From destroying each other to helping each other
Getting off the road to hell, on the way to a new reality
Seeing our history being torn down, as Heather Cox Richardson writes about here, is beyond enraging. Words fail for the debasement being perpetrated on what it is to be human from this public lying going on about our past. This is my life being ripped down. Your life. Everyone’s.
Progress is two steps forward one step back. We’re a learning species. Try this, try that, as we flesh out our design capacity to be a cooperative family. The horrors of slavery morphed to gay and transgender abuses, but there also has been a steady stream of humanity getting more rights and becoming more equal. That is until this aberration of a government. But we are on fire now, with ever growing fury about how our decency is being coopted. And that could be what pushes us into the deep dive to create a system that save our species.
Omg, what it is taking get us to deal with Earth’s finite supply of what maintains our world. People don’t want to confront the seriousness of using up our resources. And, although fires and floods are more intense than ever, they still are being explained away as normal weather fluctuations. But look at what Geoffrey Deihl says about immanent crashes. Why doesn’t everybody know this? How come I’m just learning it from Geoffrey, my go-to soulful expert on global warming and overshoot. Subscribe to him to stay informed.
One thing that remains, through the thick and the thin of things, is how being grounded in reality gives us our best chance for the future. I’ve become convinced we don’t have solutions for what can take our civilization down, but there’s one thing we haven’t tried. That is to unite humanity, getting all hands on deck looking for new ways to do things, and dealing with what’s best to do if nothing comes along that lets us continue as is.
For new subscribers who took up a recommendation and might wonder what’s going on here, I’m looking for that family of humanity idea to come into play, where the world would go from being oppositional to being cooperative and everyone would take pride tending to Earth.
I fell into a crack between worlds. My mother, who entered NYU at 15 and in her senior year was the president of all the women, was a dancer and a poet. She traded herself in to be a housewife. She wrote rhymes for friends’ birthdays and took cha cha lessons with my dad, where people would turn to look at how fetching she was on the country club dance floor. My dad was a heroic type as a successful lawyer, and her role was to take care of us and our house. So, even though I graduated from NYU Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude, I played housewife until I was 35, when, as a single mom with three little girls, what I had to serve my future was the devotion to excellence that had gotten me my academic honors.
The Human Potential Movement was in its early stages when I got single and I went from living in Hollywood glitz to roaming around in my inner self. In 1988, I collected twelve calls to humanity, starting in 1975, that I’d written when I’d gotten new insights. After thinking I’d dealt with different content each time, I was startled by how they all said the same thing, as kind of cheerleads for humanity. They reminded me of my three years as a cheerleader, when I loved getting excited for my school’s team. Welcome to my destiny as an enthusiast, which is derived from en theos, that’s Greek for the god within.
This is the 1975 earliest of my Pep Talks for Humanity, which is what they all are. I’ll add the others to my next posts. I don’t remember being that wise, so they seem like some other team-spirited person encouraging me. I’ve pictured Pep Talks flooding the net, and hopefully you’ll be inspired to write yours! Copy me on anything you put together for what I might do with it, and click on mine for a version that you can share.
And here’s a treat for Sunday. It’s free! If you cling to some woo woo image of Marianne Williamson, do yourself a favor and pick up on why I call her our world teacher:
To get immersed in the point of view I argue for, have a look at comments I’ve made in Substack Notes.
HOUSEKEEPING
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In Now What? I advocate a revolution. You could say an evolution, to a next phase of consciousness where we act from our interconnection as one humanity. In not having paying subscribers I lose the gods of Substack singing my praises, where all I have for support is you.
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It’s so frustrating that the people being affected, us, don’t have a say in what’s going on. I applaud you in trying to help us find our voices.
Countries and civilizations are self-destructive. Why? Because they mistake short-term gain for long-term survival. We optimize for comfort, power, and advantage—while ignoring consequence, interdependence, and limits. Our intelligence amplifies impact, but not wisdom. We can build faster than we can understand what we’ve built.
History is clear. The Roman Empire flourished—then collapsed under the weight of excess and internal decay. The Maya civilization advanced—then disappeared amid ecological strain. The Easter Island civilization exhausted its resources and fell. The U.S.A. is moving quicly in this direction.
We do not lack knowledge.
We lack restraint, responsibility, and the willingness to act beyond ourselves. In essence, we lack Elders.