This morning being Sunday is a good time to think about a Pledge that works and how it would benefit us as free citizens in pursuit of happiness both individually and collectively. Any number of people more than one is a social matter. This link appearing this morning rounds out one aspect of my thinking from the prior post:
The New Progressive Agenda: A Return to Citizenship by Toni Morrison
"The difference between understanding oneself as a citizen and understanding oneself as a taxpayer is not merely wide; it is antagonistic. A citizen thinks primarily about his or her community and is preoccupied with the safety of the neighborhood, the health of the elderly and disabled, the well-being of the young. A taxpayer thinks mostly about himself or herself, about who or what is taxing -- that is to say "taking" -- his hard-earned money to give to some undeserving body or some other distant, wasteful thing..................
The Progressive Agenda seeks to return us to citizenship, the happily adult responsibility of being citizens to each other. It's concerned with how to ensure a livable wage for all of us; how to improve schools in all our neighborhoods; how to protect working-class jobs and pensions from predators who rely on exploitation and selfish behavior; how to welcome the immigrant, the "huddled masses" we all (except for Native Americans and slaves) once were."The Army Soldier's Creed sets and order of importance:
I am an American Soldier.
I am a warrior and a member of a team.
I serve the people of the United States, and live the Army Values...........
This link about bonds formed by combatants:
“What the military learned pretty early on . . . is that people die for the person beside them, not for their country or for any ideology,” McQuinn said.
This link illustrates the same motivation for super heroes.
The social bonds are often directly related to shared experience with the strength of the bond determined by the length of time shared and the magnitude of the shared emotion. People that by chance simply happened to be the few survivors of a plane crash bond together to the extent that they may reunite annually. Married couples attain the same degree of bonding by sharing many years together. Mutual dependence and sharing and the degree of dedication related to them establishes social bonds. So does shared fear, as long as it is perpetuated, often beyond reason when there is a focused narrow interest agenda that benefits from it.
The nature and relationship of motivation through fear or altruism is an interesting thing to ponder and apply to the the social order. Fear shared among a social entity creates bonding as well as altruism among those in the social entity to be.
Interesting side note here. Read the link to get the full context.
"The Pledge of Allegiance was written in August 1892 by Francis Bellamy (1855–1931), who was a Baptist minister, a Christian socialist,[5][6] and the cousin of socialist utopian novelist Edward Bellamy (1850–1898).... and formally adopted by Congress as the pledge in 1942.[1]"
The Pledge has been challenged for various reasons. Challenge is thought provoking but to be constructive the social entity of the object of a shared pledge either included or excluded or placed in a relative priority is the free choice of an individual. One may choose to put God above nation or honestly, any other social entity relationship.
In Japan, the corporate employer gets a pledge from its workers and a company song of dedication.
Robert Reich proposes this pledge of allegiance by companies since they are people:
"The Corporate Pledge of Allegiance to the United States
- We pledge to create more jobs in the United States than we create outside the United States, either directly or in our foreign subsidiaries and subcontractors.
- If we have to lay off American workers, we will give them severance payments equal to their
- The [fill in blank] company pledges allegiance to the United States of America. To that end:
- weekly wage times the number of weeks they've work for us.
- We further pledge that no more than 20 percent of our total labor costs will be outsourced abroad.
- We pledge to keep a lid on executive pay so no executive is paid more than 50 times the median pay of American workers. We define "pay" to include salary, bonuses, health benefits, pension benefits, deferred salary, stock options, and every other form of compensation.
- We pledge to pay at least 30 percent of money earned in the United States in taxes to the United States. We won't shift our money to offshore tax havens and won't use accounting gimmicks to fake how much we earn.
- We pledge not to use our money to influence elections.
I like it!
The best expression of individual affiliation with a social entity is the one they make for themselves. While we are all in service to the joint social union we have created (USA) like soldiers in the army we fulfill that service to ourselves by first and foremost dedication above all to the most immediate, most personally important social entity of our choice. It is our freedom of choice as long as it does not impinge on the rights of others in our country.
In conclusion, it would be a good thing to set the allegiance record of our lives straight by each citizen deciding where their most immediate allegiance is and ordering their citizenship accordingly.
What would be the result of that? God of course for most in first place. However we serve our country most by choosing other than country in second place. Sequential order of linear priority orders the entire list of priorities from most to least. How can it be stated that we serve our country best by a unique relationship statement of each individual citizen's priorities that at the end of the list says "This is how I serve my country (fellow citizens united) the best".
Maybe what we need to establish our personal "Mission Statement" in a context of our accomplishing it in the social order we collectively support.
Mission "Pursuit of Happiness"
Statement of personal social entity allegiance priorities in service of the general welfare aimed at "Mission Accomplished".
Every citizen (and corporation and all other social entities) should have a Citizen's (Social Entity) web page and the "About" being their own personal "Pledge of Allegiance" (and historical record of change throughout their life time). Maybe that is a good way to get our eyes collectively on the ball.
Just all random free range thoughts on a Sunday morning.
"I Pledge Allegiance to Myself" by Gary Lindorff.
Gary is David Lindorff's brother. I am familiar with and respect the thoughts of David Lindorff often read at CounterPunch.com and was surprised to discover that his brother Gary thinks along the same lines. That is not surprising after reading here about their father; Dave Lindorff Sr.
who evidently left a strong ideological legacy to his sons. Dave Lindorff Sr's personal Pledge of Allegiance changed over his life time to become that legacy his sons inherited as their own to change and continue to express over their lifetimes.
Gary Lindorff's writings here.
It is often initially strange to find serendipitous relationships between and among previously known independent entities that become new found connections as I free range wander on the internet. Perhaps not so surprising after all since the general rule of relationships is that everything is connected. The more I roam, conceptually or geographically the more I find the connection of everything.
The joy of discovery!
Gary wrote "Tribute to Snowden". A fitting poem to illustrate the power of Allegiance to Myself.
The legacy of father passed to son named Edward?
I would hope.
Perhaps are journey through life is marked by mile posts where allegiances changed and a new course was followed. The quality of the journey defined by the clarity of their purpose and.....what?
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