The word politics comes from the Greek word “polis,” meaning the state or community as a whole. Plato, in his “Republic,“ confidently detailed his version of the ideal state and how it could be achieved.  From this beginning, the word politics has always implied the ways in which to create the ideal society. 

And the creation of an ideal society is, of course, the hopeful aim of the New Age.  No wonder, then, that the idealism of the New Age asserts the importance of becoming politically active.

“To heal the world you must be in it,” said George Lakoff.  “Spiritual commitment requires political action, or it amounts to nothing.”   

Politics is philosophy brought to life in the community.  It is the process by which groups of people make decisions, by which we put our ideals to work in the public sphere, and by which we rank priorities for the common good.  Every part of our lives is influenced by political decisions -- from the jobs available to us, to the food we eat, to the cars we drive, to our personal safety, even to the very air we breathe.  We can therefore expect that any true peace and harmony brought to society will be developed and refined through political means.

Yet as we look back at the past thirty to forty years of our political history, we see that America is drifting ever further from peace and harmony, not closer.  Our spiritual ideals are supposed to be expressed through politics, but today, progressive politics has been stripped of all spiritual ideals.  A progressive politician might talk about their faith in a “people interest”-style media story, but almost never in terms of particular political decisions. This trend has been a disaster for us both politically and spiritually.

Many believe that a good and healthy separation of church and state requires us to separate politics and spirituality into independent spheres.  But idealism tells us that “all is one,” all things are interrelated and interdependent.  Politics and spirituality mutually create each other.  To insert a sharp knife between them is to harm both, and this harm is perpetuated in a never-ending negative spiral.  

“There is a real spiritual crisis in this society,” writes Michael Lerner, founder of the Network of Spiritual Progressives.  “And it has everything to do with the way we organize our economic and political lives.” 

Likewise, the political crisis in our society has everything to do with how we organize our spiritual lives.  

Stovepipe democracy

In the 1960s -- the days of the Democratic vision of a Great Society, the days in which the Kennedy Brothers and Martin Luther King Jr. inspired a nation to inhabit its highest ideals -- every cause was a logical extension of the idealistic vision of justice and equality.  That spiritual vision was so ennobling, so empowering, that it completely transformed our society within a single, turbulent decade.

Today, the political party that most commonly represents us operates on a cobbled-together platform of policy issues and causes such as environmentalism, anti-war, pro-choice, gay rights, etc.  Rather than pooling our efforts toward a common cause, we tend to get passionate about one or two narrow issues.  According to former Sierra Club president Adam Werbach, we are now organized into “stovepipes rather than toward a single end.“  Lakoff, meanwhile, calls them “issue silos.”

Each group pursues its own specific legislative goals, addressing them from the “Old Enlightenment” thinking that, according to Lakoff, focuses on materialistic interests, the numbers and statistics that apply to certain demographic groups.  Rarely do progressive groups work together toward a common goal -- building the political power to create a world that works for everyone.  We are like specialists running around treating the particular symptoms of our diseased society -- global warming, war, discrimination, corruption in government, economic collapse -- without ever mentioning the disease itself.   And because the disease is spiritual bankruptcy in the public sphere, we actually end up helping the disease grow and the symptoms intensify.

The irony is, our political positions are still very much drawn from our spiritual beliefs about what is good and right and moral:  That we are all connected, interdependent, and responsible for each other.  But somewhere along the way we began to mistrust all public expressions of spirit, and turned meaning into a “private matter.“

I don’t know whether we should blame disapproval from secularists, or our own desire to be as different as possible from Bible-waving conservatives, but for whatever reason, spiritual ideals have vanished from progressive politics.  We no longer have common goals, we no longer have a common vision, and for years we have been unable to win important elections.  Meanwhile, our goals for more enlightened public policies have drifted ever further out of reach.

In search of meaning

Politically, idealism did very well back in the early 20th century, when larger numbers of people were struggling to survive.  The “liberal project” created the minimum wage, the 40 hour workweek, Social Security, civil rights, as well as greater gender equality. In fact, idealism succeeded so well that one might say it has become a victim of its own success.  Because of its political triumphs, basic survival is no longer a concern for most of us.  We now have the luxury of voting for our “meaning” needs instead. 

“Most Americans today are not survival oriented; they’re fulfillment oriented,” says Werbach. “People are looking for something to believe in.  They’re looking for meaning in life.  They’re looking to be part of a broader project.”

And who is addressing meaning needs?  Which party claims to represent meaningful “values”?  Well it’s not the Democratic Party.  Because the Religious Right is the only spiritual representative on the political scene -- the only one clearly articulating the pain inherent in the materialistic American way of life -- they have been winning the vote of the spiritually hungry by default.

If we spiritual idealists want to see our ideals represented in the public sphere, then we are going to have to stand up for them in the public sphere.  We are going to have to talk about spiritual values like compassion and empathy as valid reasons for universal health care.  We are going to have to talk about values like peace and non-violence as valid reasons to end the war in Iraq.  We are going to have to talk about values like unity and interdependence as reasons to reform our justice system.  We are going to have to do as Michael Lerner suggests, and “come out of the closet and identify publicly as spiritual beings and claim [our] right to be heard and respected as spiritual people.”

This is not a new observation. Walt Whitman, the great 19th century mystic poet, felt that democracy was a concept “the real gist of which sleeps, quite unawakened.” He believed the solution was the ‘spiritualization’ of the political sphere. “The core of democracy, finally, is the religious element.”  He talked about a universalized spirituality “which is adhesiveness or love, that fuses, ties and aggregates, making the races comrades, and fraternizing all.” 

Today, more than ever, we are in need of a spiritual story that will help us to throw off fear and apathy, and to fight the influences of money and special interests that have been able to get such a death grip on our politics.

It is time, says George Lakoff in his book, The Political Mind, for a “New Enlightenment,” which “comes with a new consciousness.”  This new consciousness, he continues, starts with the understanding “of our connection to the natural world and to each other” and ends with “the realization that empathy and responsibility are at the heart of the moral vision on which our democracy is based.”

It is time for politics to meet the New Age -- and the New Age to meet politics.

Go to The Political Mirror.