Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[childers.paula AT epamail.epa.gov]

No "crackpot" alert 'cos it's meaningful, but a length alert is perhaps
in order.  Here's something deep for y'all to chew on, put better than I
could. In my opinion, anyone who sincerely wants to make change in
America and the world today would do well to read & heed this article:

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1104-01.htm

"For years the Democrats have been telling themselves "it's the economy,
stupid." Yet consistently for dozens of years millions of middle income
Americans have voted against their own economic interests to support
Republicans who have tapped a deeper set of needs.


Tens of millions of Americans feel betrayed by a society that seems to
place materialism and selfishness above moral values. They know that
"looking out for number one" has become the common sense of our society,
but they want a life that is about something more --- a framework of
meaning and purpose to their lives that would transcend the grasping and
narcissism that surrounds them. Sure, they will admit that they have
material needs, and that they worry about adequate health care,
stability in employment, and enough money to give their kids a college
education. But even more deeply they want their lives to have meaning
--- and they respond to candidates who seem to care about values and
some sense of transcendent purpose.


Many of these voters have found a "politics of meaning" in the political
Right.[...] [E]ven if the flip side is a willingness to demean those on
the outside [...] what members experience directly is a level of mutual
caring that they rarely find in the rest of the society. And a sense of
community that is offered them nowhere else, a community that has as its
central theme that life has value because it is connected to some higher
meaning than one's success in the marketplace.


It's easy to see how this hunger gets manipulated in ways that liberals
find offensive and contradictory. [...] Yet liberals, trapped in a
long-standing disdain for religion and tone-deaf to the spiritual needs
that underlie the move to the Right, have been unable to engage these
voters in a serious dialogue. Rightly angry at the way that some
religious communities have been mired in authoritarianism, racism,
sexism and homophobia, the liberal world has developed such a knee-jerk
hostility to religion that it has both marginalized those many people on
the Left who actually do have spiritual yearnings and simultaneously
refused to acknowledge that many who move to the Right have legitimate
complaints about the ethos of selfishness in American life."


I'm working right now to build my own self past that "ethos of
selfishness." I think from the level of community & communication, the
general quality of engagement on this list, most of you are also
concerned with this.  I would love to engage in constructive dialogue
with ANYone who sincerely wants to work on building our own local
"spiritual left." Coffee or brews, perhaps Thursday evening?


Paula