The glorious historical Flag of the United States (aka "Old Glory") is the original creation of Betsy Ross. There are competing claims, of course, but the eye witness account of the original design that she made is depicted at the upper right side of the painting of George Washington at Princeton (1777), by Charles Willson Peale (1777), showing the left side of a flag containing a blue field with a circle of 13 white stars. This is Betsy's Flag, flying alongside George Washington rendered by an artist known for his authentic art works who was at "the front line at the battle’s climax, with Washington in command"!

"The Spirit of 76" located in the Selectmen’s Room of Abbot Hall in Marblehead, MA, was painted by Archibald M. Willard of Ohio. This painting symbolizing the spirit of the American Revolution, was exhibited at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia where it "stirred the heart of the nation." It was sent on tour of several major cities and then was purchased by General John H. Devereux and presented to his native town, Marblehead, "...whose history is so interwoven with Colonial and Revolutionary times and whose patriotism shone forth in every epoch..."
Digital image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Betsy Ross embodies The Spirit of '76 that produced the birth of a nation. We will allow no doubt to obscure the truth that appears from the Betsy Ross Flag that was created and produced according to Betsy at the request of George Washington, who was familiar with her and her upholstery shop. The documented stories told by Betsy to her children and grandchildren, were handed down in a scholarly paper read before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (March 1870), entitled THE HISTORY OF THE FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES by William J. Canby whom was Betsy's grandson. This is certainly not fantasy or fabrication, but the life of an American original.

Those stories that contributed so much to American history and the "incandescent biography" of Betsy Ross: and the Making of America, written by Marla R. Miller (Henry Holt and Company, New York 2010) describe an ordinary Philadelphia woman we know as Betsy Ross, but what a woman and what a life she lived: a Quaker who left her church, a Revolutionary, a wife who buried two husbands killed in war, and an artist and business-owner who moved in circles that included the man who would become the nation's first president. She is also, of course, the woman who gave us what may be our nation's single most recognizable symbol" (says a reader from Amherst, MA).

At 84-years of age, on January 30, 1836, Betsy Ross peacefully died in her sleep and passed into the spirit of the cosmos. Despite numerous historical ambiguities concerning her life and works, these cannot obscure the central reality of the Betsy Ross Flag of the United States, which provides contemporary Americans with a symbol of American History that is true, good, and beautiful; all claims to the contrary notwithstanding.

Edvard Munch, The Scream.
Tempera and casen on cardboard.
One of four versions painted in 1893.
MUNCH Museet, Oslo, Norway.

Then a not so peaceful death spiral ensued, as Americans swinging free-as-a-bird down to the 21st century - with no instinctual concern for survival of the species in the long term - have given way to the undisciplined lust and greed of planetary life, paradoxically, still symbolized by the same glorious Flag of the United States, waving from the State House and from the Court House. Many patriots have simply lost the spirit of democracy that produced the birth of the American nation. Many have rejected or turned away from the pursuit of wisdom and democracy to form a more perfect Union of the whole people. The very fountains of social, economic, and ecological integrity of Planetary life now lie in doubt -- under dire attack from irresponsible development, corruption, and pollution (discussed further below) -- awaiting with dim hope for humankind to rise above the screaming, death rattle of the return to barbarity.

Is national or planetary transformation even possible under these conditions?

Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, American, 1816-1868
George Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851
Oil on Canvas; 12 2/5 x 21 1/4 in. (378.5 x 647.7 cm)
Gift of John S. Kennedy, 1897 (97.34)
Image Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The United States has seen transformative moments before, grabbing victory from the jaws of defeat: For example, the heroic actions of the Father of our Country, when Washington Crosses the Delaware, 1776, with Betsy's Flag of the United States, in the American Revolutionary War. There were actually three crossings:

During the night of December 25, Washington led his troops across the ice-swollen Delaware about 9 miles north of Trenton. The weather was horrendous and the river treacherous. Raging winds combined with snow, sleet and rain to produce almost impossible conditions. To add to the difficulties, a significant number of Washington's force marched through the snow without shoes.

The next morning they attacked to the south, taking the Hessian garrison by surprise and over-running the town. After fierce fighting, and the loss of their commander, the Hessians surrendered.

Washington's victory was complete but his situation precarious. The violent weather continued - making a strike towards Princeton problematic. Washington and his commanding officers decided to retrace their steps across the Delaware taking their Hessian prisoners with them.

