BRAINSTORMS IN SOME THINK TANKS

None of the think tanks I list below are recommended. I just wanted a guide to who they were and where they wanted the rest of us to go. I do not believe the binary party system works now. It’s splintered on all sides. And I do think it’s related to religion, so I include the Templeton Foundation. I think all of these are on YouTube so you can see their faces.

Templeton Foundation

“The John Templeton Foundation is a philanthropic organization that reflects the ideas of its founder, John Templeton, who became wealthy via a career as a contrarian investor, and wanted to support progress in religious and spiritual knowledge, especially at the intersection of religion and science.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Templeton_Foundation

Lincoln Project

“The Lincoln Project is an American political action committee (PAC) formed in late 2019 by former and present Republicans. During the 2020 presidential election, it aimed to prevent the re-election of Donald Trump and defeat all Republicans in close races running for re-election in the United States Senate.[2][3][4] In April 2020, the committee announced its endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.”

Contributors are often small amount donors, with the big money weighted to Southern California.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lincoln_Project

Sisters in Law

“Politicon — the company behind the bipartisan “Unconventional Political Convention” — today formally announced their latest podcast #SistersInLaw, a roundtable-style podcast featuring a conversation between four legal heavyweights, including Boston Global Opinion columnist Kimberly Atkins, former US Attorneys Barb McQuade and Joyce White Vance and Jill Wine-Banks, the only woman on the Watergate prosecution team.”

https://www.law.com/legalnewswire/news.php?id=2840999

Gaslit Nation (Kendzior/Chalupa)

“Hiding in Plain Sight”

“The podcast’s title, Gaslit Nation, refers to their assertion that the Trump administration is “gaslighting” America in precisely the way that Arendt, Orwell, and Pomerantzev have described, by repeatedly contradicting the facts and claiming that black is white. This assertion is supported by independent databases maintained by Politifact and The Washington Post that tally false claims involving President Trump. According to The Washington Post’s Fact Checker, President Trump has made 15,413 false or misleading statements (and counting) since taking office. Many of these… have been repeated again and again to the point that some no doubt believe it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Kendzior

Big Think

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XirnEfkdQJM

“Victoria Brown is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Big Think, the knowledge company that makes people and companies smarter and faster through efficient e-learning from world-renowned experts.” Funded by the Koch Brothers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Think

Academy of Ideas

“Claire Regina Fox, Baroness Fox of Buckley (born 5 June 1960), is a British writer, journalist, lecturer and politician and sits in the House of Lords as a life peer. She is the director and founder of the think tank Academy of Ideas.

A lifelong Eurosceptic, she was previously a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party but later began identifying as a libertarian. She became a registered supporter of the Brexit Party shortly after its formation and was elected as an MEP in the 2019 European Parliament election. She was nominated for a peerage by the Boris Johnson-led Conservative government in 2020,[1] despite her past opposition to the very existence of the House of Lords.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Fox

None of the Above

None of these proselytizing and promoting organizations speaks for me. All of them accept an historical structure of knowledge and power, even those who oppose it. What I want is a clean slate — “zero based” thought. The ideas that seem most valid to me are those from indigenous people, which have been overrun and trampled by the irrational notion that America is essentially an immigrant nation, which ignores the pre-existing cultures of the continent governed by one principle: the needs of survival.

In spite of resource theft, war on a culture that could not negotiate so settled for mock treaties, war between the immigrants, the industrial revolution, and a religion based on one small location in what is now Iran — the indigenous people waited and survived. Today what we can recover from their past and quiet present, may be the key to surviving climate change, internet renegotiation of society, and pandemics. I don’t know of a think tank dedicated to this or who might fund it. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Primary though counter-intuitive and repugnant, the fact that ultimate survival is impossible must be faced. That’s partly because survival of “one” is doomed by one’s life span. But indigenous survival is based on the community. Today we are facing survival as it applies to species. All other species have had lifespans, the same as individual creatures and communities. The doctrine that death can be transcended by a particular set of beliefs is consoling to some, incredible to others. I’m with the latter.

We have not solved the problem posed by survival based on hierarchy, the ability of some people to hoard and dominate elements thought to extend life. One of those is education, another is connection, or focus, or persistence. More and more indigenous people are learning these arts and rising in the hierarchy. No one can depend on skin color to indicate hierarchy level anymore, which is why indigenous people are all for it. It scares whites.

In a sense “race” is already shattered by education, presentation, and memberships. In terms of knowledge, respect, and intelligence, a lot of the formerly top people are now at the bottom. Just another old white selfish geezer.

And it turns out that the “perks” of being at the top of the wealth pyramid — booze, steaks, drugs, nubile blonde girls or boys, viagra — etc. are factors causing early deaths. This excludes the possibility that being a bigshot attracts criminals, threats and extortion, and even assassination.

To balance that cynicism, survival supports evolution to something new and better. The indigenous Peoples of America have accepted “fusion culture,” made it their own and proceeded to recognize both the old and the new. A new indigeneity blooms as it always does because it includes only those who survive.