It was astounding to watch the news about Tunisia, Egypt, and now Libya as nations throw off ruthless dictatorships. Now, without dictators, how will those nations stay unified? Will the masses of citizens, with habits of conforming to coordinates coercively enforced, willingly build a consensus and find democratic coexistence?
The answer can be found in God's creation and God's Word.
Last week it occurred to me that all creation seems to wait expectantly for human beings to find their way to God's plan. That's when I stopped to watch the usual fall starling pre-migration clouds (look up "boid" or "swarm behavior" on Wikipedia or an encyclopedia).
My fencing work was interrupted by white noise emanating from of hundreds of thousands of chirping starlings in a massive cloud. They undulated in synchronized flight down from the rims across the river and over the back 40, darting in perfect synchronicity to the left and then right. Were they synchronized in response to a threat to flock security? I stood still in amazement as I saw another cloud moving with more southerly coordinates about to intersect with the first cloud over my west fence line. What would happen if they collided?
The encounter was amazingly smooth and uneventful. It looked for a while they would morph into one, maybe choosing a compromised set of coordinates. But they didn't. As the intersecting boundaries pulled back toward separate clouds again, several individuals in flight seemed confused. These few were reversing, changing directions, and occasionally stopping and fluttering in the air. This was the only stressed behavior I detected, and it was instantly gone. By the time I realized what was happening, the boundaries were clarified, those individuals previously perplexed figured it out and took off into the nearby morphing flowing cloud of leaderless synchronized flying starlings, apparently still with precise distances apart in all three dimensions.
It was obvious mass confusion was avoided by simple respect of equal access to resources of air and flying space. All individuals except these few adapted quickly to new directions with impunity. No few went off to the side to shout hostilities at one bird propped up by others as the decide. In all the massive direction changes—evident bird mind changing, I saw no policebirds, no attempt even to distrust these few deviants let alone punish them, no opposition to the immigration of one cloud into the other.
As the clouds separated again I watched as each with portions stretched out and slowed where the colliding encounter occurred. Orderliness continued. Every individual again remained properly respectful of every other's space. One of the clouds executed several instant direction changes, still in total synchronization, and still with no discernable mass fear.
Khadafy had for decades been able to keep his nation unified around his leadership through arrest, torture and disappearance. In his mind they all belonged to him, and he loved them all, unless they departed for other flock coordinates. That's when his depraved arrogance took over. It took a civil war and his violent death to end his tragic failure. Learning from Big Horn County birds was beyond his beliefs.
We in America have leaders with similar little belief in the masses of Americans nationwide. Yet that's where, by our constitution, the power of the ship of state resides. Just like the birds could be trusted to change directions and follow coordinates not owned or imposed by a few, so the new democratic movements in the Middle East like Egypt and Libra now need their powerful people to trust their masses too. Few do, and that's a problem.
We Americans are entering a new era, beginning to trust the flocks morphing now in nearly every major city, the flocks of Occupy Wall Street. They represent the best the world can get from America: our tradition of leadership empowered by the authority of the governed over the government. Even our president is and should be just one of the flocking cloud. We the people should not follow the example of the world's dictators in believing we should model our family economies or our life coordinates upon a few powerful elite. It's true we are fortunate that the power of the few in America over the many is not exerted by violent abusive force and fear, at least not much yet. But we do have massive numbers of our citizens dropping out in frustration, unable to find their space in our economic flock. Such power imbalance as ours, currently focused on Wall Street, cannot make for successful synchronicity in family economic navigation toward the freedom to find the space to breath, live, and move together in a more perfect union.
The following is not posted in the Big Horn County News:
Read the writings in the New Testament by Dr. Luke, St. Paul's personal physician, "Luke" and "Acts." Read all Bible passages surrounding words like "masses" "multitudes" "families" "Israel" "church" and "koinonia."
Our national conversation
It's a knee-jerk reaction. Whenever we see a group of people synchronized in religion, economics, politics, war, sexual mores or any life or death pursuit we look for leaders. Often, we can't really find them. People get coordinated like birds do, and for much the same, but vastly less complex, reasons.
Belief that God has a specific plan for each person's life is linked now with ending or reducing government social programs. Belief that there is no ultimate truth is linked with bigger government programs to benefit citizens, especially the poor. Whose side would Jesus have been on? It depends how you read the Bible.
http://www.baylor.edu/pr/news.php?action=story&story=100503
http://www.baylor.edu/newsclips/index.php?id=85125
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/20/unemployment-religion-baylor-survey_n_970772.html
"People who cannot state this belief clearly are only pretending belief; they really are not True Believers."
In a way, I'm glad we humans are not bird-brained. On the other hand…
--
David Graber
Hardin, MT
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org
