Barack Obama, Fractals and Momentum in Politics – Think Piece

The new force of the youth has now made itself felt in US presidential politics in 2008. This force is manifest in the tremendous outpouring of the collectivities of different races, classes, genders, sexual orientation and ages coming forward to support the candidacy of Barack Obama. Barack Obama was born of an African father from Kenya and a mother of European extraction from Kansas in the heartland of the United States. Obama is drawing on both heritages and is campaigning to make a break with the binary categories that perpetuate divisions and the politics of exclusion. This break is a fundamental concept in fractal theory and opens up questions of the laws of unintended consequences in politics. It is the combination of the new energy and light that emerges from the Barrack Obama campaign that sparks questions on the need for a new framework for analyzing politics. This is the framework based on truth, justice, peace and a new mode of politics. In South Africa, the term Ubuntu emerged to point to the ways in which we share a common humanity.

Ubuntu and Recursion are at the heart of fractals and at the core of recursion is the concept of memory. What memories are being unearthed in this campaign? How can these memories create a new reference point for the politics of the 21st century? How can a new movement inspire the peoples to tap into their creative energies to build a new peace movement, a new movement to make a break with the destruction of the planet earth and to make a break with the plunder of the present mode of petroleum production? This short statement will argue that after nearly thirty years of traditional republican and democrat politics, there is a desire for hope. It is hope that goes beyond the audacity of the campaign of Obama or the kind of balancing which is inscribed in his book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.