The Moral Framework for the Occupy Wall Street Movement by George Lakoff, 3

I think it is a good thing that the occupation movement is not making specific policy demands. If it did, the movement would become about those demands. If the demands were not met, the movement would be seen as having failed.

It seems to me that the OWS movement is moral in nature, that occupiers want the country to change its moral focus. It is easy to find useful policies; hundreds have been suggested. It is harder to find a moral focus and stick to it. If the movement is to frame itself, it should be on the basis of its moral focus, not a particular agenda or list of policy demands. If the moral focus of America changes, new people will be elected and the policies will follow. Without a change of moral focus, the conservative worldview that has brought us to the present disastrous and dangerous moment will continue to prevail.

We Love America. We're Here to Fix It
I see OWS as a patriotic movement, based on a deep and abiding love of country - a patriotism that it is not just about the self-interests of individuals, but about what the country is and is to be. Do Americans care about other citizens, or mainly just about themselves? That's what love of America is about. I therefore think it is important to be positive, to be clear about loving America, seeing it in need of fixing, and not just being willing to fix it, but being willing to take to the streets to fix it. A populist movement starts with the people seeing that they are all in the same boat and being ready to come together to fix the leaks.
Publicize the Public

Tell the truth about The Public, that nobody makes it purely on their own without The Public, that is, without public infrastructure, the justice system, health, education, scientific research, protections of all sorts, public lands, transportation, resources, art and culture, trade policies, safety nets, … That is a truth to be told day after day. It is an idea that must take hold in public discourse. It must go beyond what I and others have written about it and beyond what Elizabeth Warren has said in her famous video. The Public is not opposed to The Private. The Public is what makes The Private possible. And it is what makes freedom possible. Wall Street exists only through public support. It has a moral obligation to direct itself to public needs.
All OWS approaches to policy follow from such a moral focus. Here are a handful examples.

Democracy should be about the 99%
Money directs our politics. In a democracy, that must end. We need publicly supported elections, however that is to be arranged.
Strong Wages Make a Strong America
Middle-class wages have not gone up significantly in 30 years, and there is conservative pressure to lower them. But when most people get more money, they spend it and spur the economy, making the economy and the country stronger, as well as making their individual lives better. This truth needs to be central to public economic discourse.

Global Citizenship
America has been a moral beacon to the world. It can function as such only if it sets an example of what a nation should be.
Do we have to spend more on the military that all other nations combined? Do we really need hundreds of military bases abroad?

The Moral Framework for the Occupy Wall Street Movement by George Lakoff

Two Moral Framing Systems in Politics
Conservatives have figured out their moral basis and you see it on Wall Street: It includes: The primacy of self-interest. Individual responsibility, but not social responsibility. Hierarchical authority based on wealth or other forms of power. A moral hierarchy of who is "deserving," defined by success. And the highest principle is the primacy of this moral system itself, which goes beyond Wall Street and the economy to other arenas: family life, social life, religion, foreign policy, and especially government. Conservative "democracy" is seen as a system of governance and elections that fits this model.
Though OWS concerns go well beyond financial issues, your target is right: the application of these principles in Wall Street is central, since that is where the money comes from for elections, for media, and for right-wing policy-making institutions of all sorts on all issues.
The alternative view of democracy is progressive: Democracy starts with citizens caring about one another and acting responsibly on that sense of care, taking responsibility both for oneself and for one's family, community, country, people in general, and the planet. The role of government is to protect and empower all citizens equally via The Public: public infrastructure, laws and enforcement, health, education, scientific research, protection, public lands, transportation, resources, art and culture, trade policies, safety nets, and on and on. Nobody makes it one their own. If you got wealthy, you depended on The Public, and you have a responsibility to contribute significantly to The Public so that others can benefit in the future. Moreover, the wealthy depend on those who work, and who deserve a fair return for their contribution to our national life. Corporations exist to make life better for most people. Their reason for existing is as public as it is private.
A disproportionate distribution of wealth robs most citizens of access to the resources controlled by the wealthy. Immense wealth is a thief. It takes resources from the rest of the population - the best places to live, the best food, the best educations, the best health facilities, access to the best in nature and culture, the best professionals, and on and on. Resources are limited, and great wealth greatly limits access to resources for most people.
It appears to me that OWS has a progressive moral vision and view of democracy, and that what it is protesting is the disastrous effects that have come from operating with a conservative moral, economic, and political worldview. I see OWS as primarily a moral movement, seeking economic and political changes to carry out that moral movement - whatever those particular changes might be.

