East-West, Left-Right, Lotus-Rose

Have you ever wondered why the world - or rather its peoples - seem more divided on an east/west basis than north/south? In philosophy, religion, right/left politics, left brain/right brain for instance. Sun rises in the east and sets in the west - the axis of our home planet, is that somehow involved? Our eyes, ears, limbs, internal organs are set in a left/right east/west arrangement too. I notice that today, 8th May, is White Lotus Day, a celebration day of the Theosophists. Symbolism of the lotus is interesting, one of several strands of Eastern philosophy and an example of the east/west cultural divide.

From Wikipedia:

White Lotus Day is a celebration that encourages meditation about the metaphor of the lotus. The lotus is born under the mud, growing through the water to achieve the surface, and therefore the air and the light of sun. This growth is identified with man's life, born in earth but desiring the elevation to the air; representing his middle stage between animals and the ultimate reality. The seeds of lotus contain (even before they germinate) perfectly formed leaves, a miniature shape of what they would become. This flower is often present in eastern religions.....

In Buddhism the lotus is seen as a sign of purity, it is associated with beauty in Hinduism, and with the Sun in Egyptology. (More HERE)

Lotus symbolism based in Eastern philosophy and religion was used by an American poet, Vachel Lindsay in The Wedding of the Lotus and the Rose written to mark the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914. For poet Lindsay this promised the union of the best of western and eastern cultures and philosophies. (Click on poem to enlarge image)

Lindsay saw the western rose as symbolizing an active, dynamic spirit, while the eastern lotus symbolized a passive but contemplative spirit. Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior in President Wilson's cabinet, distributed this poem to Congress on the opening day of the Panama Exposition. (See HERE and HERE).

An earlier, British, poet Rudyard Kipling recorded his thoughts on the east-west divide in The Ballad of East and West, first published in 1889:

Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!

Logically, I guess it'd be likely for world cultural divisions to follow a more east/west divide than north/south because the southern hemisphere didn't become as quickly settled from the north, or as industrialised and heavily populated at the same rate as in east/west development, which arose after humans (as far as we know) originated in either the East Africa region or in what we now call the Middle East. Both those regions could be seen as sitting on the cusp of east/west. Sigh....that's probably not as logical as I think it is, but it's all I can come up with!

Asian and other eastern societies were far more culturally and economically advanced than those in the west during the first millennium, but western nations moved ahead rapidly, and now it's the the east playing catch-up, likely soon to be on a winning streak. It's always east/west though, never north/south.....or so it seems. But Buddah said:

In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true.

LOST LEFT

One doesn't need to harbour politically left-wing tendencies to appreciate the value of being presented with a true clear choice. There is no real political choice in the USA now. The "choice" is between sugar-coated corporatism/militarism or corporatism/militarism au naturel.

Sugar-coated Democrats will not allow such emotionally unintelligent talking points as we heard this week from Rep. Todd Akin with regard to rape victims. I guess that's comforting in the short-term, on a topic that's important but certainly not the whole picture. In the bigger picture the two-headed corporate political reptile we now encounter in the USA will act in unison, in effect if not in words. Lesser-evilism, journalists call it, but few of them do little to combat it.

A true choice, if a two-party system is all the USA can manage as seems to be the case, would be between an amalgam of the two present major parties (the right), and a real left-leaning party offering something very different. A party of that kind isn't visible on even the farthest horizon. Several seminal parties with possibilites do exist, but are blocked at every turn by the US electoral system, The Powers That Be, and not least the media, from doing damage to the status quo.

The American left suffered a kiss of death during the anti-communist purge led by Joe McCarthy in the 1940s/50s. Other democratic nations didn't suffer similar events. The purge terminally weakened the US labour movement - that had to be part of its purpose, of course, as well as removing the militant element of the left-wing.

Before the left could spring fully back to life, triple assassinations in the 1960s, of President J.F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy, dealt an intimidating effect on a re-emerging left. After effect of those tragedies remains to this day, i.e. an expectation that left-wing activists risk being shot/killed by (fill in the blank) if they ruffle too many of the wrong sorts of feathers.

The unpalatable reality of the ridiculously unbalanced US class system and rampant corporatism are, today, accepted as the norm. There is no serious effort to address a powerful mass hypnosis effect delivered by corporate-owned mainstream media. Anything unfriendly to the corporations or detrimental to either Democrat or Republican talking points is routinely ignored or smothered beneath a hail of derision. The populace's tendency to cling to whatever talking points their chosen "team" dishes up means that people have become frozen in their stances.

Hope of change seems remote.

Yet it is said that the flapping of a butterfly's wing can create a hurricane across an ocean. Change will come - change is a constant, along with (as my Dad used to say) "death and rent-day". The question is: when?

