April 10 | Governance THE ISSUE of who will run society is one of those things that lives at the root of the human experience. Usually it's the guy with the biggest stick, who knows how to use it, and who has done so a few times. It is a sad fact that for the most part, in history as we know it, we are ruled by killers, conquerors, thieves, and their descendents. But, in a way, it's only natural. Then look what happens. These sorry bastards don't usually have a clue how to take care of people, but that's one of their job responsibilities. Theoretically. At least it's on paper somewhere. But that doesn't get the cows milked. And we may well wonder what does, if you think for half a sec. The answer is that people who are willing to do it and have a sense of responsibility get the cows milked. The basic jobs always get done by people without vast sums of power, money or guns. And the people who do have the power, money and guns generally neglect the rest of what they're supposed to do, and in the United States there has long been a move to cut anything that helps people out of the budget. Let's put it this way, does anybody realize what a pain in the ass it is to run society? I mean, how much do you LOVE taking care of the astonishing degree of bureaucracy necessitated by your relatively miniscule life? So multiply that by 250 million, add keeping the lawns mowed in the national parks, chuck in Hurricane Katrina, don't forget The Pentagon, and you can see that the only person who would want to get involved high up in government is 1. An idiot, 2., a crook, or 3., both. The result is we wind up with people who want power for its own sake. So, onto my story, which is about Miracle Manor, which once existed in New Jersey. I lived there for one year in the late 80s, with about 15 other adults in a community housing situation. We lived in what used to be a convent. We all had little rooms, like monks. There was a chapel, and a nice kitchen and common area. I still occasionally have strange dreams set in the place. Our spiritual theme was A Course in Miracles, and while our spiritual tastes were pretty eclectic, the Course was indeed the thing we had in common. Actually, now Miracle Manor has a claim to fame, which is that Allan Cohen, its co-founder, wrote a book called Chicken Soup for the Soul (which is patiently waiting on my reading list). Allan, the somewhat charismatic sort-of leader (he was actually pretty low key), had moved onto other adventures the year I lived at 'the Manor', as we called it. So we were left to basically run our own show. A few people who were holdovers from the one and only previous year had natural seniority, but they were open to leadership. Of those, Marina, Dan, George, Patrick and Vicki stand out. Then there was Rosalie, who was obsessed about the kitchen floor, and who could cause more turmoil and consume more energy over the milk being left out once than it would take to put it back in the refrigerator 100 times. So there we were, 15 adults (at 22, I was second youngest, and my girlfriend Ginger was six months younger), needing to do nothing but run our household. How should we organize? What did we need to do? How would we get the work done? Who was in charge? How would we plan for the future? Who would deal with the crazy landlord, Mario? And here was the real kicker: since were were living in a community and doing spiritual psychology work designed to bring up personal material, how would we handle that at the same time? Growth work and housework don't necessarily go so well together, and people who have one kind of authority or role in our lives (such as spiritual teacher) don't necessarily do so well with (the ones to tell us it's our turn to deal with the trash). And it might work worse going in the opposite direction. At the beginning of the year, I volunteered to be secretary of a loosely defined organization we created. I took the minutes of meetings and because I had some organizational experience, began writing a charter that defined how we ran our meetings and organized our responsibilities. I have a copy somewhere. But essentially, the charter/organization project got nowhere. People seemed to either have too many outside commitments, or to be too triggered by the spiritual work, which induces instability, to actually be organized and functional. As things developed, there was basically a complete breakdown of communication. It turned out to be impossible for us to organize, govern, or even loosely orchestrate a sustainable life. Just handling the diversity within the community made basic things like dealing with food extremely challenging. Leadership was full time work, but there was no way to pay anyone to do that. In the end, the crazy landlord, who was not really part of our community, took over, then he threw us all out on a week's notice. He had got the idea that we needed a guru, and that it would be him. Since we would not have him as guru, he would get some people who would. Mowing the lawn, fixing the pipes and owning 16 acres in New Jersey somehow qualified him for this responsibility. So, in no time at all, without the ability to take care of our own needs, and focus our power, we were helpless. I don't know if the meaning of my parable is clear, so let me state it: it's not easy for people to govern themselves and their communities, but it's 100% necessary. Very few people have the skill, the experience or the willingness. Exceedingly few have the patience to deal with other people and their problems. And, unfortunately, not so many people really understand how to organize their individual lives in a way that's truly compatible with the lives of people around them. Right now, we are witnessing a vast vacuum of leadership in our society. In many ways, indeed, in every way, at some point, that need for leadership is going to come back down to us. Our lives tend to be organized around work places and homes. Our boss or the admin assistant runs the work place and we tend to handle the household as best we can. Besides that, there is not much -- at the moment -- that needs to be run, and what we have is pretty challenging. However, as society changes the next few years, that will not always be the case. At a certain point, the responsibilities of community will need to be taken up by more people closer to the ground. That could involve organizing ourselves to save energy, create energy, get specific tasks done, make changes, or make progress. We may need to organize how we acquire, prepare and eat food differently than we now do. Transportation is going to change -- a lot. These things take specific skills and experience, which unfortunately, most of us have never had the chance to get. As we look at the decay not only of 'leadership' [such as it was, based entirely on lies] but of centralized power in the federal government, we may well ask how we're going to fill that void, and it's a lot to think about. Since generally when there is a void of power, it's filled by a crook, an idiot or both, we need to spend some time thinking about other options and how we might get them. Is it even possible? Is it even worth thinking about? Should we really just withdraw energy from the whole thing and pay no attention to what's going on up on top, because we can't do anything anyway? And are we willing to face what happens when we do that? If we really knew what that meant, I would say not.