I don’t really like the idea of more than a two-party system. I also object to nearly every change to MLB regulations post-Fay Vincent as commissioner, but I adjust.
If only the alien spaceships hadn’t landed on Capitol Hill and released all these weird pod people pretending to be Republicans, who then took power, outraging me to bits in the process, I might reclaim my erstwhile party. But, until the mothership returns to collect these demons from outer space, I will have to demur.
What I am getting at is that more than anything else, I just want things to make sense.
Which is to say, “Yes, please!”, to a country run by Latinx transsexuals and black lesbians where the system of taxation is clear and straightforward, as well as fair and reliable, and the white Evangelical church on the corner welcomes everyone to its bake sale as well as its come-as-you-are Sunday morning sermon, and all that teachers in the public schools need be concerned with is literacy and STEM.
If I could shake my fiscally conservative snow globe and behold as the glittering white dust settled over my perfect fantasyland within it, I would see there a peaceful scene indeed: a gleaming place with people of all walks of life who were happy, accepted, and calm because they knew they could rely on their infrastructure being accessible to all, the presumption being that no one is inherently more deserving than another. I think my fairyland might aptly be animated by the Spirit of ’76, and its guiding documents be the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
But while I fantasize a rainbow world in a glittering glass globe, and fret over the aliens predating upon us (I’m not willing to concede that is a fantasy, actually), there remains the question of how to respond to what’s actually happening across our nation. How can we make sense and move forward at a time when truth is no longer truth, and intolerance is the norm?
If there was ever any unifying truth in America, it would have been e pluribus unum, which was undermined when the need to posture against Communism was deemed more important and In God We Trust supplanted it. Since then, the upward trending intolerance for whatever interferes with our abject need to feel special has driven the wedge between us, a phenomenon stoked by curated newsfeeds that play to our need to always being the hero of our story, and also by corporate media and other monopolies that have colonized our minds with what our “brand” should be, to hell with the rest.
So, until our original national mission statement is restored, I think the best way any of us can serve one another is to operate from the place between the extremes where democracy, neuroscience, and religion – or at the very least, spirituality – intersect: our minds, and in particular, our brains.
We’ll know we’re in that space if we’re just being kind.
Last month, while addressing our national political divide, James Griffith, MD, a psychiatrist and thought leader in the sort of political negotiation that relies upon healing one-on-one community relationships gave us the fairly straightforward insight into how kindness works. Basically, we have two brain circuitry systems to choose from whenever we interact with people. We can choose to operate from what I will call the lizard brain because it’s primitive, or we can choose the wizard brain because it’s wise and evolved, and might even be magical.
The first is the brain circuitry of group think, the latter is the circuitry of the true individual, the kind I think our Constitution was referring to when it talked about each of us having a right to happiness of our own choosing. That’s the individualism that comes from knowing who you are and what you need without having to get others’ approval of it before you will allow yourself to have it. Or, in other words, the opposite of intolerance.
And if we’re kind to each other, I think we can buy ourselves a little time to learn how to operate in a world of so much righteousness. Oh! And I should note, Dr. Griffith explained how what got him interested in the neuroscience of niceness was seeing people essentially be two-faced, and how that didn’t really lead to progress.
But why I think we can buy ourselves some time if we’re nice is because of something another medical professional, a labor and delivery nurse, once told me: no matter what is happening in a medical crisis, how the patient is treated is what everyone will remember when the crisis has passed.
Expanding on that, I think is the sentiment at the heart of good customer service, which too many of our elected officials, (mostly the ones from outer space) don’t grasp: even if the outcome isn’t what we might have hoped, if we felt as though everyone was attuned to our pain, and that we mattered to all involved, then to a great extent, even in death, a victory can be claimed because humanity prevailed.
You know, I yell at the TV just like you probably do whenever it spews the dysentery of bullshit from the mouths of what sometimes can seem like everyone talking on every network. And I have colorful ways of describing some of the nematodes squirming around my adopted hometown of Washington. But, also probably like you, I would far rather grant someone whose views I abhor a moment of empathy and peace if it might lead that person to see me for who I am, too.
I’m selfish that way. But, to me, treating others the way I want to be treated also just makes sense.
PS…
And there is a coda to this, I realize. Also in the past year, mundane astrologer Elisabeth Grace elucidated for us how our national myth in America is that of the tough guy who swoops in to save the day, especially to protect hearth and home.
But, we all want to be the hero of our story, which is why it is so hard to tell ourselves the truth when we don’t actually act in a heroic way, and why we are so easily seduced by those curated newsfeeds that reinforce just how golly darn smart we are.
Some of us really are heroic. But, the rest of us, when we’re sincerely kind, kinda sorta are heroic, because it’s harder to be seen as the enemy if we’re seeking common ground.
Well, anyway. Thank you again for being here. I’ve loved every moment of creating every docu-mental post I have ever shared with you, and for that I am grateful to you for your attention. God bless you, peace, so mote it be, and truth to power.
I believe in it all.
