Hope
The election of President Obama suggests the possibility of a good result. How?
The social topology of Japan provides a clue. The pervasive exclusion of foreigners from the substantive internal functions of Japanese social concourse is as effective today as it has ever been. Japan is no democratic melting pot. The influence of the outside on the inside is not a facet of tension or polarities, it is a highly controlled mediation designed to perpetuate the ruling social order and established collective identity. As Peter Drucker points out (mistakenly, the reader may recall), when embarking on his mischaracterization, or historical redesign of Daruma, the qualities of “spirituality, power, total compelling control,” are what is essential to the Japanese animus.
Old habits die hard, but die they must. Art is a vehicle for reshaping collective identity, which is, in a word, innovation. Dimensionist realism entails that a fundamental aspect of art is historical accuracy. Correct documentation is vital to the integrity of expression, because expressive progressions occur scientifically. Failures are normal. They must be remedied, if possible, or another avenue of inquiry must be sought, if the failure is terminal.
The solution for private ownership (of land, things or people) is, as we have seen, the trust, or stewardship of the Commons. The presumption is equality. (“All men are created equal.”) President Obama, a descendant of slave owners, married to a descendent of slaves – privately owned people – indicates that the identity of the United States, its collective topology, allows for the society to correct past failures. The medium for such change is love, as is usually the case.
What if America, tomorrow, determined to restore the Black Hills to the Trust of the Lakota, as a function of the collective will?
This course of action is the only one that will stave off the emerging threat of globalism and the rise to pre-eminence of the multinational corporation, and the concomitant outcome of the subsuming of national identity into a global collective.
