Social consciousness takes it’s own path depending on what social structure about which we are concerned. Margaret Mead made that quite plain. Our social consciousness is woven with the thread of Puritanism, and sides get taken. There lies the ego connection.

The dissolution of the ego can only be undertaken by the understanding of the unity of opposites. There is no absolute evil or good. We cannot know God’s intention in allowing Nazism, or the Inquisition, to take two examples, until the Plan is completely exposed, and that can only happen when God’s plan has been run completely, if I may use a Judeo/Christian POV.

I wish we could have a conversation about this much more extensively. In my own life, when my ego takes over, I suffer. And my ego will do all it can to try to subvert it’s subsuming by the “I”, that which observes but does not judge.

I don’t know whether this can work, but maybe we need to give it a try. Jesus pointed to it, as did the Buddha, The Tao and other spiritual paths as well.

The Mayans have an expression: “In Lak’ech”, which traslates to “I am another yourself”.

Maybe start there?

To Southern Dragon at 89, let me say: Who bought all the stuff enabling capitalism to thrive? Whose ego is going to be dominant in attempting to defeat it?

That’s my point, and beyond that, I won’t be dragged into a dialog over ego dominance.

Ah, yes…I remember when human compassion was very wide spread and didn’t just pop up whenever there was some kind of tragedy. That was back in the 1950’s. After that compassion seemed to slowly fad away.
The 1950’s has always impressed me because it was a time when many of us felt connected to one another. Income ranges were not so out of wack and greed had not yet been invented.
You also mentioned how we moved away from helping one another and let our governmental agencies do more of that. Again, I see a correlation between big government getting bigger and compassion becoming more rare.

If only the people of Algiers Point heard your message:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K3veQLmhAE

- Tom

Communism is not incompatible with democracy.

I disagree. If we lived in a world society where only items needed for existence, ie, food, clothing, shelter were produced we could conceivably live a purely communistic lifestyle. That is not the reality, however. How do we ensure that the person who cleans the school at night has the wherewithal to acquire the products enjoyed by the school principal? Under a communistic system where would the incentive to become a school principal come from?

We have ceded our lives to unfettered free market capitalism which is greed driven.

Communism in the purist sense only provides for the people to all share in the deal – they share – the wealth and the poverty.

Communism is not incompatible with democracy.