When we were very little, my younger sister was terrified of the turnpike.

“We’re going to have to get on the highway,” we’d be gently informed, before a brief stint traveling at what really does feel like an unreasonable speed to preschoolers.

(Not the highway!)

On Destinations

One thing I appreciated being able to learn a little bit about during lockdown was bookbinding, as it enabled me to discover what sorts of insights the spine of an illustrated volume can offer into its contents. Because of the way my book’s folios are organized, at least, it’s indicated at a glance that after a bright beginning, the story arc contained features the discovery of a problem, a lighter section, a return to confront the darkness of the challenge, and a light-themed resolution.

Just as the answers at the back of math textbooks come in handy, I pondered with this in mind during a walk today, they really are no replacement for understanding. And I would never expect anyone interested in literature to overlook or speed through a potentially enlightening read based solely on the knowledge that, in it, a problem is solved before the book ends.

On Bypasses

I loved listening recently to a talk by two spiritual thinkers who referenced the importance of avoiding spiritual bypass (or, “bypahss” as one says it) even while emphasizing the importance of keeping one’s focus on eternal concepts – a balance I’ve been advised over many years to seek but that’s requiring practice.

Over the past several years, I have been glad to see news organizations further center concepts of human rights in their coverage; but I still feel the other half of my – and others’ – request that news organizations’ business models be reviewed so that such corporations will be more accountable both within and without – has gone unaddressed.

If those who, today, do seem to believe that media organization heads should serve as sorts of kings, that there should no longer be democracy as we once knew it and that there should no longer be journalism as we once knew it, believe, too, that the media sector’s hegemony over the country is to be principally maintained by the discrimination against women within their ranks, I still wonder whether there could be value in addressing – in a more healing way – women’s concerns regarding safety and equality within media organizations.

On Making Concepts One’s Own

I have found it so fascinating, recently, to consider the degree to which America’s framers were inspired by the Haudenosaunee in the design of the structure of the United States Constitution but how many of the latter’s central – and, arguably, load-bearing – ideas were either excluded or modified beyond recognition in planning the new government.

In what are sometimes referred to as Iroquois (or, if I understand correctly, those who more are properly termed Haudenosaunee) communities, women held very empowered roles in the selection – and dismissal – of chiefs. (If I am not mistaken, in the case of the Haudenosaunee, actually only women were allowed to participate in such decisions.) While I by no means advocate for such rigidly gender-based role definitions today, the empowerment of women by this segment of the Founding Fathers’ mentors was a notably far cry from the decision these still brilliant, but flawed, men then made to exclude women altogether from voting rights in the new country. (I realize I have written a great deal in this blog about the distinction between compositional and formal structural integrity when discussing governmental system design; but I still wonder whether this shortcoming of what could be termed the compositional sort was what led to the new republic’s resorting to race-based subjugation.)

Today, compositional structural integrity certainly continues to demand deep consideration. Also important, one could argue, is that American democracy at least appears to be in danger of system failure due to an unapproved, and unforeseen, formal modification in the shape of a stock-market-augmented journalism sector (and its non-profit adulators) whose business model could be considered an unprecedentedly formidable force not only operating outside the plane of our government’s triangular design, but ramming it broadside. (The problem is arguably not its drivers, incidentally, who are all but passengers now.)

I believe seeing this will require little more than taking the time to do so once more women’s perspectives are better permitted to be considered.

On Shown Work

Part of the genius of our government’s formal design, which does draw from more than one precedent, is its strategy of ordering, balancing, and counterbalancing forces, accounting for extant shortcomings in human nature while harnessing the good toward the end of an ever “more perfect Union.”

I’ve considered this wisdom while reflecting on my experience trying to request feedback from within the journalism industry on some proposed solutions to problems involving the safety and equality of women I put forward several years ago. While I felt silenced certainly, and it also seemed there was a rather serious and automatic opposition to any idea at all that questioned the media sector’s hegemony over the nation, I also did not feel this necessarily meant I had fully resolved what I still do consider to be a design problem.

My hope was to gather not only information but feedback in order to collaboratively work through an obviously very serious challenge – not to side, certainly, with those who seemed intent on presuming the best answer would be any one that maximized the power of media, but also not to assume I was able to even begin to solve it all alone. Foundations are important, after all; and, sometimes, I find it instructive to remember that even Marx would arguably have made some sense if his first premise were not totally false.

What’s perhaps most notable about our government’s design is its dual emphasis – not only on the destination of just and equitable policies but on the preservation of a route there that is at least reasonably informed and inclusive; and it feels important to note that these emphases relate directly to concepts of formal and compositional structural integrity. It’s worth acknowledging more often that the prioritization of sacred processes for the sake of our democracy’s health requires the investment of a lot of time, effort, and inclusion. What I believe those who came before us saw, and that so many in power today seem to be forgetting today, is that such work is worth it and should neither be rushed nor skipped.