Inspiration to think outside the box
What we the people can do
I’m priming the pump here, with comments I’ve made on Substacks I subscribe to, to inspire the committee of thinkers I’ll be creating to think outside the box. I strung them together as if it’s one piece of writing, but it’s bits and pieces of what I’ve said to Robert Reich, Noam Chomsky, Dennis Kucinich, Marianne Williamson, Thom Hartmann, The.Ink, Michael Moore, The Intercept, Ralph Nader, James Fallows, Steve Schmidt, Seymour Hersh, Daily Kos, Heather Cox Richardson, and others.
A new conversation is in order. The foundation of it would be what we the people can do. How can we acquire a voice? And how to decide what it would say? What a perfect storm, with Democrats paralleling Republicans where big money is the controller. Government isn't going to do it for us so let's get power to the people!
We need a voice that everyone would listen to so it’s not just gadflies all the way down. The MeToo movement disbanded when it had no way to negotiate, so let's create an ad hoc Wisdom Council with the most broadly respected people in the country. Some power person, say Schwarzenegger or Oprah, could step up to start it. That person would pick another one, the two of them would pick the third, and so on till there’s a group of thought shapers that everyone would listen to. And we could enroll a Human Survival Party to become a force to carry out its directives. Have a Suggestion Box for the rest of us, for what to pass on to the Council. Get people rocking and rolling instead of killing each other.
There isn’t work being done on changing the attitude of humanity where we become cooperative instead of relying on enforcement of regulations. The bullet to bite is to create system change to get us to be altruistic instead of exploitive.
The most effective way to create the massive change we need would be to get a new idea of what humanity is doing here -- a new creation story where we aren’t sinners climbing over one another but are interconnected as one humanity. As we think, so we act, so getting our thinking in order could get the changes we need.
There’s intelligent talk about how the world could be, but none about how to get there in any reasonable time. A creation story that isn’t greedy humans but one humanity would be our essential container.
I am dreaming that the Elders will draw on deeper wisdom to not only deal with fixes but also to deal with causes. Our prevailing model is Newtonian and we are in a quantum world. We need a new story consistent with Hubble discovering the universe isn't fixed dead matter but is alive and evolving. Humanity needs a story where we aren't on a dead rock, but are of the living Earth and here to tend her.
The Universe is a Green Dragon, a “cosmic creation story” by physicist/mystic Brian Thomas Swimme, could be the most important book of our time. Good old Copernicus took Earth out of the center of the universe and massively changed human consciousness, and what Green Dragon is about could cause an even more massive shift.
With talk of “connecting to inner-outer essence” and “reconnecting people to the natural world,” the Universe Story sees us AS the natural world — i.e. already connected. We aren’t on Earth using it, but we ARE Earth that’s evolving from the fireball and got us to Shakespeare.
When you get the beauty of being the most evolved species in this glorious universe, there’s pleasure in taking care of our home. That it’s up to us is a realization and not a training.
Tune people into humanity being hot stuff -- cheerlead for that. It’s for us being the thinking species that has the honor and privilege of helping this incredible planet.
Our out-of-date creation story keeps us moving the deck chairs. We need a story that takes us from self-interest to caring about each other as much as we care about ourselves. We should be having conversation about this, but thought shapers are delivering to students and audiences and not being creative with each other.
We need to address who we think we are in order to create a more utopian world. If humanity were tuned into being interconnected we'd create what serves everyone. It’s the #1 priority to understand we’re sacred inhabitants of a sacred universe -- i.e. it's all god.
Looking ahead in our Trump obsession, where punishing him will command headlines for years, this is terrible energy to be in. What about a wild idea where we offer him immunity from all prosecutions and pardon him for all his crimes if he does a mea culpa? We don’t need our pounds of flesh if we can get the key to our kingdom! He’d have to be so convincing confessing to everything bad about him that he'd get all but the most comparably evil people to stop following him. The U.S. could pay his creditors, which probably would be cheaper than paying for his prosecutions. Why would he do that? To stay rich and out of jail. And, in that weirdo warp he’s in, he might get satisfaction from being able to claim he was the hero who had united us.
