Tik tok. Instagram etc speaks to our animal fast brain with emotional candy. Deliberative democracy engages our slow brain allowing us to see others and feel others through deep conversation.
people come out of public deliberations saying “there was love in that room“.
I think the solution to nearly all our complex problems is to build processes in which love can flourish through civic deliberation.
Hi Richard, I saw the link to this essay in the Deep Transformation Network.
I found your movement toward seeing Love (and I assume, Christ and God?) as fundamental to be inspiring. I attended 3 Leftist meetings in 1971, my first year of music school, and found them to be utterly flat and boring. I was inspired in 1974 by EF Schumacher, who not only borrowed from the Catholic economic/political doctrine of subsidiarity, but even more important, put forward the perennial philosophy (the underlying Unity of all spiritual traditions) as fundamental to a transformed world.
I see very little of this in any political movement around the world. I'm hoping you see more clearly than I do - do you see any examples of what you're calling for?
I've been associated with Auroville for the past 50 years - one such experiment to bring Divine Love into embodiment; though they have been filled with strife and conflict much of the time (now the government of India is trying to take them over)
Looking forward to hearing more from you and reading more of your reflections.
Thank you, Don. Your reflection resonates deeply. Yes—when I speak of Love, I mean not sentiment but structure—the living architecture of reality itself. Christ reveals it most fully for me. One connection to Sri Aurobindo is his vision of an integrated life, bringing together the personal aspects of God and also the impersonal cosmic sense but brought into the physical world.
I’ve followed Auroville’s journey with compassion—it’s one of many sincere efforts to embody Divine Love within systems still shaped by old habits. What I call Symbiotic Culture builds on a long lineage: the early Christian communities of shared life, Gandhi’s and Dr. Ariyaratne’s Sarvodaya movement in India and Sri Lanka, and the Parallel Polis of Charter 77 under communist Czechoslovakia—all living expressions of Love as civic order.
My focus is to bring that sacred pattern back into "ordinary" (but sacred) life—local economies, art, neighborhoods, and acts of trust that reconnect the vertical (Divine) with the horizontal (human).
Very well-written and on target - it is now clear, especially now post-covid, that progressivism (which I similarly heartily embraced for 35 years) is essentially tyrannical and destructive of the cultural fabric, and serves the interests of globalist plutocrats who use it to divide and conquer. The universities preach it, and the mainstream media, and Hollywood, and it's embedded in government agencies and it reduces our spiritual intelligence, as you say, and our capacity to love and to awaken out of the delusion of materialism.
One thing I would add, though, is that it is our culture's routine abuse, enslavement, and killing of millions of cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals daily for food that is the greatest destroyer of our capacity to authentically embody the love that you are discussing and espousing. This ongoing violence toward animals and nature is completely unnecessary; it's just conditioned into us from infancy. Animal liberation is the essential next step, and is the foundation of human dignity, freedom, justice, and wisdom.
I'm sorry you had such a bad experience with Progressivism. It has not been mine, or other Progressives I know, or even of its so-called ideologues. Love IS its foundation, in both theory and practice. It seeks to heal not divide, to include not exclude, to tolerate diversity and provide opportunity for all. When religion is weaponized to exclude, Progressives call it out. Nobody dismisses the importance of family. That is a red herring used to demonize Progressives. Dominance of one religion over another is not virtue. I hope that in your conversion, you do not open the door to the worst instincts and horrors coming from our political leaders, not from their followers who are good people being misled.
Thank you for this thoughtful response. I appreciate your empathy, and just to clarify—my experience with Progressivism wasn’t “bad” so much as formative. I entered it with a sincere desire for justice, compassion, and inclusion, and I still honor those motives. Over time, though, I began to notice how certain ideological frames redefined love primarily through power and identity rather than covenant and shared virtue. My concern isn’t with people or intentions, but with how that philosophical drift can weaken trust and fragment communities that genuinely seek healing.
I deeply agree that religion should never be weaponized. What I’m exploring is how we might rediscover a moral and spiritual grounding that transcends ideology altogether—where love functions as both moral order and relational coherence. In Part II, I share more examples of how ideology—both secular and religious—can subtly keep us apart, and how we might find our way back to a deeper, unifying love.
