Many will say this is not a call for imagination, but an expression of insanity. Many will say that whatever the flaws of the systems in which we live, we have no choice but to find our place in them and try to mitigate the worst effects.
I recognize that it's possible I'm wrong about all this. I could be stone-cold crazy. I try to retain humility about the limits of my ability to understand a complex world. We all go forward with imperfect information and limited capacities. In the end, we all decide what to believe -- and how to act on that belief -- not solely on evidence and logic but on something in our gut. Here's what I can say with clarity:
When I look around at the world we have created, at the systems on which that world is based, I get a bad feeling in my gut. When I let the enormity of it flow over me -- when I let myself really see the state of the world -- I get scared. And I have a feeling that time is running out. If I sound harsh and impatient, it is because that feeling in my gut grows deeper each day, and each day I know we have lost more of the time we desperately need to imagine a new kind of society -- a society that taps into that collective wisdom rather than ignores it, a society in which we have a fighting chance to be the people we say we want to be.
I do not know the origins of this creation of which we are a part. But I know that we have both the capacity to destroy that creation, and the capacity to find our place within it. I know we have the capacity for arrogance that will lead us to that destruction, but I also know we all have within us a love that goes deep enough to create a new world within that larger creation.
It may turn out that we are a failed experiment. It may turn out that the human with the big brain is an evolutionary dead-end. It may be that we will struggle and fight, and in the end fail. It may be. There are no guarantees in this fragile world, for each of us personally or all of us collectively.
But there is always the struggle, and the joy of the struggle to honor what we know deep within us, individually and collectively. It is a struggle we can all join, a struggle we must join if we are to be the people we say we are.
I recognize that it's possible I'm wrong about all this. I could be stone-cold crazy. I try to retain humility about the limits of my ability to understand a complex world. We all go forward with imperfect information and limited capacities. In the end, we all decide what to believe -- and how to act on that belief -- not solely on evidence and logic but on something in our gut. Here's what I can say with clarity:
When I look around at the world we have created, at the systems on which that world is based, I get a bad feeling in my gut. When I let the enormity of it flow over me -- when I let myself really see the state of the world -- I get scared. And I have a feeling that time is running out. If I sound harsh and impatient, it is because that feeling in my gut grows deeper each day, and each day I know we have lost more of the time we desperately need to imagine a new kind of society -- a society that taps into that collective wisdom rather than ignores it, a society in which we have a fighting chance to be the people we say we want to be.
I do not know the origins of this creation of which we are a part. But I know that we have both the capacity to destroy that creation, and the capacity to find our place within it. I know we have the capacity for arrogance that will lead us to that destruction, but I also know we all have within us a love that goes deep enough to create a new world within that larger creation.
But there is always the struggle, and the joy of the struggle to honor what we know deep within us, individually and collectively. It is a struggle we can all join, a struggle we must join if we are to be the people we say we are.
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