The news of the American victory spread rapidly through the colonies reinvigorating the failing spirit of the Revolution. The battle's outcome also gave Washington and his officers the confidence to mount another campaign. On December 30 they again crossed the Delaware, attacked and won another victory at Trenton on January 2, and then pushed on to Princeton defeating the British there on January 3.

Although not apparent at the time, these battles were a decisive turning point in the Revolution ...

Major General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, USA
Photograph Courtesy of the Wikipedia Commons. Click image for source data

Another example of astonishing heroic action, grabbing victory from the jaws of defeat, occurred during the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg (You Tube). "When you can't retreat and you're out of ammunition," Joshua Chamberlain, 34-year old professor of rhetoric from Bowdoin College, ordered a charge by bayonet, bringing a moment that without doubt saved the Union.

President Lincoln described the Battle of Gettysburg in these words:

"The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here." (Gettysburg Address)

The heroism exhibited by General Washington, in the American Revolutionary War, and by General Chamberlain, in the American Civil War, Gettysburg Battle, are qualities of human beings who, under extreme circumstances, exhibit clarity of mind or superconsciousness in their understanding of the situation, enabling themselves to exercise the "creative will" necessary to carry out the unique, transformative response upon which "splendid progress" is dependent. This is the doctrine of true democracy advanced by the early 20th century sage philosopher of democracy, Mary Parker Follett "that every man is and must be a 'creative citizen.'" These are qualities we have seen in many special moments, and on various scales, in World History.

Our worthy ancestors have overthrown the Pharaohs of Egypt, the Church of heavenly Earth, the Feudal Lords and Monarchs of Europe, the slave plantations of America, Global Colonialists, Fascist Dictators of Western Europe, Latin America, South Africa, the Philippine Islands, Indonesia, and Japan, and the Communist Dictators of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. All fell by the unvanquishable power of the People! Now we await the transformation of decadent capitalism, which is written in its self-destructive structure.

But in other respects the present moment in American history is not at all like the glorious past. We are presently suffering from an existential breakdown driven, ironically, by our glorious past success. I describe this situation as the "Wired but Disconnected E-culture" requiring nothing less than a cultural transformation to close the incommensurable values-gap between the current situation and the desired future. All our social, economic, and ecological systems are in crisis mode. We are headed into "an evolutionary quantum jump"! What can be done at this time is described by Bela H. Banathy, hopefully, as the Guided Evolution of Society, ¶ 8.1.2 (2000).

For the hunter gathering stage of human evolution, five hundred thousand years were needed. The agricultural society spanned ten thousand years. The Third Generation, industrial society moved through in five hundred years, while spawning willy nilly in only fifty years, the post industrial, post modern, information/knowledge age. During just the past ten year period alone humankind has witnessed the emergence of the, "information super highways," now transforming global civilization. It was anticipated that this technological innovation, "will revolutionize the way we work, learn, shop, and live," with the promise to have, "an even greater impact than the interstate freeways or the telephone system," as John H. Gibbons, the White House Science Advisor explained in testimony before Congress, Apr 27 1993.

It is also true that despite the unprecedented scope of its impact on their lives, this revolution was imposed by the leading 100 or so multinational corporate business giants who wrote the bill in US Congress, with a virtually complete lockout of public interest participation. Public interest leadership was paralyzed by groupthink. There was no meaningful dialogue with the American people, and others, who have been directly affected. My report documented the whole sorry story. See V. Schreibman, "The Politics of Cyberspace," in Journal of Government Information, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 249-280 1994.

There will soon be a review by US Congress of the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996, according to a story in The New York Times, May 24, 2010, but without a transformation of the Congressional and Civic Sector decision making process, it is unlikely there will be any fair and effective consideration of the public interest. Two pivotal conditions that impact our "mode of association" most relevant to democracy compel this pessimistic outlook.

