my attempt to define who i am and we are, spiritually, can be read in my blog entry.

great news!
if you're here exploring newBluePlanet
you probably have a soul 😀

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1Gbx5MtqMA/

There is a trend among some liberals that we all need to co-exist and "get along". I understand where this idea comes from. Certainly, those of us on both sides of the aisle have commonalities. At the end of the day, we all want to own a home, live in safe neighborhoods and send our kids to good schools. However, I do recall Bill Maher once saying, "There IS a difference between the two parties." One party pulls out racist and homophobic slurs like their morning coffee. Therefore, I do agree that often the other party does not have a soul. After all, how can one sit back and defend what ICE is doing to migrant families? How can one proudly proclaim to be a Republican and not care at all that many people will not be able to afford health care?

Whether Repubs and conservatives still have a soul or not, may be debateable. What seems to be indisputeable tho, is that they have zero empathy for anyone different from them, who is not a member of their tribe, while on the other hand, liberals will gladly extend all the same rights and privileges to them that we have, because we believe in equal rights and fair treatment for all. Their base attitude is that only white people who share their religion, politics, and sexual orientation/identity, deserve the same rights and privileges as them.. In other words, they lack a spirit of generosity and fairness that we have.. And they also don't really believe in democracy for all, but in a hierachical system where their group has all or most of the power, permanently...

4 hours ago, scarylibrarian said:

". . . At the end of the day, we all want to own a home, live in safe neighborhoods and send our kids to good schools . . ."

A safe neighborhood, I won't argue about, scarylibrarian. But, not everyone wants to be a homeowner or a parent.

I'll split the difference with you, mac. I ended up owning a home, a condo apt., most I ever wanted. But never wanted to be a parent and so I ended up childfree.. Even as a childfree adult, I have always supported having good and safe schools for everyone's kids, simply because they all deserve it and in the end it benefits all of us, including those without kids, by promoting higher property values and producing better citizens...

1 hour ago, BobDylan said:

“ . . . Even as a childfree adult, I have always supported having good and safe schools for everyone's kids, simply because they all deserve it and in the end it benefits all of us, including those without kids, by promoting higher property values and producing better citizens...”

I entirely agree with you, BD. However, I once worked with a hardcore right-winger who would bellyache about having to pay taxes to support schools.

“I don’t have kids!” ,he’d kvetch.

Again, I’m on your wavelength. But, my hackles get raised whenever I hear or read “We all” or “Everybody.”

The right wing co-worker is a 🍆, who thinks like an idiot, but you already knew that... Most of us never need welfare programs and many of us never live long enough to collect Social Security, but both programs are necessary, because they make for a more humane and secure society, which benefits us all. But you can never get a conservative to accept that, because they are all about selfishness, immaturity, and greed...

to clarify my view, the "who has a soul" clip is entertainment.
the truth is likely that, at worst, some people's souls are offline
from a lifetime of matrix programming
interference -- static

the replies that followed the clip are politics based
imo, politics is an exercise that separates people
and since our spirit is shared
dividing people is like the right hand fighting with the left hand

indeed, as Scary says, we all want the same thing.
because we are the same things
if everyone believed that
felt that
we would know how to behave and how to treat each other
without laws, police, or government, as we know them

only one guideline to follow:

"do unto others as you would have others do unto you"

sharing the food, shelter, land, and resources -- and the work
is everyone being good to themselves

Call me cynical, but some people are just plain selfish and wicked, so that even if we had a socialist utopia, like I would prefer we have, there would still be a need for laws, cops and government, esp. government.... The opposite of my desired utopia, is some sort of post apocalyptic world, like the Walking Dead, universe, where everything is chaos and everything is about the strongest and most ruthless having all the power and being completely free to prey on the weaker people who are still left.. I would frankly rather be dead, than going on and trying to survive and suffer in such a world..

14 hours ago, V.3 said:

"indeed, as Scary says, we all want the same thing.
because we are the same things"

I earnestly wish that I could agree with you, Cap'n. But I cannot because we, in fact, do not all want the same things. The state of the world and the behavior of Man are irrefutable testaments to that tragic reality. Yes, we are all human. But, we are not all humane.

