NOTICINGS: Awe and Politics

Written By Lisa Citron

Our Founding document declares its own Adjacent Seven

Who WANTS ME?, Unknown artist, 1792

Shock and awe. Hmmm. There is that. But why limit ourselves? It’s like turning over the symbol of our country, the flag for instance, to demagogues. Like others before me, I would prefer not to.

As to awe—the eighth emotion that we each possess—the whole of awe, not just the sliver of dark that it most definitely holds, but the universe of abundance that has no stop to its giving… this awe I’d like to say something about. And why not? The government established by the Founders features politics and awe writ large.

But first. About the dark. The focus on it is, as my grandmother used to say, out of kilter. I mean no disrespect when I judge that favoring the horrors of what’s grievous and illegal on the banners of protest more than what’s working, is seriously out of whack. I, too, howl. But the emphasis on what’s horrific, which clearly must be spoken, steals energy from what is most needed: a vision, beyond stopping Trump’s manufactured mayhem, of what we want for our future. Clickbait headlines in legacy media, TikTok, and YouTube do one thing only: empower the negative. Only howling, stating only the wrongs, shuts down the possibilities to build on what we already have.

What do we have? The ideals declared in the Declaration of Independence. They are clear. They are bold. They are words containing inordinate gravitas. The vision is trustworthy. Unintended by the signers, these words that summarily left Indigenous, Black, Brown, Asian, property-less white men, and all women from our country’s founding documents, provided a solid foothold to claim those ideals and, somewhat, win those rights. To the poor Johnny one note of profit-driven Breaking News, I say, let us out show what was declared in the Declaration. Let us out show our vehement protection of those ideals. Let us build upon what is already ours.

The Declaration of Independence is a powerful example of the life-centered patriotism evident as we protest, resist, and take to court lawless actions.

We are Unalienable Patriots. We are making America more beautiful. We are making America available to, for real this time, We the People.

Let’s take a minute to contrast and compare the 17 grievances against King George III charged in the Declaration of Independence and the actions of today’s president. Here are four.

Our current leaders suggest that all of us envision what we want as if we’re starting from scratch. But what we want is not something totally, utterly, new. It’s nearly 250 years old!

Maybe, if we take a look at a Third Way between the polar opposites of demagoguery and liberty under the rule of law, something will emerge and show us how to make more physical the unalienable Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. In order to make these ideas something you can hold, I propose that we notice in our daily, ordinary lives, occasions of awe. Not the shock kind, but the kind that takes your breath away into unexplainable wonder. Are not the fundamental ideals of Equality, Justice, Consent of the Governed chords of awe?

Is not the fact that our Right to Alter or Abolish government is embedded and stated awesome? Isn’t that what we’re up to now?

This mysterious force of awe in our lives has been largely dismissed as sentimental or just that rare experience of Whoa!

But no. “Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world,” says Dacher Keltner. Experiments in 26 cultures around the world show that awe can repair body and mind. It can deepen social relationships. It can metamorphose our sense of loneliness into the rhythms of being part of a community.

But, one might ask, what’s awe got to do with this big mess we’re in? A lot. Awe is a survival mechanism, always has been. And awe is what we need today to survive the in-your-face chipping away of the Constitution. The emotion of awe was preserved in our evolution because it generates the desire to be prosocial. We are born to help or benefit another person or group. And because everyone, as Thomas Jefferson noted, is born with unalienable rights. The emotion of awe is in your body. You know it when you’re liberty is thrown to the ground by masked ICE agents, and you know it when you see the sun slip behind the moon. Words or not, every human being is aware of and humbled by the vast, complex world which we share, not as political partisans but as a species.

Species. Did you ever see a murmuration of starlings?

Source: Sjo, www.sjo.nl

The way starlings murmurate confounds. Our minds can’t make sense of how they do it.

But before I say more about awe, there is something important to know. About one-quarter of the awe experienced by us humans is dread and terror. It is “the dark side of the sublime.” Like all its other aspects, it too is huge, vast, and profoundly unfathomable.

Source: AP Video/Allen G. Breed

This full-body restraint device is called the WRAP. Can’t you just hear the smirking employees calling it “The burrito”? I was physically ill when I comprehended what I was looking this photograph. The WRAP has become a harrowing part of deportations for some immigrants. Is it really a hard choice to choose life?

I cannot fathom the individual who conceived, designed, and ordered the use of the WRAP. I reluctantly understand the left brain “logic” to delete the paragraph acknowledging the enslaved as whole humans in order to get the unanimous vote to approve the Declaration. Unanimity meant revolution. Non-unanimous meant to continue as subjects of King George III, and for the enslaved to stay enslaved. But the abandonment of the principles undergirding the Declaration made it possible to not even notice the profound betrayal of what some of the Founders learned and applied in the governance they designed, from Indigenous Americans. I am profoundly distressed that in my own reading of the Declaration of Independence, I did not register the damming uncontested paragraph left in by all the signers:

“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

The dark aspect of awe is as dark as outer space.

The most often used word by the Founders was not liberty. It was not freedom. It was not democracy. The word used the most, the word that guided the formation of a government to create liberty, freedom, and democracy, was a word filled with the awe experience of dread and terror. That word is demagogue. Meaning in 1776? No Kings! The meaning today, No Kings.

The negative aspect of awe is vital to democracy. Why? Because it is materially real and, in this situation we now protest, it is designed by a human, and used by humans on human beings. Unlike the dark forces of nature, like a flood wiping out a community, humans can change what humans make in human affairs.

“Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Awe is foundational to the Third Way. We need to make space for awe because it makes us happy. And when willing, able to build together on the ideals of our Declaration of Independence.

Starling murmurations are leaderless. Leaderless! Birds in the center keep track by watching the edge. How do they do it? Because of the “Rule of Seven.” Pick any one bird out of thousands and that bird’s movement is influenced only by the seven nearest neighbors. In perfect synchrony. And nothing else. The seven adjacent. Amazing, no?

In starlings, their individual need for safety may be one evolutionary reason for a starling murmuration. Should a predator lunge through the murmuration, nearly all survive. Their survival is the result of the quick sensing of the Adjacent Seven. Even if one bird does not feel the predator’s threat, the neighbors do. When they swerve, they all swerve. Human survival is communal. When in trouble, change direction.

More and more citizens have changed direction from inaction to action.

The combination of a flock’s need for safety and the human need for a stable, just society suggests an idea. What if each of us, individuals who are the body politic, took advantage of what each of us embodies: the need for safety and harmony? How do we get that? By looking for that moment of awe every single day. Small is beautiful.

Source: Sjo, www.sjo.nl

The Declaration of Independence is our guide. Our Founding document declares its own Adjacent Seven. Count them. They number seven.

The unalienable Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, and the implicit right of Equality, Justice, the Consent of the Governed, and the Right to Alter or Abolish government. It is our song to sing. Our country to claim.

We are using the power of seven adjacent now.

No Kings Rallies Map - Sunday, October 19, 2025. https://www.nokings.org/#map

This is our time to ourselves murmurate and bring forth the vision established in 1776 into the one that welcomes, holds, and protects all the people, we the people, now into the future.

Lisa Citron
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NOTICINGS: Contrast & Compare the Grievances — 1776 to 2025