(Originally published at Greater Democracy.)

Over the past couple of days, I’ve encountered incredible jubilation about the election of Barack Obama to be our next President. Yet in the background, I hear concerns expressed. Even in President-Elect Obama’s speech on Tuesday night, he spoke about the difficult task ahead. I’m on a mailing list of group psychologists that I often turn to, to try and make sense of the dynamics which are going on, and this list, too, has been overrun by jubilation. To them, and to all of you, I want to ask, why is this jubilation so great? Are we missing something by not heeding President-Elect Obama’s words about the difficult task ahead? What might we be missing?

It seems that there are probably many intermixed causes for this and that if we understand and name better, we may be better prepared to protect it. Here are some of the thoughts I shared with the list.