First of all, the tyranny of decision making overwhelms our political situation. There is the choke-hold on the flow of information vital to the public interest. The introduction of any new technology, which might upset the status quo -- such as shifting from daily newspaper publishing by telegraphic dispatches, to periodical publishing, radio, television, and now Internet! -- have been regularly used "as an excuse to exclude competitors," according to Donald Ritchie, Assistant Senate Historian, and author of "Press Gallery" (Harvard Press, 1991), quoted in The New York Times, Feb. 26, 1996, at D7, col.1. During the process of enacting the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996, the US Congress, locked out the civic sector, and the Congressional Press Galleries, continued their historical pattern of discriminatory conduct, locking out the public interest press or internet based reporters, like myself, to assure absolute control by the Media Aristocracy, over Congressional information vital to the public interest. This abuse was supported by the grossly illegitimate actions of the US Courts, abdicating law for media ideology, in a lawsuit this writer prosecuted pro se, up to the Supreme Court of the United States, Schreibman v. Holmes, et. al., No. 99-7779 (U.S. January 21, 2000) (my complete online folder of this case was destroyed by computer terrorism). In this lawsuit the U.S. Courts obstinately failed and refused to consider my constitutional right to freedom of the press guaranteed under the First Amendment. The Government claimed the Congressional Press Galleries -- managed by a group of established periodical correspondents who have undertaken to implement arbitrary and unnecessary regulations with a view to excluding from news sources representatives of publications whose ownership or ideas they consider objectionable -- are immune from prosecution under the Speech or Debate Clause, U.S. CONST. art I, § 6, Cl. 1. However, this claim clearly requires the Court, in the first instance, to make a determination of my right to freedom of the press, Nixon v. United States, 506 US 224, 228 (1993), which the US Courts obstinately failed and refused to do. In this great land of liberty only the rich and powerful are guaranteed equal access to the law! Everyone else is a subject of the New Slave Masters. These conditions guarantee there will be no serious review of public interest concerns related to the Telecommunications Laws by US Congress.

Secondly, our democratic mode of association is blocked by a set of inherent constraints limiting essential human capacities needed for competent democratic action. The wonderful diversity of American society and culture insures that everyone has their own set of ideas. Group decision-making involving complex problems is highly resistant to resolution because we lack the intellectual capacity to process all our collective ideas about our situation. Without outside assistance that would enable citizens of any community to discover the set of shared values that can reliably guide community action, the community is paralyzed, once again in favor of tyranny. We are just waiting for some tyrant to tell us all what to do because we don't know how to break through our own limitations to discover the wisest course of action! These inherent constraints lead to the existential state characterized as "technological sumnambulism" -- sleep-walking our way through the process of changing basic patterns of social and political relationships. L. Winner, "How Technology Reweaves the Fabric of Society," Chronicle of Higher Education, 4 August 1993, sec. 2, B2, col. 4.

Our democratic paralysis is a tragic comedy of fools waiting for any loud mouth tyrant, or demagogue, to direct citizens' thought and actions, with dangerous consequences.

The cure for these group decision making pathologies is the Technology of Democracy. Structured design dialogue (SDD) can competently guide the democratic group decision making process to successful consensus at the highest level of group wisdom. See e.g., Schreibman, V. and Christakis,A.N. (2007) "New agora: new geometry of languaging and new technology of democracy: the structured design dialogue process" (Updated 9:25 AM DST; Friday, June 13, 2008); T.R. Flanagan & A.M. Christakis, The Talking Point: Creating an Environment for Exploring Complex Meaning (2010).

Strengthening the democratic decision making process "to form a more perfect Union" is the paramount purpose of the Constitution of the United States, allowing effective management of the public sector and the private sector by the civic sector. This is "government of the people, by the people, for the people": a democracy. Nevertheless, democratizing civic power is fiercely resisted by all those who benefit from weak citizenry. Within the dominant political power system of the public sector and the private sector, democracy has no adequate sponsor. This condition allows the most ludicrous outcomes:

• the hi-tech feudalism and telecommunications infrastructure serving the plutocrats;

• the ever expanding global military-industrial establishment;

• the Courts of robbery, extortion, and despotism, now engaged in Treason to the Constitution;

• the Robbery of the Social Securuty Trust Fund of more than $2 trillion dollars, by President George W. Bush, for a tax break for the super-rich,* while the Obama Administration has set up a National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, stacked with fiscal conservatives, according to a report by William Greider, a prominent political journalist and author, "to offer Social Security as a sacrificial lamb";

