GOATs for the Greater Good
Zeroing in on how to save the world
We’ve been turned into victims and ordinary thinking is sinking us. My once-upon-a-time crazy guru would laugh at us seekers on the path, struggling to find ourselves, while he was over in the bushes having a good time. From my bushes, I see celebrities. Taylor Swift moves masses. I see power to the people coming from GOATs for the Greater Good.
I’d collect Taylor, Oprah, George Clooney, MacKenzie Scott, the Obamas, Barbra Streisand, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bridges, since they live here the Duke and Duchess – who else is progressive royalty? Make it international? Get Greta Thunberg, Sirs Attenborough and Branson, Jane Goodall, the Dalai Lama??? I could see Arnold Schwarzenegger taking it on to hustle up the people everyone would listen to. We would teach them the Universe Story so they could share how we are in an evolutionary process, all connected, lucky to be at the top of the evolutionary chain where gratitude and service to our beloved home would prevail.
Our superstars would be signatory to this:
As GOATs in an age of celebrity worship, we are moved to serve -- not for our glory but with devotion to doing what helps our species and our world.
For more the GOATs could take on, they could set the examples they would urge people to follow:
CONVERSATION – Everywhere, in social networking and on TV talk shows, people would ask, “What can we do now?”
FIRESIDE CHATS - Social networking would be flooded with people famous and unknown sharing heartfelt wishes for humanity.
Change the zeitgeist! Big changes can happen. For half my life I didn’t wear the seatbelts I automatically buckle into now. And you wouldn’t be reading this if there hadn’t been Women’s Lib. We can get a forward-thinking energetic to prevail!
Our GOATs could press on governmental forces. Dealing with economic inequality is the most primary adjustment humanity needs to make. Then, there would be attention on duplicating Norway’s justice system, where a focus on the greater good beats vengeance. And they could create a Suggestion Box to cull workable ideas from what the public offers. On and on, clear, strong voices, that everyone hears, could be what gets us where we go from here.
For this new year, these words, that spoke to the creation of the United States, can be invoked again, this time to use our minds instead of our muskets!
Dear subscribers -- A lot of you make direct replies to each post. Instead, if you comment here we can have the conversations I’d like to generate. First-timers will have to complete your Substack profile to be able to comment on the Substack platform!
I like your idea of GOATS and Thomas Paine was, and is, a hero; but to bring together your luminaries (and I'd switch out Harry and Meghan for King Charles) to tell the Universe Story seems unlikely. For that to happen, I remain convinced that humanity needs to experience and even expect Disaster. The whole world needs to be collectively shocked by what we have become and how we are living on this planet. The only alternative to Disaster with sufficient weight to bring about such a complete reorientation of thought is undeniable extraterrestrial visitation akin to "Divine Intervention", and in such a way that we are awed and humbled by the experience rather than further riled up.
Paul and Suzanne, I was reading your comments about the world being terrible and heading for disaster and my first thought was... "based on which metric?" Since google is apparently reading our thoughts now, a youtube video popped up this morning showing a debate about this subject. Stephen Pinker argues that since the enlightenment the world has never been better, while John Mearsheimer argues those gains are at the cost of truth and morality. Interesting chat, here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA-tCQJEzqk&t=564&ab_channel=TheInstituteofArtandIdeas