Can we get smart in the Democratic primary about our common welfare? In a spiritual path that I walk, we have traditions that set the guardrails for our behavior with each other and in all aspects of our lives. We joke that the traditions are there to prevent homicide while the self-reflection parts of the path are there to prevent suicide. Since there are 12 of them, I try to focus on one each month. This month I am studying tradition one with the guiding principle of Unity. It reads:
Our common welfare should come first; personal progress for the greatest number depends upon unity.
“Coincidentally,” a friend of mine (who also follows this path) mentioned to me today that she thinks people who want to defeat Trump have to get really smart really fast about how we don’t let (and participate in) the opposition dividing us. She noticed how she as an undecided who wants to go all in to defeat the incumbent was already starting to feel impulses of disunity.
She heard, like many of us, that a certain celebrity who may have espoused beliefs that neither she nor I share, is supporting a presidential candidate whose values we otherwise support. And she noticed that she had the surge of a thought, “oh my God, I can’t support this person.” And then she noticed, “oh wow, this is how they do it.” “We can’t let them do this to us.”
Granted, all primaries are at least temporarily divisive and highlight the differences amongst candidates and then we inevitably come together in the general to support. Remember, despite all kinds of bad feelings about losing in the electoral college, that coalescence did happen in large part in 2016. Folks from all walks center to left came together, many of us, like myself, holding our nose (due to old & new resentments against her) to vote for the Democratic nominee. As a result she handily won the popular vote. Unfortunately, she also lost in key battleground states where there was depressed Democratic energy and enthusiasm. This coming together regardless of result is bound to happen in the 2020 general.
We also know that between Russian bots and their allies in the US, there are forces already meddling in US politics and trying to divide Democrats or depress turnout in all kinds of ways. These operatives have already been hard at work dividing us. They know exactly how to do it. They know that we can turn on each other quickly over issues of gender, race and other matters.
This is a tender area to even talk about because to imply that we remain united regardless of differences that have been highlighted may risk implying that issues of gender or race or whatever else they are trying to divide us over should take a back seat to other issues. I don’t think that. But what I do think is this:
Our common welfare should come first; personal progress for the greatest number depends upon unity.
What I know about the application of this tradition or principle is that it never seems convenient. And when I feel attached to my rightness my point of view and what I want and believe (as I totally do at this moment by the way), I am singularly uninterested in the concept of common welfare. Or, more accurately, it seems like a cop-out or a fake thing perpetrated by “the man.” But what I have learned is that in many other circumstances, principally my marriage, my family, my neighborhood, my spiritual communities, my work life, that if I can get my little self out of the way and get interested in this question “what is our common welfare?” and ask for humility and guidance on this matter. I get it.
I say aloud to the universe something like this, “please show me what our common welfare is here and how to be interested in it. I don’t know. I don’t know how to tell what is really important. Please don’t let me be caught up by differences between us. Please let me actually care enough about this higher good that I get myself out of the way of it.”
And it works. It actually manifests. Often I reluctantly resentfully give way and later realize it was the right thing. More rarely the peaceful knowing descends on the front end. It matters little because I come to know that the common welfare mattered and I come to support it.
My guess is that if this works in my little spaces, it will work in the Democratic primary. Who is with me?
I'm with you!