Systemic Regeneration and (R)evolution: America at the crossroads

Systems protect themselves.

Always.

Like living creatures, comprised of fundamental ecosystems of mutual support often parasitic and opportunistic, charging and redirecting energy flow in the form of capital, human innovation and work in multiple directions, feeding multiple sub-systemic functions all geared toward the continuing propagation of coherency within the system as a whole.

With both deliberate and inherent processes of planning and design at play, systems and their component sub-systems originate and evolve to process energy efficiently in whatever direction is necessary for that system to not only continue to exist, but to thrive, profit and evolve. It is a function of any system to have in place release valves for excess energy diffusion. Some systems are able to recapture that energy and redirect it in a manner that reinvigorates the system dynamically.

Political and cultural sub-systems behave in this way.

They evolve, over time and across space. Release valves form that allow for disharmonic energetics to split of and reform, reintegrating with the system in a new configuration. Components within overarching systems behave similarly.

Most national political and cultural systems in the world have evolved on an ethnic foundation, meaning that their capacity to integrate differential energetics – i.e. other ethic, cultural or political splinter groups – is dependent upon the political and cultural history of that particular ethnic group, which, by definition, is limited and closed, fully available only to those within that ethnic group. The United States of America is different.

The model of the United States political and cultural formulation and evolution was originally ethnic in composition but was formally codified as multi-ethnic (primarily European in nature) with the continued documentation and formalization process inherent in the creation and implementation of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Over a period of approximately 100 years, from 1776 to 1868 (addition of the 14th Amendment, which provided citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States), dynamic martial, political and economic processes led to a cultural renaissance codifying the fundamental rights of the entire human family under the auspices of one flag, an innovation that separated the United States from all other nations in existence at the time.

Over the subsequent 150 years, the nation’s political and cultural evolution has proceeded in a dynamic manner, fraught with martial, economic and social recalibration wherein the original ethnic calibration of the Constitution has been continuously reconciled to the pervading reality on the ground of what has been termed, miscegenation, i.e. multi-ethnic and multi-racial integration. The resultant com-mixture of European, Asian and African ethnicities has resulted in the evolution of a national character that is a combination of cultural artifacts, mentifacts and sociofacts originating on every continent and in every nation on this planet.

The multi-nation, European-dominated time-frame between 1642 and 1776 of colonization and West-ward expansion provided the core racialization period within which the Eurocentric impetus toward ethnic hegemony was originally crystallized. Prior to this time period, racial groups were based upon nation and not necessarily skin color. There was an English race, an Irish race or a Spanish race, for instance. The comingling of all of these disparate ethnicities within multiple, interconnected states, the nascent American colonies, then presiding over a growing population of African, Asian and Indigenous enslaved and indentured workers, required the creation of an overarching ethnic community within which the European-descended colonized could find common cause, against those then prescribed intergenerationally to abject service and hard labor. The time-frame of this racial and cultural genesis was the mid to late 1600s.

By the time the Declaration of Independence had been served to the British and the Constitution of the United States had been written, the so-called “White” race had coalesced and European settlers eagerly invaded these shores knowing that a sort of privilege, in relation to those then relegated to the sub-class of laborers and servants, was to be found. The domination of and hegemony over the American landscape thus proceeded within this first 100 years between the late 1500s and 1600s, setting the stage for the crucible-like melding of American culture to follow.

The American system of political and cultural organization, thus implemented, evolves in a number of very particular ways that protects it from displacement or from being overtaken by any other political or cultural system that may have typified the experience of immigrants to this nation:

1. European-descended peoples immigrate into the nation and relegate their ethnic identities to the overriding “White” racial identity that predominates. Ethnic expression is footnoted to acceptance within and lived expression of “whiteness” as personal and collective identity.

2. Those subjected to forced immigration (i.e. slavery) into the nation provided the energetic wherewithal to propel the United States economically, during its formative period (1600s-1900s), toward world hegemony. Their descendants continue to create political and cultural capital benefiting the nation.

3. Non-white minorities immigrate into the nation recognizing the racial and class-based stratification of the nation and the opportunity for advancement in the “middle and upper-rungs” of economic opportunity. Integration within these class-based structures is generally possible, based upon skin color and originating culture.

4. General immigrants to the United States are accompanied by cultural artifacts, mentifacts and sociofacts that become integrated into the overall American culture. I.e. pizza, karate, linguistic innovations, musical instruments, scales, artistic styles, architecture, etc.

5. All (or potentially so) immigrants to the USA self-select and come with a strong desire to succeed, work and contribute to their family’s well-being and, most often, wholeheartedly embrace the American ideals of freedom, a high work ethic and acceptance of the “American Dream”.

The highly individualized nature of the American system as well as its open immigration policy, which has resulted in the (often fraught) acceptance and inclusion of all disparate ethnic and racial groups has evolved even to the point of integrating political and cultural resistance within its systemic expression. The polar dichotomy and contention between White and Black, elemental in nature – which has defined the United States of America since its inception – has provided a figuratively book-ended contextual battleground within which all other ethnic and racial battles have and do occur upon these shores. The “release valve” provided by the integration of politics, culture and media as an integral component of national expression and tool of policy formulation, redirects energy and incorporates resistance movements, effectively neutralizing them or integrating them into preexisting channels of political and cultural articulation.

The current state of the system is one of siege and duress, primarily caused by the individual and collective cognitive dissonance of racial and ethnic integration energetic streams of identity formation, all synthesizing at an important pressure-point in American history. The burgeoning relegation of the white majority to minority status within the overall population demographics of the USA has resulted in political and cultural, fear-based retaliations designed to cement “white-rule” for the foreseeable future and despite upcoming numerical inferiority. The pervading fear-based prescriptions run the gamut from out and out gaming of the voting system to preserve white privilege, to the resurgence of hate groups. Continuing issues of red-lining and housing segregation, over-concentration of policing in minority communities, underemployment of minority populations, economic peonage, subjugation to demeaning cultural narratives and many other mentifacts and sociofacts of the nation’s historical treatment of minority communities remain at issue, hundreds of years later.

The system’s innate protections are formidable.

Yet, uniquely subject to grassroots pressures due to the evolution of diversified points of entry and acceptance which transform it fundamentally from an ethnic system of political and cultural organization to an ideologically-based system of political and cultural organization. The true diversity inherent within the borders of the United States of America and exemplified by its individual and group interrelations, all point to the potentiality of continuing evolution of the system into something the world has never seen before. A multi-ethnic and racial democracy formed upon the cauldron of conflict and desire manifest in a shared ideological foundation.

The Will to Power of all populations within the United States has created a potpourri effect, wherein even the most marginalized voices can be heard, bringing potentiality that could not be expressed or countenanced within an ethnic nation to the ears and eyes of the entire nation and world. This critical juncture within the evolution of the United States of America can be traversed, albeit with much difficulty, pain and potential national trauma, as the nation’s original ethnic formation is being fully challenged, with the potential for fundamental change present, at last.

Art by Caleb Weintraub