The Progressive emphasis on identity is meant to empower the disenfranchised, not to take away anyone else's rights, and it has worked. Without equity and diversity, the community suffers. These values are the outgrowth of love at the center of Progressivism. I have not seen evidence of philosophical drift that weakens communities or fragments communities. But if you have, that is a valuable perspective, and something in need of correction. It sounds like your solution of deeply unifying love is a recommitment to the core of Progressive values. I look forward to your Part 2.
I appreciate your engagement, though I did sense a bit of dismissal. My aim isn’t to attack Progressivism but to name a pattern I’ve seen up close: when moral ideals become centralized, they often enforce conformity instead of inspiring care. Since the 1960s, many Progressive values have become embedded in bureaucracies with power to compel rather than persuade.
That shift—from love freely chosen to virtue imposed—erodes trust and weakens democracy. When any group sees itself as morally superior, it divides communities that need each other most. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment: Progressive, Liberal, Conservative, Religious, MAGA, secular, spiritual, rich, and poor—we all need to rebuild civic life together from the ground up through covenant, virtue, and shared love.
And now we see the backlash, the centralization of anti-DEI. The government is trying to institutionalize the opposite, which is just as pernicious. Discrimination was the law until Civil Rights. So this backlash is a flashback. I get your point about centralization and coercion. That is the function of government when it seeks to right a moral wrong. Can citizens behave morally without coercion? Possibly, with the right system, concensus and incentives. You have been formulating one, and from the many comments on this and your other posts, so have many others. I hope all of these groups will network and collaborate rather than fragment. I didn't mean to dismiss. Only to question whether this is the right time to promote unification at the expense of a movement that is attempting to do the same given the extreme injustices being perpetrated by our leaders.
It’s really a chicken-and-egg question—who came first?
I was deeply involved in progressive movements from the late 1970s through the early 2000s and watched from the inside as the long-term plan unfolded: spreading cultural ideas through education, media, politics, and eventually federal and corporate bureaucracies. That institutionalization of DEI became its own cultural revolution, driven by state power even as half the country resisted it.
Now, the surge of anti-DEI laws is a counter-revolution—another attempt to impose control, just in the opposite direction. I believe human history is littered with examples of people who thought government could be used in a righteous cause—Lenin and Mao come to mind—and the results were catastrophic.
Basically, the government always ends up becoming an oppressive oligarchy; no matter what we think, "it will be better this time."
My point is that we need to move beyond both. Left and right keep us locked in cycles of centralized corporate and political power, when what we truly need is a decentralized commonwealth—local people, institutions, and communities reclaiming moral, civic, economic, and political responsibility together. I’ve seen that when communities do this—following the Parallel Polis's lineage—they can solve problems directly without waiting for distant systems to save them.
A powerful example was the Czech Charter 77 movement under Soviet communism, where citizens quietly built a parallel grassroots culture of millions, grounded in moral, civic, economic, and political values. Over time, this network of trust and solidarity helped weaken the totalitarian system and laid the groundwork for a new democratic order after the Soviet retreat. It shows that genuine renewal doesn’t come from capturing the state but from rebuilding society from the ground up, through relationships, virtue, and shared responsibility.
My book is about my own experiences building some of these parallel approaches and how anyone, anywhere, can do the same —a bottom-up movement of thousands of communities at the same time.
Thank you, Richard, for your clarity, coherence and courage. Much of the ascension that is coming is rising off the spectrum political polarity. Well done!
Foster, it is great to hear from you, and your encouraging words are appreciated. With this piece, I felt I was sticking my neck out! Part 2 is coming next week.
“Love is not merely an emotion or virtue—it is structure. Love is the ordering principle of life, the architecture of reality, the way creation coheres and grows.“ 👍🏻
What a read, quite excellent, and rooted in hope that your vision is possible. I am so looking forward to reading your book, and recommending it to others as well. Thank you for your deep and enduring commitment in this work.
Thank you for this, Richard. What an excellent narrative. In my book, CONEtrolled: How we've lost our freedom and how to reclaim it, I write about the way one dogma begets the next one (often the one that opposes the "old dogma") and how we can stop doing it. Your story exemplifies just that. I look forward to the release of your book. It is exactly what we need right now.
Nava, thank you for the comment and support. I, too, can't wait for my book to come out, as I actually started writing it in 2006 and have been on the task for the last four years.
