In honor of TVUUC
THE REVEREND WILSON SPEAKS
OF
ROBERT KENNEDY'S VISION FOR AMERICA
16
May 2004
The
Reverend Dr. Gregory Wilson, minister at the UU Church of Brevard in West
Melbourne, spoke first of those visionaries of the past-the ones who died for
their beliefs over a hundred years ago-and how we tend to lose the immediate
feelings and enthusiasm they generated at the time, and the grief widely
suffered at their deaths. Within our lifetimes, he told us, there have been John
Fitzgerald Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, each
assassinated at the apex of their lives, at the time each sought to formulate
their vision. .
Wilson
read a recent book by RFK's son, Maxwell Kennedy, who is trying to rekindle the
fires that burned within his father. RFK, writes Maxwell, was primarily
concerned over the loss of individuality as a result of our country's growth.
The business community is making of individuals interchangeable units for
business purposes. With the explosive growth of business organizations (as well
as population), people are losing contact with the sun, air, trees. . . the
earth! There is a continuing loss of sense of community, a breaking of bonds
that tie members to each other. The object is to bring control of our citizens
fully under the government and economy.
Moving
quickly to emphasize his point, Wilson told us that we now have an entity within
our community with all of the human and constitutional rights of a citizen, but
this particular “person”does not have the responsibility of the human being
citizen. It is called a corporation, with the purpose of accumulating
wealth.
A
corporation may have a lifetime exceeding several hundred years, yet share none
of the life cycle of a human. Humans grow, fall in love; raise families, gain
wisdom as they age, and return it to the community. Corporate lives are linear,
perpetually taking in and getting bigger, rarely returning, and rarely improving
the community. Corporations have no spiritual or ethical concerns, no sense of
responsibility to others, no self-doubts, nor subjective inner world. Their
personalities are narcissistic.
Further,
people who run corporations don't have responsibility for effects, don't have to
answer for failures, nor move toward reconciliation when fragmented either
within or with an external unit. They lose the capacity for empathy and concern.
Corporations never experience that unique human emotion, shame.
RFK
talked about how we all could become more human and more understanding by
awareness of the needs of others. This vision determined the path of his life.
Humans all have a sense of shame from time to time, which may drive them toward
corrective action; this is healthy shame.
Gregory
Wilson asked, citing RFK, “What are we to do with this citizen entity that we
created, an entity that is dominating our country, our government, our world?”
There are 20,000 lobbyists on record, so how do we individuals get to our
governmental representatives? Corporations must be held accountable, said
Wilson, accountable as are human citizens.
Mentioning the ongoing attempt to pass a constitutional amendment banning flag burning, Rev. Wilson said, “We defending the symbol of our country will ignoring what the symbol stands for–the land itself, the water, the trees, and the people.”
Copyright 2004, Rev. Gregory Wilson, D.Min.