As the insurrectionists get prison sentences, what about dealing with the higher need for our oppositional country to come together? How about a training program for the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys to make them self-aware? Waking them up so we can come together in one human family is a higher objective than making horrible people’s lives miserable.
How can we ever be safe as long as the world is so oppositional? In our attempt to "control" nuclear weapons, we’ve been saved several times from the accident of a launch. The only surety to avoid nuclear catastrophe is to get rid of the weapons, and to do that we need to be a cooperative species.
Get everyone in the world to watch THE DAY AFTER for what nuclear war would do.
A world running on money and not on morals is hitting walls. Excellent analyses of our situation abound, but to elect Democrats is as far as envisioning change goes.
Alarms keep being sounded, but conversation about what to do is not to be found. We are boxed in with no thinking outside the box.
One way to see our situation is that perhaps what we lack for is good ideas. Let’s look for some!
Morality isn't what matters most to people. Eating matters more. And shelter. And health care. People can't adopt higher order understandings until survival needs are tended to.
Why is there such discontent in this rich-getting-richer country? Dealing with each of the ills that plague us keeps us busy but we should be dealing with what's causal to them, and if we addressed income inequality so much of what ails us wouldn’t exist.
Universal Basic Income is the future for making it beyond an extinction event we could suffer in the exploitive reality we are in. Remove what causes misery and you'll change the aberrations it supports.
It figures to get worse for the powerless because thanks to automation there aren’t going to be enough jobs no matter what, and UBI would be the answer. Experiments worldwide are working like gangbusters.
"We need to fight rising prices, not fight working people." Right. How? Assuring everyone gets food, shelter, education, and health care would solve many problems as it would get us started being a compassionate society instead of an exploitive one.
All the monetary garbage that goes on is a function of the basic system we have degenerated to where an oligarchy exploits the masses. It's an economic world where it should be a humanitarian one, and we resist deep dives into what's causal as we fumble with surface realities. No amount of legislation will make this a more law-abiding country with so much economic deprivation while the obscenely rich get obscenely richer.
Democratic candidates should deal with how namby pamby the party is. Support UBI. Then, advocate for replicating Norway's prison system, where a recidivism rate of 20% compared to our 70% comes from putting rehabilitation over punishment. They make society work rather than get their pounds of flesh. Where being a compassionate society instead of a vengeful one is the system change we need, so few people even know about Norway. On a Zoom I asked 50 well-educated English people to raise hands and only one person did. There’s the same unfamiliarity with Japan having no mass shootings. What else would make Democrats attractive to vote for?
Encourage a stand that no one should be a billionaire and agitate for billionaires to turn the world around. They could distribute their wealth, where they’d stay rich but not megarich as they’d provide enough for everyone to get survival handled.
See if we can get Democratic candidates to run on visionary goals.
Maybe it's time for you pundits to go from talking about what's wrong to looking for how to make things right!
The biggest war crime is war itself. Think of being in the future looking back, where we’d be incredulous at it being legal to kill one another. We need a new take on everything. With the GOP reflecting some deep disturbance, best we look to the causal level so voting Democrat isn't the only intelligent thing we do.
It’s a small game to tell us what we already know. I am urging you to ask what we-the-people might do to end-run around the government. Lead a parade instead of reporting on one!
I grew up watching movies where Indians were villains and cowboys who killed them were heroes. We wouldn't present that now, nor do we condone owning human beings. Tell children the truth about our past. If we fool them into thinking of us only being exemplary, they won't be in the flow of the evolutionary imperative to make things better. The good news is we improve all the time. If I hadn’t lived through women’s lib I would still be Mrs. Him, and not writing anything publicly.