Tik tok. Instagram etc speaks to our animal fast brain with emotional candy. Deliberative democracy engages our slow brain allowing us to see others and feel others through deep conversation.
people come out of public deliberations saying “there was love in that room“.
I think the solution to nearly all our complex problems is to build processes in which love can flourish through civic deliberation.
see braverangels.org and deliberationgateway.org
“…right relationship as the organizing law of life.” What a truly great post. Thank you.
Hi Richard, I saw the link to this essay in the Deep Transformation Network.
I found your movement toward seeing Love (and I assume, Christ and God?) as fundamental to be inspiring. I attended 3 Leftist meetings in 1971, my first year of music school, and found them to be utterly flat and boring. I was inspired in 1974 by EF Schumacher, who not only borrowed from the Catholic economic/political doctrine of subsidiarity, but even more important, put forward the perennial philosophy (the underlying Unity of all spiritual traditions) as fundamental to a transformed world.
I see very little of this in any political movement around the world. I'm hoping you see more clearly than I do - do you see any examples of what you're calling for?
I've been associated with Auroville for the past 50 years - one such experiment to bring Divine Love into embodiment; though they have been filled with strife and conflict much of the time (now the government of India is trying to take them over)
Looking forward to hearing more from you and reading more of your reflections.
Thank you, Don. Your reflection resonates deeply. Yes—when I speak of Love, I mean not sentiment but structure—the living architecture of reality itself. Christ reveals it most fully for me. One connection to Sri Aurobindo is his vision of an integrated life, bringing together the personal aspects of God and also the impersonal cosmic sense but brought into the physical world.
I’ve followed Auroville’s journey with compassion—it’s one of many sincere efforts to embody Divine Love within systems still shaped by old habits. What I call Symbiotic Culture builds on a long lineage: the early Christian communities of shared life, Gandhi’s and Dr. Ariyaratne’s Sarvodaya movement in India and Sri Lanka, and the Parallel Polis of Charter 77 under communist Czechoslovakia—all living expressions of Love as civic order.
My focus is to bring that sacred pattern back into "ordinary" (but sacred) life—local economies, art, neighborhoods, and acts of trust that reconnect the vertical (Divine) with the horizontal (human).
Warmly,
Richard
Very well-written and on target - it is now clear, especially now post-covid, that progressivism (which I similarly heartily embraced for 35 years) is essentially tyrannical and destructive of the cultural fabric, and serves the interests of globalist plutocrats who use it to divide and conquer. The universities preach it, and the mainstream media, and Hollywood, and it's embedded in government agencies and it reduces our spiritual intelligence, as you say, and our capacity to love and to awaken out of the delusion of materialism.
One thing I would add, though, is that it is our culture's routine abuse, enslavement, and killing of millions of cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals daily for food that is the greatest destroyer of our capacity to authentically embody the love that you are discussing and espousing. This ongoing violence toward animals and nature is completely unnecessary; it's just conditioned into us from infancy. Animal liberation is the essential next step, and is the foundation of human dignity, freedom, justice, and wisdom.
Thank you for connecting, Will.
I'm sorry you had such a bad experience with Progressivism. It has not been mine, or other Progressives I know, or even of its so-called ideologues. Love IS its foundation, in both theory and practice. It seeks to heal not divide, to include not exclude, to tolerate diversity and provide opportunity for all. When religion is weaponized to exclude, Progressives call it out. Nobody dismisses the importance of family. That is a red herring used to demonize Progressives. Dominance of one religion over another is not virtue. I hope that in your conversion, you do not open the door to the worst instincts and horrors coming from our political leaders, not from their followers who are good people being misled.
Thank you for this thoughtful response. I appreciate your empathy, and just to clarify—my experience with Progressivism wasn’t “bad” so much as formative. I entered it with a sincere desire for justice, compassion, and inclusion, and I still honor those motives. Over time, though, I began to notice how certain ideological frames redefined love primarily through power and identity rather than covenant and shared virtue. My concern isn’t with people or intentions, but with how that philosophical drift can weaken trust and fragment communities that genuinely seek healing.
I deeply agree that religion should never be weaponized. What I’m exploring is how we might rediscover a moral and spiritual grounding that transcends ideology altogether—where love functions as both moral order and relational coherence. In Part II, I share more examples of how ideology—both secular and religious—can subtly keep us apart, and how we might find our way back to a deeper, unifying love.
