An an author and spiritual advisor, Marriane Williamson is always striving for higher power. This time, she has her sites set on the Oval Office.
Williamson is currently running for the Democratic nomination in the 2024 presidential election, going up against sitting president Joe Biden. The key to her campaign: morality.
Why Marianne Williamson Is Running For President
"When we try to be good people, when we try to behave with compassion, ethics, conscience, life works better," she tells Sonia Baghdady of Advocate Now. "And when we don't, all kinds of chaos and unworkable solutions are produced. That's true in politics as much as in anything else."
Williamson believes too much focus in government is placed on profit rather than people. This can be seen in crackdowns on human rights, as well as policies that allow companies to devastate the natural environment.
"The idea that a kind of soulless economics — that lacks any kind of ethical consideration — is somehow a good thing, is now given primacy over the health and the safety and well-being of people, animals, our children, and our planet: our communities. And we've got to stop this," she says. "We've got to course correct. This is a very dangerous trajectory."
Moving away from profit requires morality as well as spirituality, according to Williamson, who notes that "the founding of this country is grounded in principles which are higher than merely transactional political values."
Without a moral foundation — and with human needs cast aside in favor of economics — Williamson believes that it can be difficult to find every day fulfillment. The United States is currently seeing an unprecedented epidemic of loneliness, which she says is a symptom in itself of a larger cultural crisis.
"They call it a mental health crisis. But we have to ask ourselves why, though? Why are so many people chronically depressed, chronically anxious, chronically upset, and having such a hard time?," Williamson says, adding, "We have to replace those people in those places of power, because the the forces which make so much suffering inevitable are so baked into the cake at this point."
For more interviews like these, watch Advocate Now on The Advocate Channel.