14 hours ago, V.3 said:

"if everyone believed that
felt that
we would know how to behave and how to treat each other
without laws, police, or government, as we know them"

. . . and that we have laws, police, and government confirms and affirms that everyone does not believe that "we are the same things."

14 hours ago, V.3 said:

"only one guideline to follow:

"do unto others as you would have others do unto you"

That holy precept, created by Man, is much exalted, oft quoted, abidingly taught, and casually obeyed. Like a New Year's resolution, it is a commitment and ambition that is not always achieved.

. . . maybe tomorrow. Maybe next year. More likely, never.

You nailed the essence of it, mac. We are all human, but not all of us are humane....

yes, you both describe the world as it is
but, describing the world as it could and should be,
is a step in the right direction.
when MLK said
"the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice"
(if we engage and actively pull it)
he was right. and it did.
obviously, there's a long way to go
but complacency, hopelessness, and despondency
can bend the arc back the wrong way.
that's what we're experiencing

the point of this thread is...
IF we tune into our shared spiritual source
instead of the broadcasts from the corporate gods of profit
we can, as Gandhi said,
"be the change we hope to achieve."

it begins by asking,
and being receptive to the un-distorted answer
to the question
WHO I AM?

MLK was right in saying things were going in the right direction, but since the 1970s, things have been getting worse, and many of the advances in social progress have been reversed, due to reactionary politics, but also due to the oligarchs and corporations taking and gaining much greater power than they had back in MLK's time. The globalization of the world's economy has been one factor, another is the multinational corporations taking complete control of the Dem Party, which left unions and workers with no competing or balancing power to the Repub Party. And since Americans and their electoral system are so resistant to using third parties to advance political goals, we have been stuck in a one way class war for the last several decades, where only the rich and corporations are fighting it, and the rest of us are left defenseless and nobody advancing our cause, at least no one with any real power in the fed govt..

Believe it or not, I've not given up, even tho I have little hope left these days. But most Americans do seem to have given up, whether it's about democracy, or about the system ever working fairly or for them again, and as long as that's the case, we are not going to ever get out of this hole. I think it's going to take a charismatic, progressive leader, who can somehow avoid being assassinated like so many were in the 60s, and I just don't see that happening soon enough to save us. Nor do I see the American people rising up and overthrowing the corrupt regime, like they recently did in Bulgaria. We seem to have lost our solidarity and revolutionary spirit too much to ever do that..

2 hours ago, V.3 said:

"yes, you both describe the world as it is . . ."

I describe the world as it is because that is the world that I live in, Cap'n. I can hope for and dream of a better world -- but I must live in The Real World. I can join other fellow travelers to work toward and fight for a better world -- the better world that I want but, at my age, shall never see.

I have seen a lot of change during my lifetime. Change in America. Change in the world. Change in societal and cultural mores. Change wrought by science and technology. Change birthed by the arts. Change for the better and change for the worse. Yet though I have seen a lot of change, I am always sobered by Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr's maxim "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."* I have seen a lot of change. But not enough of the change that I want to see.

2 hours ago, V.3 said:

" . . . obviously, there's a long way to go
but complacency, hopelessness, and despondency
can bend the arc back the wrong way."

Michelle Obama would agree with you. Last week on MS NOW she chastised the "entitled" studio audience and at-home viewers for giving in to despair and hopelessness and giving up the fight. Because giving up, she lectured, is denying children today and future generations the right to a better future. The rights, benefits, and privileges that we have today were bestowed upon and bequeathed to us by our ancestors who struggled, fought, and died for us so that we could have better lives than they had. We owe them tribute for their victories and their sacrifices as much as we owe the generations who follow us a better tomorrow. To wit, we need to keep our eyes on the prize -- and that prize is children.

* The more things change, the more they stay the same. This is the third time that I have employed Karr's aphorism on nBP. It probably won't be the last.

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One thing I believe as pretty likely, is that future wars will be fought more with drones and robot soldiers, than with cannon fodder flesh and blood soldiers on the ground. As to replacing human soldiers with robots, I'm not sure if that's an improvement or not. It will look a lot more like the Terminator movies, with a real Skynet... Your post is on the mark tho, V., in that psych ops will be an increasingly big part of wars...