Wake up! No more politics as usual! 3

Wake up, America! Seize the day!

Could our many different problems - unemployment and underemployment, housing foreclosures, high health care costs and the lack of coverage, the concentration of wealth, gridlock in DC and the over-concentration of Federal power, energy – be addressed by a shift in the way we think, feel and behave?

Aren’t all our problems really interconnected and interdependent anyhow?

Remember what Pogo said? “We have met the enemy and they is us.”

Could more cooperation, compassion, and less conflict, hate and blame begin to move us forward?

What wonders could we accomplish if we came together as Americans first, and partisan party members, second?

Wake up, America! Seize the day!

Stop business as usual!

Stop conflict, hate, and blame.

Shift from that negative stuff to the positive stuff of cooperation and compassion.

The competitive, adversarial way we're doing things prevents our getting a clear unified vision, prevents our coming from the necessary cooperative compassionate perspective that will produce the solutions we need.

Let’s come together, and from that new and different place, gain the perspective that will enable us, not only how to see how to solve our problems, but how to turn them into opportunities.

Wake up, America! Seize the day!

Projection Makes Percepton

Since all thinking produces form at some level, what we think within will be projected and perceived without: projection makes perception. What our eyes see is the fulfillment of what our minds wish them to see. Perception seems to teach you what you see. Yet it but witnesses to what you taught. Perception is the outward picture of a wish; an image that you wanted to be true.

The world is nothing in itself. My mind must give it all the meaning it has for me. What I behold upon it are my wishes acted out so I can look at them and think them real.

Under the ego’s influence, no matter whether I experience pain or pleasure, as I identify with ego and not mySelf, my wishes are to prove, one, that the separation is true and that my individual identity truly exists; and, two, that I am an innocent victim of what the world has done to me, beginning with my creation at birth. This allows me to have the ego’s two fold wish, the cake of separation and to eat it, too, because I am innocent and someone or something else is guilty.

The film in the projector determines, the movie I will see. If I load a horror story, I see that; a love story, I see that. But because of the ego’s illusion, I, we, forget we’ve chosen the film and loaded the projector and instead think what we’re seeing on the screen just happened and had nothing to do with what we’ve done.

The forms of this illusory world do not matter. It is only the mind’s decision for the content of guilt or forgiveness that is important, reflecting our decision maker’s hidden wish for ego or spirit. If we are mindful, we learn not to trust our perceptions and see them for what they are: a means to direct our attention from what matters within, to what doesn’t matter without. Perception’s purpose is to obscure the decision making mind that alone can chose the thoughts that constitute our perceived reality.

Wake up! No more politics as usual! 2

Wake up! No more politics as usual!
It’s just not working!
Haven’t we had enough gridlock, hate, fear and blaming?

We’re bleeding to death.
We’ve got to stop the hemorrhaging of jobs, infrastructure, education, ideals and the American Dream.

Would cooperation, love and compassion work better?
We’ve done the hate, fear and blaming and it’s brought us to where we are.

No more politics as usual!
Could cooperation, love and compassion get us to where we want to go,
stop the hemorrhaging of jobs, infrastructure, education, ideals and the American Dream?

What if we worked together as Americans first, and party members second?

What if we moved on, past all the bullshit to what really matters, healing our wounds and doing the great things we are still capable of?

Our so-called ‘problems’ are not insoluble, they can be resolved, but not the way we’ve been approaching them, not the way we’ve been thinking about them, and behaving. We’ve got to try something different. If we always do what we always did, we’ll always get what we always got. Haven’t we had enough, hate, fear and blaming? Can’t we try love, compassion and cooperation?

Wake up! No more politics as usual!