I believe that change will come but will remain hidden, undetected for a while. Carl Sandburg uses a lovely description, in his wee poem Fog he wrote the line : "on little cat feet". That's how change will come, on little cat feet, silently, lightly.... it could be here waiting, right now, as I type....

LEFT- RIGHT

I've wondered for a long, long time, both during my life in the UK and since I arrived in the USA, how it can be that humans see matters of political importance in such diametrically different ways.....the black and white of it - the liberal and conservative of it, to attach available labels.

I attempted to write about the topic in April last year, in a post Political Preference - Brain Differences? Astrology in there anywhere?

If astrology "works", even at the most basic of levels, planet Saturn and/or its sign of rulership Capricorn (and possibly even its sign of rulership before Uranus was discovered, Aquarius), would have to be in some way more prominent or in a stronger position and without heavy conflict, in the natal chart of a dyed-in-the-wool right-wing conservative type. I don't have a view on what would likely be prominent in the chart of a strongly liberal left-winger, it's not as clear cut. Perhaps simply the absence of such astrological indications mentioned above would set political preference in the other direction?

Yesterday, How the Right Brain Works and What That Means for Progressives - an essay at Alter Net by Chris Mooney approached the topic (minus any astrology, of course). The essay draws on the author's book due to be published in April (The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality ) and on certain interviews.

The essay is interesting. I found several comments in the thread beneath it excellent assessments also. Two especially caught my eye:

From Perry Logan

A good way to frame it is to say conservatives in the U.S. have an incredibly strong herd instinct, whereas lefties tend to be weak or deficient in this area.

The Right are profoundly tribal. This intense group instinct affects both the emotions and the thought processes of conservatives.The most notable cognitive difference is that the Right's concept of truth itself is tribal--that is, conservatives only accept information/disinformation from conservative sources. Liberal or lefty sources of information are rejected out of hand. In addition, righties will categorize any unwanted or threatening information as being "liberal" or tainted.

That's why the Right can reject an entire scientific discipline--atmospheric science--for the simple reason that the information is unacceptable. Those scientists--hundreds of them, from all nations, all over the world--must be lyin' libs. The whole thing must be a plot.

Likewise, when I offer years of research and reviews from the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, which one might have thought an unimpeachable source, showing that guns are just as deadly and dangerous as common sense would predict, the gun guys just snort. "Harvard? What do they know?" and trot out some stats their cousin cooked up in the basement, which are more to their liking.

Lefties are not clear-eyed, objective observers, by any means. But in my experience, they are rarely capable of such a profound degree of cognitive bias.

The result of all this reality-filtering is that the Right literally have their own facts about everything. It's as if they lived in a parallel universe, where liberals are the cause of all our problems, if the world could only see. Those are some weird brains they have over there.

When I say the left are "deficient" in herd instinct, I don't mean it as a criticism. Our relatively weak herd impulse is one of our virtues, it seems to me. At the same time, it puts us at a distinct disadvantage in politics. We're not the great followers our rightward brethren are.

The Obots are very tribal, by the way. Obots--Obamacrats--are strikingly similar to wingnuts in their thinking and behavior. That's because Obots are not true lefties, but are members of personality cult centered around the Bammer.

And..... from a different angle:

Along Came Jones

I found this article interesting from a philological prospective but I am not so sure of it's practical use. While there are certainly differences in the extremes, those difference begin to dissipate when considering the total attitudes between the extremes. There has always been this difference and likely always be a difference. I also suspect that civility has had it's ups and downs and will continue to ebb and flow. However, I don't believe these differences account for the problems we face now or similarly in 1890 or 1920.

There is a percentage of a group somewhere between 5-10% that either works at cross purposes, is unsuitable, is delinquent, or what have you. If you start with this premise it becomes clearer the nature of most problems. The problem society faces is how to justly isolate this percentage so as not to impede the group.

To cut this short and offer a quick summary of today's conditions:

1. 95% of people will obey safe driving rules either by choice of peer pressure, while 5% will not. Thus the need for traffic laws to protect the 95%.
2. We have allowed a small percentage of people, many of which are psychopaths or sociopaths, to game our political, economic, and social systems. When judged by wealth alone many are at the upper levels of respectability.
3.This small percentage of wealthy misfits uses distraction to confuse the other 95%.

These periods of the 1890's, 1920's, and today are similar in this case and I am sure there are other similar periods in history. If I had to guess, it is generational in nature, ie: one generation of abuse followed by one of reform, one at rest. and one diminishing group diligence. It starts over again as the last generation that remembers dies off.

"...one generation of abuse followed by one of reform, one at rest. and one diminishing group diligence. It starts over again as the last generation that remembers dies off. That proposition would benefit from some research, astrological and otherwise - as would the original conundrum of why people seem to naturally gravitate left or right politically. Perhaps more posts on this, sometime, if I can get my head around the best way to do it.