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John Hagelin's New Year Message

I wish to thank all my dear friends for your hard work, generosity, and moral support during our historic 2000 Campaign. While clearly our work has just begun, I think we should all feel proud of our achievements.

Millions of voters cast their ballots for our Natural Law Party/Independence Party candidates, and many of these candidates were within striking distance of victory, with vote totals up to 30%. We raised over $4 million and built a network of 30,000 activists and volunteers. Most important, we set the example for true coalitional politics--and thus laid the foundation for a powerful, broad-based movement that represents millions of independent voters.

Having toiled in the trenches of independent politics for more than eight years, I can personally attest that these are remarkable achievements.

While my heroic friends and colleagues in the Natural Law and Independence Parties are striving to consolidate our gains, expand our coalition, and prepare for the future, I will rededicate myself for the next few years to foundational research--laying the foundations in the deep knowledge of natural law and natural-law based solutions that will offer Americans a new and higher form of leadership.

Natural law is universally nourishing. Government truly in accord with natural law can, through win-win solutions that transcend partisan politics, balance and fulfill the diverse needs of all citizens. An intrinsic weakness of our winner-take-all democracy is that leaders are elected with as little as 51% of the vote. These elected leaders, who lack our win-win solutions, are ready to sacrifice the interests of the minority for the sake of their 51% majority. Still worse, in the recent U.S. election, only 49% of voters cast ballots for George W. Bush--which was only 25% of eligible voters. We elected a leader who is poised to sacrifice the majority for the sake of a small but financially powerful minority.

So I will work with the elected leadership and will continue to promote win-win solutions that are life-supporting and sustainable. In addition, under the auspices of my Brain Research Institute, I will resume my research in the vital field of human consciousness and its full development. America's problems are human problems, born of the tragic underutilization of our full mental and emotional potential. To survive and progress in this new millennium, we must better harness this, our most precious, national resource--the full creativity and intelligence our 281 million citizens.

The final frontier of scientific research is consciousness. As a physicist and brain researcher, I must report that our scientific understanding of consciousness is quite primitive. Indeed, there is no physical explanation of "mind" in terms of the known particles and forces, causing many physical scientists to deny the very existence of consciousness.

I am excited to have embarked on the development of a true physics of mind, because of its potentially profound implications for education, crime prevention, and other areas of public policy. I feel fortunate to have assembled a superb team of world-class physicists, physiologists, and neuroscientists to tackle this traditionally thorny subject.

For those who are interested in following our progress, there will be periodic updates posted on my website, http://archive.hagelin.org.

Please stay in close touch! I treasure our friendship and, of course, remain deeply, dynamically committed to the crucial democratic work we have begun. Despite my global travels, you will find me generally more accessible now than during our hectic campaign. I am also available to speak, from time to time, should a suitable forum arise.

Wishing you the greatest success and happiness in the New Year,

John Hagelin