"Some years ago, I gave a series of talks about the underlying priniciples of Methodism," she goes on. "I talked a lot about how timeless a lot of scriptural lessons were because they tied in with what we now know about human beings. If you break down the Golden Rule or if you take Christ's commandment -- Love thy neighbor as thyself -- there is an underlying assumption that you will value yourself, that you will be a responsible being who will live by certain behaviors that enable you to have self-respect, because, then, out of that self-respect comes the capacity for you to respect and care for other people.
"And how do we just break this whole enterprise down in small enough pieces? Well, somebody says to themselves: 'You know, I'm not going to tell that racist, sexist joke. I don't want to objectify another human being. Why do I want to do that? What do I get out of that kind of action? Maybe I should try to restrain myself.'
"Or somebody else says: 'You know, I'm going to start thanking the woman who cleans the restroom in the building that I work in. You know, maybe that sounds kind of stupid, but on the other hand I want to start seeing her as a human being.'
"And then maybe the next step is I say to myself: 'How much are we paying this woman who works the 3 to 11 shift. And who's taking care of her kids while she's here working? And how do we make it possible for her to be able to both be a good parent and perform a necessary function?'
"And these are little pieces, and a lot of those little pieces can be done on a very small scale that then aggregates. So I think what we're basically, what we're really looking at is, you know, millions and millions of changes in individual behavior that are motivated by the same impulses, even if we're not doing a very good job of describing them."
This rambling passage seems to validate The New Republic's impertinence. What does it all mean? This is, as it turns out, a fair question. The meaning of the politics of meaning is hard to discern under the gauzy and gushy wrappings of New Age jargon that blanket it. Michael Lerner, who has been expounding on the subject for several years in the pages of Tikkun, a magazine of liberal Jewish thinking, has described the new politics as all about "how to build a society based on love and connection, a society in which the bottom line would not be profit and power but ethical and spiritual sensitivity and a sense of community, mutual caring and responsibility."