The Progressive emphasis on identity is meant to empower the disenfranchised, not to take away anyone else's rights, and it has worked. Without equity and diversity, the community suffers. These values are the outgrowth of love at the center of Progressivism. I have not seen evidence of philosophical drift that weakens communities or fragments communities. But if you have, that is a valuable perspective, and something in need of correction. It sounds like your solution of deeply unifying love is a recommitment to the core of Progressive values. I look forward to your Part 2.
I appreciate your engagement, though I did sense a bit of dismissal. My aim isn’t to attack Progressivism but to name a pattern I’ve seen up close: when moral ideals become centralized, they often enforce conformity instead of inspiring care. Since the 1960s, many Progressive values have become embedded in bureaucracies with power to compel rather than persuade.
That shift—from love freely chosen to virtue imposed—erodes trust and weakens democracy. When any group sees itself as morally superior, it divides communities that need each other most. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment: Progressive, Liberal, Conservative, Religious, MAGA, secular, spiritual, rich, and poor—we all need to rebuild civic life together from the ground up through covenant, virtue, and shared love.
And now we see the backlash, the centralization of anti-DEI. The government is trying to institutionalize the opposite, which is just as pernicious. Discrimination was the law until Civil Rights. So this backlash is a flashback. I get your point about centralization and coercion. That is the function of government when it seeks to right a moral wrong. Can citizens behave morally without coercion? Possibly, with the right system, concensus and incentives. You have been formulating one, and from the many comments on this and your other posts, so have many others. I hope all of these groups will network and collaborate rather than fragment. I didn't mean to dismiss. Only to question whether this is the right time to promote unification at the expense of a movement that is attempting to do the same given the extreme injustices being perpetrated by our leaders.
It’s really a chicken-and-egg question—who came first?
I was deeply involved in progressive movements from the late 1970s through the early 2000s and watched from the inside as the long-term plan unfolded: spreading cultural ideas through education, media, politics, and eventually federal and corporate bureaucracies. That institutionalization of DEI became its own cultural revolution, driven by state power even as half the country resisted it.
Now, the surge of anti-DEI laws is a counter-revolution—another attempt to impose control, just in the opposite direction. I believe human history is littered with examples of people who thought government could be used in a righteous cause—Lenin and Mao come to mind—and the results were catastrophic.
Basically, the government always ends up becoming an oppressive oligarchy; no matter what we think, "it will be better this time."
My point is that we need to move beyond both. Left and right keep us locked in cycles of centralized corporate and political power, when what we truly need is a decentralized commonwealth—local people, institutions, and communities reclaiming moral, civic, economic, and political responsibility together. I’ve seen that when communities do this—following the Parallel Polis's lineage—they can solve problems directly without waiting for distant systems to save them.
A powerful example was the Czech Charter 77 movement under Soviet communism, where citizens quietly built a parallel grassroots culture of millions, grounded in moral, civic, economic, and political values. Over time, this network of trust and solidarity helped weaken the totalitarian system and laid the groundwork for a new democratic order after the Soviet retreat. It shows that genuine renewal doesn’t come from capturing the state but from rebuilding society from the ground up, through relationships, virtue, and shared responsibility.
My book is about my own experiences building some of these parallel approaches and how anyone, anywhere, can do the same —a bottom-up movement of thousands of communities at the same time.
Thank you, Richard, for your clarity, coherence and courage. Much of the ascension that is coming is rising off the spectrum political polarity. Well done!
Foster, it is great to hear from you, and your encouraging words are appreciated. With this piece, I felt I was sticking my neck out! Part 2 is coming next week.
“Love is not merely an emotion or virtue—it is structure. Love is the ordering principle of life, the architecture of reality, the way creation coheres and grows.“ 👍🏻
What a read, quite excellent, and rooted in hope that your vision is possible. I am so looking forward to reading your book, and recommending it to others as well. Thank you for your deep and enduring commitment in this work.
Thank you for this, Richard. What an excellent narrative. In my book, CONEtrolled: How we've lost our freedom and how to reclaim it, I write about the way one dogma begets the next one (often the one that opposes the "old dogma") and how we can stop doing it. Your story exemplifies just that. I look forward to the release of your book. It is exactly what we need right now.
Nava, thank you for the comment and support. I, too, can't wait for my book to come out, as I actually started writing it in 2006 and have been on the task for the last four years.