  * Editorial Note: Public thievery and chicanery of the American establishment have soared during the last three administrations. For example, higher payroll taxes increased revenue for the Social Security Trust Fund during the Clinton years, but this revenue was placed in the Government's General Fund, where it could be "borrowed" by the Government to pay down the burgeoning national debt inherited from the Reagan years, resulting ultimately in a huge budget surplus. When George W. Bush came into office, he immediately raided the trillion dollar Trust Fund that produced the budget surplus. This was simply given away as a trillion dollar tax break for the super rich, leaving the Trust Fund hanging on thin weeds. Bush then tried to explain with another pack of false and misleading statements, in his State of the Union address, on February 2, 2005, backed up by an army of Republican Party spin doctors, how the Social Security Trust Fund disappeared. This was intended to "lay the groundwork for defaulting on almost two trillion dollars worth of US Treasury bonds" that were dedicated to assure liquidity of the Social Security Trust Fund. All the talk in Bush's moribund Social Security reform plan was about the expected bankruptcy of the Fund: "The fact is Social Security will go broke when our young workers get ready to retire.." What was covered-up by the Bush cabal and the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security, with their deaf-dumb-and-blind-media-supporters, was the truth about the great Trust Fund robbery: the indubitable fact is that the trillion dollar budget surplus that was given away as a tax break for the super rich was all derived from the stolen Trust Fund revenue that without a rollback of the trillion dollar tax giveaway the Government is now unwilling or unable to repay .

• the collapse of the subprime mortgage market "based on the total unabashed complicity of the upper class of American capitalism .. a near total breakdown of responsibility";

• the Wall Street bailout leaving Main Street bereft; and

• the Tree of EcoSphere Destruction; including especially:
  • the air pollution; video
  • the Oil Spill case histories;
  • the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill; video
  • the BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill; video and
  • the Ecological Denial On The Gulf Oil Disaster: U.S. Policies Continue Toward Collapse.

Public policy driven by self-serving government and private industry, while keeping the citizens who pay the bills in their place as subjects of the New Slave Masters, makes the whole planetary civilization vulnerable to grossly dysfunctional and unethical governing systems. The American legislative decision making process remains an ethical disaster zone producing the unanticipated consequences Americans, and others, are presently experiencing: the lack of essential adjustment in the guiding values of society that has resulted in the breakdown of decadent capitalism, which is now all too evident.

President Obama acknowledged, in his Oval Office Address, June 15, 2010:

For decades, we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered. For decades, we’ve talked and talked about the need to end America’s century-long addiction to fossil fuels. And for decades, we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires. Time and again, the path forward has been blocked -- not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor.

More talk about this problem, over and over again, cannot lead to any different result.

Now let me return to the vital question "Is local or planetary transformation even possible under these conditions?" I can say there is no such possibility, unless "We the People" transform the game, because at this time our Government as well as our industries, and ourselves, are so highly irresponsible both in structure and behavior.

"All power derives from the people" the Supreme Court of the United States has recognized, but the exercise of this sovereign power of the people in a democracy requires genuine Union, as beautifully portrayed in the video: gaon chodab nahi. Without a real Union of the people there can be no democracy, nor hope for the future of humankind that is not mere delusion.

The doctrine of true democracy requires "that every man is and must be a 'creative citizen.'" That's the environment needed to transform the planetary socioculture, the planetary economy, and the planetary ecology.

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On Monday, May 02, 2010, 9:34 PM Jacqueline Howell Wasilewski JWash@AOL.com, wrote to LoD these words of wisdom:

Just piping up from my corner of the universe. One of my current hero-ines is Brenda Davies, a British M.D. working in Zambia who is "grandmother" to 100+ AIDs orphans (she is on her second generation and does micro-credit projects to set them up in businesses). Anyway ... she says:

Our integrity is a function of our truth as we know it, but we have to be willing to update our "truth" every second, so we have to create spaces where we can all update our truth together and enable our mutual integrity to rise exponentially.

I think this is what SDD (Structured, dialogic design) enables us to do.

To quote Steve Bhaerman, a.k.a. the “Cosmic Comic,” Swami Beyondananda ...

"Stick to your story, and you’re stuck with it … Our collective story has delivered us to this dangerous precipice … Now our entire species faces the same choice: Your story or your life! ... Do we go down with our old story, or do we wise up and rise up with a new one?"

Jackie ((^_^))

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Wising Up to the New Story

The 21st century is about a completely new orientation on human character and human endeavor that is emerging right now, explains Muhammad Yunus, 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Winner, founder of Grameen Bank for the poor, in his book Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity's Most Pressing Needs 202 (2010):

In a world of multi-dimensional people [striving for personal profit and striving for social equity] everything changes. In this framework, success will be measured by the contribution one makes to the well being of the world.

To reduce the misery of poverty, we traditionally resort to the redistribution of income, taxing the rich and making the proceeds available to help the poor. In an economy populated by multi-dimensional people, a self-induced redistribution will take place when the rich undertake social business to eradicate social problems. Governments may find it easier and more effective to give incentives to the rich to solve social problems through their own initiatives by undertaking many kinds of social businesses, rather than using tax revenues just to run safety net and other inefficient public service programs.

