For breakfast these past couple months, I’ve been adding some cornmeal to egg whites and microwaving. But no matter how much I mix the egg and meal together beforehand, they separate while cooking! The cornmeal ends up on the bottom, the egg on top. These two substances just won’t blend! They won’t be friends!
If I puree them in a blender, though, they will. It’s early in the morning and I don’t want to wake my wife Barbara or a neighbour, so I usually refrain from doing that. But it works.
The connection to the 2016 presidential election
What does this say about the election? Can you see where I’m going? Our two candidates—in fact the “two nations,” so to speak, that comprise today’s America—will not mix! They, too, need some kind of blender!
A “blender,” in the case of this metaphor, might be some sort of national emergency forcing everyone together. In this little system of images, it seems, at least to me, to come down to that.
This method of problem-solving is an actual discipline called Synectics. Back in college, I took a workshop on it. You take any problem and translate its elements into poetic symbols. Then, you just play with the symbols. Finally, you re-translate everything back into the original “problem” terms. Often, you find the problem has been solved! Synectics has been used in industry, government, and universities, by group dynamics specialists, and by many other people and organizations.
I’m not in love with the idea of a dire national emergency, of course. I’m just reporting on the little experiment that my breakfast brought about.
Forces of nature
There’s yet another, even deeper aspect to the cooking conundrum. Considering the chemistry of food and heat, we become involved in an exploration of natural forces. In his Discourses, Meher Baba discusses such forces of Nature as forms of Love:
The law of gravitation, to which all the planets and the stars are subject, is in its own way a dim reflection of the love which pervades every part of the universe. Even the forces of repulsion in inanimate nature are in truth expressions of love, since things are repelled from each other because they are more powerfully attracted to some other things. Repulsion is a negative consequence of positive attraction. The forces of cohesion and affinity which prevail in the very constitution of matter are positive expressions of love. A striking example of love at this level is found in the attraction which the magnet exercises for iron.
Who would have thought my breakfast would propel me into such deep contemplation?! Hope today’s hasn’t gotten cold while I’ve been writing!
Do you think Clinton and Trump (and their respective parties) will ever be able to “come together,” or are the forces of nature drawing them too far in opposite directions? Would blending their ideals even be a good idea for America? Feel free to give us your opinion in the Comments section below!