It's wrong to revel in blood flowing, but it's a mistake not to recognize that the only chance for basic social change occurs when masses of people have their illusions shaken to the core. I believe there is a growing popular suspicion that the apparent wealth and security wrought by the post-cold-war End of History were chimerical -- a doubt that is indeed leaving people weak, confused and desirous of order. Now that those feelings have come to the fore, the left should not bewail that they exist but focus on how to address them; otherwise, the right will be entirely free to capitalize on these sentiments itself.
Moreover, there's nothing wrong with mystical consciousness. What's important is to cultivate such consciousness at its most profound level -- to promote mass awareness that is transcendent, progressive and conducive to feelings of human kinship and generosity that social conventions have previously inhibited. I think the following quote from Emerson -- a favorite, which I have posted to the list before -- is particularly apt now:
"The world lies in night of sin. It hears not the cock crowing: it sees not the grey streak in the East. At the first entering ray of light, society is shaken with fear and anger from side to side. Who opened that shutter? they cry, Wo to him! They belie it, they call it darkness that comes in, affirming that they were in light before.... The sects, the colleges, the church, the statesmen all have forebodings. It now works only in a handful.
What does State Street and Wall Street and the Royal Exchange and the Bourse at Paris care for these few thoughts and these few men? Very little; truly; most truly. But the doom of State Street, and Wall Street, of London, and France, of the whole world, is advertised by those thoughts; is in the procession of the Soul which comes after those few thoughts."
Carl
_________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp