Back to that coat hanger. . .and saving utopia from itself

I want to make a somewhat metaphysical comment about my analogy of legislation to "bending the coat hanger," since it is more descriptive metaphor than it at first may seem.

Firstly, in order to pull the thing straight again, you require two opposing forces - just as you do to bend it. But when these forces are in equilibrium and pulling rather than pushing, the happiest results occur.

Secondly, the process makes at least one assumption about the nature of metal: ductility. There is an *inherent property* in metals that allows them to be stretched into a wire. It is one of the properties that makes them metals and not, say, rocks. Trusting in this innate feature of metals is what gives someone the wisdom to pull rather than merely counter-push if one wants to make the coat hanger "right" again.

Thirdly, it is harder. It takes more work, more resilience, more trust in the opposing ("loyal opposition") forces to execute than simply re-bending the coat hanger. It requires a unified effort to work and thus requires the transcendence of duality (up until a point) where one realizes that without one's "foes" one can not achieve a real solution, only a crookeder wire.


All of the above is true for mankind as well. We must postulate an inherent ability, a natural ability, born in man to restore equilibrium and to "heal" after an injustice. Just as healed skin reveals no trace of the original wound, so too do all healings, when executed properly by nature "erase the stain" of sin that was the cause of the wound in the first place. (This may be extremely difficult to visualize for the allopathically oriented, but for those of us actively engaged in holistic healing, it is a daily occurrence. The experience of healing, either through fasting, or other natural models is such that there is literally no memory of the original insult in the first place. There is a sense - if there is a memory of the insult at all - that nothing was ever wrong in the first place and that at most there had been some sort of confusion-created disturbance. While such experiences are everyday occurrences in the holistic community, they nonetheless appear to be utterly miraculous when first encountered by someone raised with the double-bent coat hanger approach to healing and health.)

Finally, we must say that the experience requires work. It requires willful transcendence of division towards a unified goal. This is rarely politically expedient, and it is always riskier. But with a build-up of patience and a vision (on both sides) that the other side has valid concerns, such a transcendence is possible.

Indeed it happens rarely. . .there were moments in our history, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, when the things that divided us were surely less significant than the things that united us, and everybody felt that. These were extraordinary moments to seek common ground with those whose viewpoints oppose our own, a moment to see past our own grievances towards a collective humanity. Obviously these moments can be seized or thrown away and exploited, and it is the mark of leadership to know what to do when such a moment arrives.

The reason it is dangerous is that if the connection is missed, the "libido" required to make it falls back into the worst kind of unconsciousness and polarized bickering, since each side feel betrayed by the other and will need to wait a long time before adequate trust is restored to try again. Because in the end, if you're pulling hard on your end of the wire, you have to trust that the other side will pull back. A modicum of trust is necessary to proceed, and, in the best of circumstances, it can grow and grow until a higher order is achieved.

We experience this every day as capitalists, only we tend to trust absolutely in the low road rather than the high road, which is, perhaps, why it takes longer to reach our goals than visionary utopianists would like. But trusting in another's self interest, in the end, works, and, in economics it is more a question of maintaining that larger trust through the necessary missteps and relocations. The danger many economists felt at the height of the meltdown was that this trust would be lost forever and we would be back to bending wires long into the future.

Fortunately (imho), the protectionist impulses to rebend, or indeed to snap the wire were adequately resisted. This marks the 2008 calamity as a true test of the economic relationship gains that were made during the 90s/00s. We have proven, in a way, that those bonds - while clearly too frothy - are nonetheless secure enough to hold our financial system through whatever difficulties lie ahead.

Perhaps we require such "testing" again for our will to reconcile politically as well. Virulent polarization mixed with just a little bit of trust gives enormous power to undo wrongs. It is the Libertarian contribution to the debate, and it is mine personally- to address the underlying motives of each side's irrational claims such that we can, at least momentarily, glimpse that they are indeed sane underneath it all. Holding the vision of a common humanity is the goal of the middle. And to use the powerful, electrical forces of he electoral polarity for the benefit of all will be its greatest blessing.