Marianne Williamson is a rare person engaging in politics who teaches us about the more compassionate and enlightened human beings we need to become. As the voice of the awareness we need to awaken to, we could learn from her how to become better people. If we were living the life Marianne calls for, we would be in the world we want to be in.
A friend whose cancer disappeared when he did psychological work on himself explained that he had changed the host so his cancer didn't have its home. How to change us to become proud of our country could be a better question than what laws we could pass. A united humanity would be the playing field for creating the outcomes we want.
How about we look for what could create a different playing field? One idea is FIRESIDE CHATS a la Roosevelt's. Like the Ice Bucket Challenge it could become fashionable, with celebrities making videos calling us to our finest that get the human family united.
That the U.S. is still acting out in imperialistic fashion is deeply distressing. We were shocked to get insight into our imperialist past during the Bush administration, where one would have thought the disappointment we felt about our country would have led us to getting beyond such manipulations. How disturbing that we still are an imperialist nation.
That billionaires shouldn’t exist is on my list. Think about them getting religion, so to speak, from a realization of how system change would be their survival, too. We already have commitments from far-sighted billionaires to give away their fortunes in their lifetimes, and let’s get them to enroll the others to save a world where they still will be privileged but not destructive.
I learned from my essay contest that the secret sauce is money prizes. Get billionaires to give big prizes for ways to save the world. Artists would make beauty, doctors would find cures, on and on. Get the best out of everyone by giving cash prizes!
We rise up to higher order thinking when there are challenges to our survival. Like if aliens landed we'd deal with that together. We are so ready for an evolutionary leap to become one humanity, where the horrors of the day could be the catalyst for it.
I trust Kamala’s heart, but I mute the TV when she comes on. Any chance she could be replaced? I'd put Marianne in as Biden's running mate.
How can our glory be in the lap of, god bless him, a faltering Joe Biden? He’s too old. Period. What to do? I'd draft Maria Shriver’s brother, Tim Shriver, to be our candidate. He is a gem, and as JFK’s nephew he has the right lineage.
What can make a massive change where we become a caring species? Don't say pie in the sky. All brains on deck for the shift of consciousness that would come in time. That's the conversation to be having.
"We the people must not tolerate it any longer." Harumph. It's low-hanging fruit to complain. Yada yada yada. So what to do?
How weird would it be to depose Jesus from being a god and to identify him as a mystic who saw beyond ordinary reality and tuned us into being united in spirit?
Engage with any complainer du jour and get the satisfaction of venting. I have the same complaints, BUT there's work to be done.
We need to look for what we can do in timely fashion. There are fine analyses of what got us here and great fantasizing about utopias, but we need to be looking for what we-the-people can do now.
In my agenda for the material world, there are no commercials for candidates. They just can talk to the camera. And I'd see candidates in unmoderated conversations, not having debates. Instead of struggling to get Trump to follow the rules, just get the candidates to talk to one another about why people should vote for them. Let voters see who they like best. Wouldn't that be fascinating?
“The rules of war" is barbarism sanitized.
Why don't we build housing in border towns so people aren't dehumanized while attempting to get into the country?
Trumpers despise the system and vote for Trump because he despises the system. We should look to fix the system. That's on us.
What’s the explanation for why we aren't suggesting more than a 2% tax on the morbidity rich -- and we even are begging for that puny amount...???
All during the last century the Twilight Club was comprised of the richest and most influential people and they were helping the world. They gave rise to the library system (Andrew Carnegie was a member), child labor laws, the Better Business Bureau, the Boy and Girl Scouts, the Kiwanis Club, and more.
How about Marianne picking up from MLK Jr. and calling for the Beloved Community as something people could be signatory to?
How about giving Trump ecstasy to try to wake him up? MDMA is a gamechanger, and if I ran the world I'd put it in the water supply.
His first tweet showed that Trump is beyond repulsive. Any intelligent person would say the same. Now, figure out what's going on with his supporters.
Pundits, get off your daily dips in the Republican Party’s sewer and get us jazzed about being in a save-the-world brigade.
