In her 2001 novel, The High Flyer, Susan Howatch suggested that human beings must have lives founded on integrity…characterized by such qualities as:
- Truth
- Decency
- Unselfishness
- Compassion
- Trust
- Hope
- Love
Without those qualities present in their lives, she says, human beings soon become emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, and even physically deformed.
And when a group of people loses sight of its purpose and forgets to manage its shared spirit, as the Wisconsin Senate and Assembly have done over the past several months, all of those qualities go out the window. The result is the most disgusting political deformity this state has seen in my lifetime–dis-integrity (to coin a word) at its most glaring.
Without even the hint of an apology to the voters, these elected fools have given themselves over to:
- Lies
- Degradation
- Selfishness
- Callousness
- Deceit
- Cynicism
- Exploitation
- Manipulation
These negative inclinations may actually seem very exciting to us when they arrive coated in various forms of self-indulgence. In fact, some who have been marinated in the hallucinogenic brine of party politics not only think these are the qualities that are expected of them but that they are the only choices available to them. The resulting destructive behaviors are deadly to sound public policy, integrity, and good government. In fact, they have everything to do with destroying integrity and the reputation of the legislative body…and the reputation of the state as a whole…and creating an incredibly toxic shared spirit among elected officials.
Sadly, these politicans are helpless in the face of their toxic shared spirit, mainly because they don’t even recognize that they have created it. Their negative shared spirit is a powerful, gigantic energy vampire, and it is playing them collectively and individually like a cheap piano.
Their only hope for bringing some iota of credibility back to the Wisconsin legislature is to become aware of “the elephant in the living room,” the condition of their shared spirit (or collective relationship, if you will) and begin to manage it–rather than continuing to point fingers, snipe, and blame one another.
Tragically, this level of irresponsibility and gross incompetence has become the norm in politics at all levels.
I wish I were more optimistic.
Filed under: Shared Spirit
