Interview with Rabbi Michael Lerner
The Religion section of the February 25, 2006 Dallas Morning News contained an interview with the unapolgetically liberal civil rights activist, Michael Lerner. The following is an excerpt from that interview.
Q: What spiritual struggle do you sense in America?
A: "There is a big spiritual crisis in people's lives based on the selfishness and materialism of society. It translates to people spending all day in the world of work, in which they learn that the bottom line is money and power, and their goal must be to maximize the bottom line or they will get thrown out. They quickly learn to see other people from the standpoint of "How can you be of use to me?" What it does is create a tremendous feeling of isolation, a lack of certainty about others, because it appears everybody is out for themselves."
Q: How does this spiritual crisis infiltrate the family?
A: "It plays out in the whole issue of can you teach your kids values. Kids quickly learn that the real world is based on manipulation and control. Get ahead and make as much as you can for yourself.
In marriage, relationships increasingly become based on a kind of implicit calculation. People make commitments on the basis of, "I'm committed to you, because you can fulfill more of my needs than anybody else who's likely to fall for me in the short run." This creates tremendous insecurity in families. Nobody can be sure that at some point their partner won't be able to cut a better deal."
Q: What's the alternative?
A: "The spiritual path says you're valuable not because of what you can do for me, but because you are fundamentally an embodiment of the sacred, the God energy of the universe. Instead of looking at you in terms of what I can get from you, I look at you as somebody who deserves to be cared for, regardless of what you ever produce.
People are desperate for that kind of spiritual consciousness. And the only place they've heard it articulated is on the right.
How do politicians respond to society's hunger for meaning?
The right says: "Yes, there is a crisis of materialism and selfishness in this society." But they blame that on the "demeaned others" of society. This is how the right works all around the world. In Europe, the demeaned other was the Jew. In this country, it has been African-Americans and, now, gays and lesbians. Feminists. Liberals. Secular people.
The left sees the right blaming these people. The left says: "Oh, we know what spirituality or religion is about. It's about sexism, homophobia, racism." They are unable to see that there is an actual spiritual crisis. Instead, they think "spiritual crisis" is just code for sexism and homophobia and racism. They give the whole spiritual domain to the right.
My criticism is of both parties: The Democrats are almost as bad as the Republicans in their inability to articulate a vision that could be transcendent."
Q: When in your lifetime have humanitarian impulses been at their strongest in the United States?
A: "I saw it in the civil rights movement, tremendously. There was a capacity in people to recognize each other as fundamentally valuable.
Instead of treating racists as pure evil, [Martin Luther] King and the civil rights movement insisted on seeing the humanity of white people who were oppressing blacks. They insisted on a vision of what we could all be together – that possibility of transcendence."
Q: What spiritual struggle do you sense in America?
A: "There is a big spiritual crisis in people's lives based on the selfishness and materialism of society. It translates to people spending all day in the world of work, in which they learn that the bottom line is money and power, and their goal must be to maximize the bottom line or they will get thrown out. They quickly learn to see other people from the standpoint of "How can you be of use to me?" What it does is create a tremendous feeling of isolation, a lack of certainty about others, because it appears everybody is out for themselves."
Q: How does this spiritual crisis infiltrate the family?
A: "It plays out in the whole issue of can you teach your kids values. Kids quickly learn that the real world is based on manipulation and control. Get ahead and make as much as you can for yourself.
In marriage, relationships increasingly become based on a kind of implicit calculation. People make commitments on the basis of, "I'm committed to you, because you can fulfill more of my needs than anybody else who's likely to fall for me in the short run." This creates tremendous insecurity in families. Nobody can be sure that at some point their partner won't be able to cut a better deal."
Q: What's the alternative?
A: "The spiritual path says you're valuable not because of what you can do for me, but because you are fundamentally an embodiment of the sacred, the God energy of the universe. Instead of looking at you in terms of what I can get from you, I look at you as somebody who deserves to be cared for, regardless of what you ever produce.
People are desperate for that kind of spiritual consciousness. And the only place they've heard it articulated is on the right.
How do politicians respond to society's hunger for meaning?
The right says: "Yes, there is a crisis of materialism and selfishness in this society." But they blame that on the "demeaned others" of society. This is how the right works all around the world. In Europe, the demeaned other was the Jew. In this country, it has been African-Americans and, now, gays and lesbians. Feminists. Liberals. Secular people.
The left sees the right blaming these people. The left says: "Oh, we know what spirituality or religion is about. It's about sexism, homophobia, racism." They are unable to see that there is an actual spiritual crisis. Instead, they think "spiritual crisis" is just code for sexism and homophobia and racism. They give the whole spiritual domain to the right.
My criticism is of both parties: The Democrats are almost as bad as the Republicans in their inability to articulate a vision that could be transcendent."
Q: When in your lifetime have humanitarian impulses been at their strongest in the United States?
A: "I saw it in the civil rights movement, tremendously. There was a capacity in people to recognize each other as fundamentally valuable.
Instead of treating racists as pure evil, [Martin Luther] King and the civil rights movement insisted on seeing the humanity of white people who were oppressing blacks. They insisted on a vision of what we could all be together – that possibility of transcendence."
posted by Erik at Friday, March 24, 2006
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