If you’ve not already converted to becoming a patron subscriber, heads up that in 2021, posts will remain available for two weeks before they retreat behind the paywall, which is publishing jargon for, you won’t be able to read it without paying for it. Plenty of posts will remain available to the general public, but the majority, including previous posts from volumes one and two, will be locked.
THE TRULY GREAT CONJUNCTION
Did you know that this Monday, December 21, is not just the Winter Solstice, but is also when the Great Conjunction of the two outer planets Saturn and Jupiter will occur at 0 degrees Aquarius? Currently ongoing, the Great Conjunction of 2020 is the first time in 800 years we have been able to see these two orbs meet up so close and so clearly. Here and here are two places you can learn more about the astronomy, and here and here are where you can go for the astrological lore of such a momentous event, but I hope even if you don’t read up on it, you will look up at the sky and see this glorious celestial gift of light and wonder.
Thematically, I like how Saturn is the planet named for the God of karma and tradition, while Jupiter is named for the God of fun and kindness, among other things. It’s time for both to meet and we can witness it!
Peace,
Whitney
(Hi! I'd sent the below comment to Whitney directly, and she asked me to put it here, hopefully to facilitate ongoing discussion.)
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It was good to read this. I appreciate you putting yourself out there in this way. That's a vulnerable thing to do.
I got thinking about this part:
"If I could shake my fiscally conservative snow globe and behold as the glittering white dust settled over my perfect fantasyland within it, I would see there a peaceful scene indeed: a gleaming place with people of all walks of life who were happy, accepted, and calm because they knew they could rely on their infrastructure being accessible to all, the presumption being that no one is inherently more deserving than another."
The thing about this is: fiscal conservatism *is the cause of* the inequality you allude to at the the end there. Fiscal conservatism is an ideology that holds that things work best for everyone when resources flow upward to the wealthy. This has been expressed over the last four decades most succinctly as supply-side economics (which, coincidentally, was just this week resoundingly debunked in a wide-ranging data-driven academic study, not that we needed it to be, because an 8th-grader could tell you that demand drives consumption, not supply, but anyway).
To give more money to the wealthy, of course, we have to take it from somewhere. And where we take it from is public spending – infrastructure, education, public wellness, social security in its many forms, etc. In other words, we're taking resources that would benefit ordinary people like you and me, and greatly benefit poor people, perhaps actually giving them the chance at the upward mobility that's promised in the American Dream – and we're giving these resources to already wealthy people who don't need it. For purely ideological reasons. (And also because the wealthy people, who happen also to believe that things would be better if they had Even More Money, control most of our politicians, which leads us directly to campaign finance reform, but that's a topic for a different day. It's all such an intertwined mess. 😭 )
If there were a clearer expression of bedrock fiscal conservatism in action than this last four years, I don't know what it would be. We started in 2017 with Obama's awesome economy being used as a pretext to give a $1.4 TRILLION tax giveaway to the wealthy ... and we ended in 2020 with the Republican Senate stonewalling on Covid relief for *seven months* while tens of thousands of businesses went under and tens of thousands of people lost their homes, even as corporations and the wealthy profited *massively* from Covid-relief giveaways. That's pure fiscal conservatism in action. Anything that happens, good or bad, is merely an excuse to give more money to rich people.
And further: conservative fiscal policy is wildly unpopular. Because of course it is ... people would rather have their own lives be easier than have their money given to wealthy people. To retain power, Republicans have to get us fighting with one another, so that we don't look at what they're doing with our money. So, they intentionally exacerbate and inflame differences between groups of people, and, specifically, they demonize the most vulnerable members of our society ... those black Latinx transgender lesbians you were talking about. There's a reason non-white/cis/hetero people have such a hard time of things in our country ... it's because Republican politicians are constantly telling us that they're a threat to the "American" way of life, as a means of distracting us from their fiscal policy. The two go hand in hand and can't be separated.
(This is also the reason that liberal protestors are demonized by these same politicians. And that, strangely, the protestors who are actually violent – to wit, the right-wing extremists – get a hall pass. You never hear it called "rioting" when a bunch of Proud Boys go on, for example, a stabbing spree, as happened in DC this last weekend. God forbid a CVS gets its windows broken though.)
Also, this isn't new. Conservatives *invented the idea of race*, for crying out loud, as a means of pitting Irish slaves against Black slaves, so that instead of finding common cause and rising up against conservative fiscal policy (expressed then as theft of labor as a means of upward wealth transfer), they would instead fight against one another. It worked great, and it's still their playbook 200 years later.
To put it more succinctly: fiscal conservatism is the *cause* of the social problems that socially liberal people want to see addressed. So I think it's kind of impossible, pragmatically speaking, to be a social liberal but a fiscal conservative? You're pulling in diametrically opposite directions at the same time.
I think about the below tweet a lot, and have for the last six years. It sums this all up so succinctly:
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1241713-neoliberalism
Anyway, those are my thoughts, in novella form. Thanks for listening. ❤️