In the midst of all of the madness of this nation and of the entire planet, with wars and power politics and competing oligarchs vying for international power, it is time for the ordinary people to take matters into their own hands, to simply say, "ENOUGH" and begin the journey back to sanity. It will be a journey of hundreds of daily actions, by thousands of people, leading to the desired destination of sustainable sanity.
Those in power assume that we will blindly follow them wherever they choose to take us. But if we begin to change our focus and begin to reclaim small parts of our lives, they will begin to see that we have minds and lives of our own and that the support of their goals and directions will begin to melt away.
Journey derives from the word "jour", meaning day. So, a journey becomes the distance that can be covered in a day. It reminds us that any change occurs one step at a time and one day at a time. That does not require that we clearly understand the ultimate end of the journey although the potential goal may look daunting.
Another word about the goal of a journey, it can be thought of as the ultimate destination, even when we do not understand the path to take or totally understand the destination. The beauty of the path our journey takes is that it will lead us not only to our destination, but in the process, we will also discover our own destiny. In this case, at this moment in time, the purpose of the journey is to recover our sanity. That sanity is about recovering our humanness, our basic orientation supporting life, each other, and the planet. It is about finding those things that feed our souls and recreate human communities and help us rejoin the planetary web of life that sustains us.
If sanity does not return, we will find ourselves on the brink of Cold War II with Russia, if not entering into a new World War with the potential use of nuclear weapons, perhaps starting with tactical weapons but easily escalating to a full nuclear war.
If this is not madness, I don't understand the term!
This is not to mention that the reality of the destructiveness of Global Climate Change is thundering down upon us with all of its devastating side effects like species extinction, sea level rise, food and water shortages, extreme weather events, and population shifts due to climate displacement. And there is the likelihood of future pandemics threatening the health of the human race.
While our leaders seem to be so caught up in a competition over who will dominate the planet, the rest of us are left to try to find ways to survive their often-misguided decisions. Meanwhile, the only voices at the table are the contending oligarchs and their minions from both sides.
At times we feel that we may have a true vision of where this is all leading and, like the old maps, we see this uncharted area beyond the map of humanity that is labelled," Here be Dragons". These are the dragons of nuclear war and its destructiveness, unforeseen pandemics, and the coming climate realities.
The leadership have walled themselves off from any significant input from ordinary citizens while insisting that we must confront those dragons, and only they have the wizardry and weapons to prevail against them. And we must simply trust those leaders in spite of any realities we might see before our eyes. And those leaders use the techniques of propaganda, manipulation, intimidation, and illusion to control and exploit us.
What they keep from us is that their whole system depends on our continued support and willingness to allow them to continue on this misguided path. If we begin to withdraw our support their entire edifice will crumble.
Of course, this cannot be accomplished with wishful thinking or with a snap of the fingers or noble words and sentiments, nor will it likely come from within their ranks.
This process is a step at a time, a day at a time, one human being at a time. However, there are many of us ready to sign up for such a journey. And every one of us has the necessary supplies to begin that journey, a step at a time and a day at a time.
This is about setting an example for others to see. It is about rediscovering the joy in our lives. It is about offering a viable and better alternative.
To begin with, it can be a coalition of the willing. No one needs to be bludgeoned into submission or argued into agreement. The process will rely upon others seeing the positivity of our journeys and being willing to inquire how to join and begin their own journey. Growth will be accomplished by a subtle kind of seduction.
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