Wake up!
Follow the money!
Who’s winning and who’s loosing?
Are you, your community and the nation better off?
Who’s winning and who’s losing?
There are more millionaires in Congress than ever before.
Corporations are making greater profits than ever before.
Who’s winning and who’s losing?
The prices of everything are up – health care, insurance, food.
Who’s winning and who’s losing?

How do we get more of what we want and less of what we don’t want?
It’s not about ideology.
It’s not about party partisan politics.
It’s about fairness.
Fairness for the great majority of us.
Fairness that…..

How do we get more of what we want and less of what we don’t want?
First, we stop doing what we’ve been doing and try something different.
The hate, fear and blaming have gotten us where we are.
Should we do more of that?
Haven’t we had enough hate, fear and blaming?
What if we tried love, compassion and cooperation?
What if we worked together as Americans first, and party members second?

It’s like a boomerang. What we put out is what comes back to us.
Put out hate, fear and blaming and we get back hate, fear and blaming.
So why not try love, compassion and cooperation? Isn’t that what we all really want?

Our so-called ‘problems’ are not insoluble, they can be resolved, but not the way we’ve been approaching them, not the way we’ve been thinking about them, and behaving. We’ve got to try something different. If we always do what we always did, we’ll always get what we always got. Haven’t we had enough, hate, fear and blaming? Can’t we try love, compassion and cooperation?

Of course we can! Unfortunately the ‘winners’ of today, those benefiting from the slow, agonizing decline of everything from our retirement benefits and bank accounts to our ideals, want things to continue as they are. In spite of what ‘they’ say, they benefit from the hate, fear and blaming and want it to continue. Look around you. Perhaps, even look in the mirror. Ask yourself, ‘haven’t I had enough of all the hate, fear and blaming? Am I ready to give love, compassion and cooperation a chance?’

One of the best definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. How insane have we as a nation and as individuals become? How much crazier will we get? How’s it working for you? How well will it work for your children and your children’s children?

Our so-called ‘problems’ are not insoluble, they can be resolved, but not the way we’ve been approaching them, not the way we’ve been thinking about them, and behaving. Einstein said, ‘you can’t solve the problem at the level of thinking that created it in the first place.’ Let’s try a higher level of thinking – love, compassion and cooperation, instead of hate, fear and blame.

Let’s do it in spite of our so-called leaders and elected officials. Let’s do it because they won’t; and if we don’t do it, nobody will. Let’s do it because it’s right and feels good, and will work.

Wake up!
Follow the money!
Who’s winning and who’s loosing?
We can get more of what we want and less of what we don’t want if we do things differently and use love, compassion and cooperation, instead of hate, fear and blame.

Forgiving, 3

Forgiveness works both ways, too. When I forgive, I am forgiven. All of us share the exact same need for what forgiveness brings: freedom from the ego and the realization of our reality as spiritual beings having earthly experiences. Of course, the forgiveness we’re talking about is not the, ‘bring the guilty bastard in so I can forgive him’ kind. It’s the realization of our common needs and our desire to serve them. It’s the realization that what I am seeing now – the guilt, hate, anger and fear, conceal my soul mate from me, the very person or thing that can bring the benefits of true forgiveness to me.

With this kind of forgiveness, I don’t do anything different with my eyes, and don’t deny what they see. I do something different with my mind. I now have the willingness to say I’ve been mistaken in how I’ve been seeing and relating – the blame, grudges and anger, and I now want to see things differently, without all that negative baggage; to learn from mySelf, from spirit, not from myself, the ego.

It’s not the other person’s body that has the power to forgive; another’s body has no more power than mine. It’s the Self we share, the one mind, that has the power and when I forgive truly, I acknowledge that whom and what I forgive are not what they seem or the only reality there is, but share a greater reality, a single Self, beyond the puny individual selves the ego allows us to perceive.

When I forgive truly, I understand that our bodies are like costumes, seeking to hide the reality of spirit that is within everyone and everything. I realize that we all do the same things for the same reasons, and really want love, peace, acceptance, inclusion and joy above all else. Forgiveness is our safe escape from anger, fear and all that we don’t want, and our gateway to love, joy and all that we do want. Be mindful, and the moment you are tempted to judge, hold a grudge, hate, exclude, punish and be angry, forgive both yourself and the other.