The Way Forward in a Poem by Muhammed Ali

An earlier version of this essay appeared at pilsenportal.com.

As we conclude the first month of 2014 and we contemplate the myriad issues that weigh and pressure upon us as a nation, I recall a comment made by George Plimpton. When asked to reflect upon the character and genius of Muhammad Ali, the legendary writer and editor of The Paris Review recalled a two-word poem by heavyweight champion and improvisatory poet from Louisville, Kentucky. Plimpton heard the champ recite the poem to a large crowd sometime in the 1970’s. Ali proclaimed simply: “Me: We.” Plimpton and those in attendance were moved; Plimpton never forgot the distillation of wisdom.

Me: We. It is that movement in thought and action that can act upon and transform every issue confronting our country and our world. Carbon emissions causing an increase in global temperature?Me: We. Brutalizing inequality between the rich and the poor? Me: We. Tensions rising over questions of immigration? Me: We. Ethnic and religious tensions rising and manifesting in acts within society? Me: We.
We is not a radical concept to Homo sapiens:  95% of human history was spent in hunter-gatherer groups of 75 to 150 people who, in order to survive and flourish across those many millennia, had to have an attitude of sharing. Those tribe members who attempted to hoard resources individually could be exiled from the tribe, a state which would likely lead to their death. In reality, a Herculean effort has been required to convince humans to act against their deepest nature and to seek fulfillment in a purely individualistic way -- most often through the amassing of consumer goods and in the quest for the social status that wealth accumulation affords.

As is detailed brilliantly, humorously, and at times terrifyingly in BBC documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis’ work, The Century of the Self, Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays - known as the creator of modern marketing - used the manipulation of the deepest irrational impulses of the human psyche to create desires where once there were none. As Paul Mazer, a Wall Street banker working for Lehman Brothers in the 1930’s declared, "We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. ... Man's desires must overshadow his needs."

Our true needs are met through the leap in consciousness suggested by the poem, Me: We. As for our desires, let us indulge them and celebrate them when they do not deprive others of their needs and when we are sure they are, in fact, our desires. Our true desires are realized through human connection, connection to nature, and a connection to something greater than us. Me: We. If, upon our deathbed, we recall a diamond broach, it will be because the broach arrived to us from our mother or grandmother or acquired meaning through our sharing it with a sister who longed to wear it one moonlit night in April. Me: We.