Continuing towards a Manifesto - The New Optimism

Yesterday I started off on a positive note with The purpose of art is to reaffirm a life that is always slipping away from us. Burning the fuel of experience on the pyre of creation to build anew the world neglected. But then quickly turned negative. I wrote 'not' too many times. I placed the situation in an unmoving present. The present is great. It is where we are. But I think we need a new vision of the future. A new optimism.

Before I continue I must note the following. I can only speak as a US American, since, well I am one, so this may appear to have a rather myopic focus, but bear with me.

American history has been from its inception marked by a tendency towards optimism. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. The preamble to the US Constitution reads We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Westward expansion, manifest destiny, the Monroe Doctrine and so forth. An ideolgy of expansion, creation of wealth and prosperity and a striving towards a better way of life. However, this high purpose has always been tinged by gross and abusive hypocracies to its very core. Slavery, the three-fifths clause, genocide of Native Americans, American colonialism, and various expansionist wars including our current situation in Iraq.

In a sense this American Optimism reached its peak in the 1950's. We were the symbol of western power, influence and affluence. We had big houses and big cars. The capitalistic propaganda machine was churning out, full force, proof of our material and cultural superiority. We had won WWII and were going to win against the communists.

Then things began to change.

The hypocricy of American 'democratic' principals were seen first in the free speech movement and the resistance to McCarthyism. My grandfather had to leave the country because he would not sign a loyalty oath and thus could not keep his teaching job at UC Berkeley. The FSM led into the Hippy cultural revolution. In many ways a Nietzschean revaluation of values. A total and severe shock to the previously ordered and controlled society.

This provided a new optimism. A potential to move away from the consumerist society upheld by the old guard. But this too fell apart. And drugs then AIDS then capitalism eventually brought us limping into the 1980's. Here we would once again find a kind of economic Strength and superiority. The good worker, not the cultural rebel, would claim the role of icon of the decade. And things calmed down. And apathy set in. And the 1990's came and went.

Then 2001 came. And it brought some explosions followed by evil. And the government started using the old images of freedom and liberty but they ment something else. They ment power and control. They ment domination. They ment evil. And it gained momentum. Then the true lovers of freedom began to see themselves in a reactionary position. As the antagonist in this twisted drama.

But that is just a perspective. A way of seeing. Shift the scene. The evil doers are running the country, but they are running scared. They are scared of true freedom. Of the implications of liberty. They fear possibility. And that fear is their weakness.

They can not last against Optimism. And not an optimism like the past, which clouds over inequalities. No. A New Optimism. An Optimism that sees potential in everything. Where every moment is a definitive time of change. Where every creative act, or healing act creates the world anew and heals all its wounds. Where the magic of action creates change from infinity to infinity.

The New Optimism accepts its faults. Rather than hiding, it seeks to constantly correct. It knows where its power lies, in the true will of Human existence to live free. The New Optimism is a return to the core values of this country but more essentially to the will to freedom. To Life. To Liberty. To the Persuit of Happiness.

This must be Art. To release us from the forces of darkness and control that would smooth our rough edges and make us weak in the face of fear. To live is to create change. Live free.