Humanity has become sensitized to the long embedded stereotype of "survival of the fittest" and "selfish gene" that a narrow fixation on the capitalist profit maximization model has produced. But the multi-dimensional character of human beings stressed by Muhammad Yunus, infra, at 139 -- "the desire to help human beings is just as strong a part of human nature as the drive to pile up personal profit" -- is well supported in the evolutionary literature. David Loye, Darwin's Lost Theory (2007). Indeed, human development, particularly, women are our greatest under developed and underused economic resource. The shift of human efforts to also embrace social business, "contributing to the well being of the world," opens a truly unlimited new field of endeavor for planetary enterprise.

Traditionally, we try to predict the future, a not very well developed scheme, in which we see ourselves, Yunus says, as "passive viewers of unfolding events." But human beings are not mere passive observers. Man has become the chief actor in the process of shaping and controlling the planetary system. E. Jantsch, "Inter-and Transdisciplinarity University: A Systems Approach to Education and Innovation," POLICY SCIENCES, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Dec 1970): pp. 403, 408-410. We cannot predict the future but we certainly can engage in "Futures Creation"!

The big question, Wharton School futurist Hasan Ozbekhan (1921-2007), proposed, is this: What do we desire our world to be in the future?

Planning to create the democratic future that we desire is no longer a technological mystery. Alexander (Aleco) Christakis, a Greek American systems scientist, who resides in his native Island of Crete, has challenged conventional talk in socio-political systems design, which has become a minefield. The origin of democracy and the desired future of this ideal-type, he prophetically explained in a meeting with LaDonna Harris, President of Americans for Indian Opportunity, in 2005, in these words:

You see, people all over the world aspire to participative democracy. In the history of Western government, we have pro- (or re-) gressed from participative democracy, to representative democracy, to government by experts, to government for corporate lobbies. There must be ways that we can engage in democratic dialogue to attain designing efficiency while retaining participative openness and fairness. We need a workable human science, one that honors and uses the authentic voices of people to design their futures. It was this insight that led me on a journey to find a scientific paradigm for bringing the wisdom of people to the surface by engaging them in dialogue.

Aleco's journey, standing on the shoulders of many other scientisis, with his partner John N. Warfield (1925 - 2009), has been a spectacular success, albeit much like Vincent van Gogh, perhaps, far ahead of his time. Due to these creative efforts of scientists the world now has the technological capacity to engage in participative dialogue, via Internet all across the planet, which can be used, by citizens who have wised up, to rescue democracy from its failures!

When "We the People" recognize and grasp the existing situation and make our desired values for the future explicit -- emulating the Grameen Bank for the poor, "Think globally and act local," community by community all across the planet -- we can design and build the infrastructures needed to realized our shared values with the plans required to fulfill that vision. In the expected leap forward to the Guided Evolution of Society, humankind must deliberately take control of our own future through the democratic imperative of creative citizens in our planetary civilization.

The game of transformation must be played at planetary level, where outsiders are free to violate the corrupt established norms with impunity. That's why multinational diversity, innovation and creativity are the touchstones of progress, revealed by Richard Florida, in The Rise of the Creative Class (2002). Using our Technology of Democracy at planetary level, we can change the game of politics everywhere by self-employed citizens taking command of the future, by strengthening participatory governance in the pursuit of wisdom and democracy.

Dependency upon the profit incentive and a narrow vision of human creativity -- the traditional game plan -- is an unnecessarily limited view of reality, abandoning almost half the world — over three billion people — to an existence on less than $2.50 a day (adjusted to March 28, 2010).

Muhammad Yunus underscores this tragic cycle of failure in light of recent history:

So far, governments struggling to alleviate the combined crises of 2008-2010 have kept themselves busy coming up with supersized bail-out packages for the institutions responsible for creating the financial crisis. Unfortunately, no bailout package of any size has even been discussed for the victims of the crisis the bottom 3 billion and the planet itself. M.Yunus, infra, at 199.

Enlarging upon the wealth of nations, in social business, to meet the needs of all citizens and the planet itself, humankind can establish a glorious new story, in which citizens are liberated from a narrow profit focus of the market system to become masters of the situation, (Lindblom, 2001, 234), as intended by Lincoln's blood soaked Gettysburg vision of democracy: "government of the people, by the people, for the people" in a future that is good, true, and beautiful.

Finally, we must ask, what is the desired Flag of the Planetary Civilization? Will this be the same glorious Flag of the United States or a New Flag for the New Civilization?

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