We Must Build The Statue of Responsibility - Article and Change.org petition

We Must Build The Statue of Responsibility
A Monumental Shift in American Values is Needed

“THE STATUE OF RESPONSIBILITY IS THE ONE THING THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING.” — http://responsibilityfoundation.org

No culture on earth is exempt from pathology. The only way to cure it, is to address it head on. We’re living under the shadows of many lies; a founding myth, a political facade, false idols, vicious abstractions, etc… This is more literally the case for those who boat by the Statue of Liberty today, the hostess-turned-mistress of US imperialism. While confederate statues are being torn down and vandalized across the country in a sweep of revisionist jurisprudence, serious consideration should be put into erecting a new monument: the proposed Statue of Responsibility.

It is a very abstract consideration, but it is the symbol of hope the country needs. It’s not going to happen under a Trump administration, so this is one of many changes that should be bundled into a 2020 progressive platform or a change.org petition which we started. Think about it. The East coast is adorned with an iconic green goddess who has welcomed many of the world’s desperate migrants. The West coast has a Hollywood sign. The United States, a country known for its ostentatious projection of world power, should rein in what power it has left and show some responsibility.

“The Statue of Responsibility is a monument and a movement; a dream of Dr. Viktor E. Frankl, Holocaust survivor and world-renowned clinical psychiatrist. It’s a catalyst for a unifying global project to enshrine and share this fundamental value, Responsibility.” — http://responsibilityfoundation.org

Hmm… a holocaust survivor proposed this. Meanwhile, the US is having flare-ups of neonazism and free-speech fascism and the President is behaving like a spoiled child who doesn’t want to eat his responsibility. It is true more than ever that we need to change ourselves. This is the meaning and urgency of metanoia. White-nationalists need to let go of their skin color and fight the abstract problems of economic injustice and racism. Here’s a statue we can all get behind.

Sign the CHANGE.ORG petition:
https://www.change.org/p/the-abs-tract-organization-build-the-status-of-responsibility?recruiter=6523487&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition

When ideas and events like this coincide it could be called synchronicity, and a rather significant one, so we should not hesitate to act. With those dates in mind, you might wonder why it has taken so long to realize, to awaken, to know right from wrong. The short answer is we failed to apprehend the complexity of social problems. The Statue of Responsibilty is a very abstract meta-solution, and needs to be brought out of abstract into the concrete. There is an urgency to this knowledge. While its important not to waste tax-payer dollars on ludicrous ideals, it is necessary to invest in them. A Statue of Responsibility would seem to pay for itself many times over. How many people even know about this proposal?

“Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.” Dr. Viktor E. Frankl, a Holocaust survivor who went on to publish the best-seller Man’s Search for Meaning, which today is considered to be among the top 10 most influential books in the U.S.” — Viktor Frankl, 1946, http://resultswithreason.com/2017/08/10/statue-of-responsibility/

It’s obvious once you see it: How necessary it is to humble greatness, to speak truth to power, to balance freedom with duty. And for Christ’s sake, to manage an economy with dignity and integrity. And perhaps, if political sociology can work, a healthy marriage between politics and society. The United States has worshipped a one-sided diety in the Statue of Liberty for 131 years since it was gifted from France. Viktor Frankl proposed the Statue of Responsibility over 70 years ago, in 1946. Today, the US is having a psychotic episode on the world stage, tearing itself apart instead of rebuilding and renewing.

The two statues are opposites of each other in more ways than coastlines and principles. The Statue of Liberty is a very explicit image literally standing for an abstract principle. By contrast, The Statue of Responsibility is itself an abstraction representing (and reaching for) a concrete moral imperative. The imagery, of the hand from above grasping the hand below, is a monumental metaphor for our collective relationship to the divine, but more importantly a reminder of our duty to help our fellow humans in the real world.

Before there has even been time to process the recent conflicts between racist civil war enactors and anti-fascists, a natural disaster has hit Houston, Texas. Much like Bush’s handling of Katrina, before and after, the US government will be ill-equiped to address this crisis in any responsible or humane way. It’s a visceral symbol of humility and a constant reminder of privilege and perspective.

“With great power comes great responsibility.” — Uncle Ben, Spider-Man

The implicit premise of any statue is that symbols mean something to people — and they do. But if you only give them certain symbols and not others, they will be unbalanced. You simply cannot have liberty without responsibility, and thus you should not have a statue glorifying one and nothing standing for the other.

The principle of liberty has been true for many, but it has been denied to most. Joe Rogan has a great quote relating to the purity of ideas: ‘if someone gave you a sandwich, and told you there was 1% shit in it, its still a shit sandwich. You wouldn’t eat that.’ So, any honest person should acknowledge that all the pomp and circumstance about American values and exceptionalism has more than a tinge of hypocrisy to it. It’s like a shit sandwich being force fed to the public. I still think the best roast of US foreign policy to date was Team America: World Police. There are valuable lessons in there, that the deep state and the government still haven’t learned.

The public debates and culture wars over racism and injustice are demons that won’t die, but they must be cured in real-time now, rather than play out is psycho-historical drama. The everpresent environmental crisis is God’s shrinking Overton window of opportunity. We need to be responsible, which means building peace based on the true collective threats, not each other, but the negative externalities of our social system.

Sign the Change.org petition to raise awareness for this project and for systemic justice.
https://www.change.org/p/the-abs-tract-organization-build-the-status-of-responsibility?recruiter=6523487&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition

“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” — Victor Hugo

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