Afrofunk Shakedown

What is the state of love as you see it? What does the word mean to you? Are we a more loving society? Do we understand what the word “love” means?

DC: I think most people think of love in terms of an emotion or a sentiment; of course emotionality and sentimentality are aspects of love that emerge in a relationship, but love is much bigger than that. Love is the ultimate truth at the heart of the universe. It’s the unifying force of the universe. It’s the glue that holds everything together. In its pure state it is spirit, or what you might want to call “consciousness”; and it is the ultimate goal of all other goals. So if you ask people why they want to achieve something, or why they want to get something, or why they want to be a certain way-most people, if you ask them,

“What do you want?” will say something like material abundance in some form, or it will be a certain relationship they’re seeking, or it will be about their physical/emotional well-being.

But if you trace that far enough and you say, “Why do you want that?” in the end they’ll say, “I want to be happy.” And if you say, “What does happiness mean to you?” they’ll invariably say, “Peace. Harmony. Laughter. Love.” One of those things.

It turns out that they’re all spiritual goals; so love and peace and harmony and laughter and happiness are shades, or flavors, of our deepest self. We’re always wanting that experience, even when we act out of violence. If you say, “Why is this person being violent?” or “Why are people motivated to violence?” or “Why is this person going to war?” well, they want attention. They want appreciation. They want affection, and they have not got it or they don’t know how to get it. Violence, in all its psychology, actually is the acting out of a person who has not experienced love, possibly as a child or in their formative years.

That’s excellent. As you were speaking, I’m thinking to myself, “Have we used the word the right way? Or do we need different flavors of the word to more accurately demonstrate what you’ve just referred to?

DC: Love has many flavors. There’s love of the mystery that we call God; there’s the love between a mother and her child; there’s love between friends; there’s love for art and music and science; and there’s sexual love. But actually, if you look at all these different flavors of love, again, it is a search for unity consciousness-the dancer and the dance becoming one, the lover and the beloved becoming one, the seer and the scenery becoming one; the knower and the known becoming one. In every instance it is an experience of unity consciousness. When a person says, “The beauty of the mountain was breathtaking; time stood still,” that’s a moment of love as well. So I think the shortest, most pithy definition of love would be “unity consciousness.”

Growing up in California as a child in the ’60s, it seemed that California exuded more of a “love environment.” Maybe it was a distortion of that true unity of consciousness that you referred to, but what do you think has happened to that spirit? Is it still here? In all your travels, have you found other areas where the energy of love is more pure, the fountains exist?

DC: It’s almost the same everywhere, but let’s take the United States as an example. I’m a senior scientist at the Gallup organization, so we do all kinds of polls, and one of the things we are finding is that you can actually divide the population in the U.S. into three groups. The first is the post-moderns, the people who come from very traditional corporate backgrounds. They are very ambitious, and they usually are atheist in their orientation. They believe in success-or rather, they think of success only in material terms. They also believe in driving ambition. They are not really concerned about global issues, like climate change or poverty in other parts of the world. They want to make huge amounts of money, live extravagantly, and even if they don’t have the luxuries of extreme extravagance they at least aspire to it. They want to have private planes and fancy cars and so on. These are the guys who get huge bonuses and severance packages. This is about 50 percent of the population.

Another 25 percent of the population, they read the newspaper and every day they’re scared by looking at the news. They’re retreating to religious fundamentalism, and they’re almost becoming fanatical with their fundamentalism. They are scared-and when you have fear you can’t have love at the same time-so even though they’re extremely religious, they’re warmongers in many ways.

But another 25 percent of people in the United States-and this is as true of California as it’s true of any other part of the country-those people are called the Cultural Creatives. These people actually pay a lot of attention to love, to compassion, to understanding the context of situations, to improving race relations, to being careful about not polluting the environment, and to having concern for what we’re doing to the planet. They want to see creative solutions, and they believe and that there is at least a higher consciousness (whatever we want to call that), and that we are part of it. And the interesting thing is that these people actually feel that they’re alone, that they’re isolated, but they’re not. They are probably the fastest-growing segment of the American population, and the population in other parts of the world. These people are setting trends. And as I have learned from talking to futurologists, the number one trend in the world right now is wellbeing. So it’s the wellbeing of people, the wellbeing of business, the wellbeing of the environment, the wellbeing of the ecosystem. So therefore, I think there’s reason to be very optimistic about the future of love.

Do you ever feel yourself getting pulled down, Deepak? Do you ever feel the gravity of the lack of love pull you down? And, if so, how do you come back again?

DC: Well, it’s taken many years to kind of adjust to the emotional down that one experiences when one sees the madness of our culture and of our civilization-you know, mechanized forms of death and solving problems through killing other people, going to war, etc. It can be a downer, but I’m not there now. I realize that everyone in the world is doing the best they can from the state of consciousness they’re in, and the goal should be to actually change the collective conversation. If 25 percent of the people are actually moving in the direction of increased harmony and creativity and love and caring and compassion, that rapidly growing 25 percent should be given attention.

“Attention passengers: The Straight Talk Express is no longer in service. … Barack Obama is our new president. I think I speak for everybody when I say, ‘Anybody mind if he starts a little early?’ … At the end of the night, the electoral vote count was 349 for Obama, 148 for McCain. Or as Fox News says: ‘too close to call. But right about now Joe the plumber is meeting with his transition team. They’re going to help ease him from obscurity back to oblivion.”
—David Letterman
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“People were worried about the Bradley effect. Apparently, it was not nearly as strong as the Bush effect.”
—Jay Leno
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“You know who I blame? The Large Hadron Collider. It is the world’s largest and highest particle accelerator. You may remember we were warned that it could create a black hole and destroy the Earth. Consider this: it launched in mid-September, when John McCain was leading in the polls. I believe it jolted us into a parallel universe that was exactly like our own, only Barack Obama is president and the Phillies are world champions.”
—Stephen Colbert
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“Yesterday, first lady Laura Bush called Michelle Obama and invited her and her young daughters to the White House. Laura Bush told Mrs. Obama, ‘While I give you a tour, the girls can watch SpongeBob with the president.’”
—Conan O’Brien
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“We’re all very happy except Sean Hannity, who is too busy in the bathroom crying.”
—Fox News’s Chris Wallace on The Daily Show
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“People all over the world are celebrating Obama’s victory. Sarah Palin watched the Russians celebrating from her house. … Sen. John McCain’s concession speech was beautiful. It was dignified, and it was classy. And I think the reason for that is he didn’t let Palin say anything.”
–-Craig Ferguson
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“President Bush called Barack Obama to congratulate him. … Obama thanked Bush for his call and for all he did to help Obama get elected.”
—Jimmy Kimmel

A new montage of that magical night, including video of each major network calling the election for Barack Obama and of highlights from his victory speech:

It’s still sort of hard to believe that it’s real, but it is. Barack Obama will be our next president.

NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin’s shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain’s top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus.

According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent “tens of thousands” more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,” and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

In this photo illustration a limited edition commemmorative coin depicting US President elect Barack Obama sits in the workshop of a die maker on November 5, 2008, in Birmingham, England. The coin has been struck to mark the historic election of Barack Obama in the United States. Birmingham company Winston Elizabeth & Windsor in association with UK Fine Arts has already sold more than 300 limited edition commemorative silver coins with solid gold versions in production. The coins depict Senator Obama’s face, along with a picture of the White House and the legend ‘President of the United States of America’.

Obama Step-Grandmother

Obama’s relatives erupted in celebration as the election results came in early Wednesday morning, and they marched through the streets singing “We are going to the White House!”

Agence France-Presse reports that Kenya has declared a national holiday in honor of Obama’s election:

“This is a momentous day not only in the history of the United States of America, but also for us in Kenya,” President Mwai Kibaki said in a statement, according to AFP. “The victory of Senator Obama is our own victory because of his roots here in Kenya. As a country, we are full of pride for his success.”