IDEA: It’s How Was Your Week, Mr. President? Different from speechifying, it would be the President talking to us like family. Not scripted, but baring heart and soul bragging about accomplishments, sharing worries, giving us things to do. How to float this idea????? We need a Suggestion Box!
It’s fundamentally undemocratic for Kamala to be shoehorned into the candidacy. There were doom predictions if Biden backed out and look how well that turned out, so now let the nomination be fought for -- not with candidates destroying one another but by presenting themselves. Not only would that be good in principle, but Kamala has baggage where other candidates could be more electable.
Candidate Kamala should get Marianne to tune her into a broader perspective. That could get us the inspirational platform the Democrats need.
What can explain how weird Trump is? Here’s a stab at how he thinks:
"The big box that I’m in is to win. That’s really all I see. Everything that comes up goes on the gameboard of how I come out on top. It’s just the way I am.
"You know about telling a big enough lie? That sounds so tame. I don’t evaluate based on lies and truth. It’s not my objective. And I do see how well it works to have the lies get bigger and bigger.
"My objective is to win. I’m off the charts in that regard. I don’t even really know what love is. But to be honest, it doesn’t matter to me. It would get in my way. And I see the principles of fairness, but they create pawns for me, little people in my game, to be swatted away. And I can’t get too stirred up by those apocalyptic things, since they don’t figure to kick in while I’m still here.
"I want whatever I want when I want it. Even that isn’t the biggest truth. Winning is even bigger. What is that about me? It just is. Like I have skin. I didn’t like growing up, and the winning thing just kicked in. It wasn’t even life or death. It just was.
"I’ve gotten so good at it. It gets easier and easier, where I’m kind of riffing in it now. I’m saying weird things that I’m letting myself do stream of consciousness, or stream of something, and I stay excited seeing the fuss I stir up in the newspapers, on TV, in the funny skits and parodies, I am omnipresent. Oh god, it is so sweet.
"You know, you only live once, and to just keep slobbering along as a winner suits me fine."
What do you think? Does this sound like him?
If all goes well, we figure to have 16 years of presidents the public never selected -- Kamala for 8 followed by the Coach for 8 more. How does that fit with democracy? Isn't there some food for thought here?
This is from a new book Marianne Williamson was waiting to publish till after her candidacy: “Our society calls it a mental health crisis, but in fact it’s a spiritual one.” Kamala could change the world with this understanding!!!!
Whew…
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There's a lot in your words, Suzanne, and we have much to overcome. The social and spiritual growth we need could come from the simple recognition the Earth is everything to us, and she needs to be cared for. That includes all of its plants and creatures that work in a harmony only achieved by the wisdom of slow change over millennia. Our common need for a healthy planet could be the commonality to overcome the divisions of people kill over. The planet and her organisms can be thought of as a body, and just as we have chosen to put toxic substances into our bodies and minds, we have polluted and made her toxic as well. It's a true measure of our insanity, absolute, irrefutable physical evidence of madness, this dubious achievement. There is little time to pull back from the brink with numerous planetary boundaries exceeded and certain tipping points at hand, or possibly exceeded as well.
Rallying over the physical emergency on our planet must be our starting point. It's only through oil, we have become so overpopulated and created mindless consumerism and the devil of capitalism at such a toxic level. Oil will become economically unviable to extract at some point in the next few decades. We are now down to fracking wells. At that point, the energy expended will exceed what can be gained. When that happens, it's game over for fossil fuels.
On one hand, we must stop burning oil as it threatens life on this planet, but on the other it's what makes the world run. We're challenged with a massive economic transition or, worse, threatened with complete collapse. Droughts, floods and fires are taking lives as I write as a result of global warming, and climate change will wreak havoc on agriculture. We have an immediate existential crisis underway that we must solve if we are going to learn to live on a deeper, meaningful level. Our frightening crisis contains the seeds of achieving this goal because it demands cooperation like never before, and something humans have never done, seeking less looking as the solution, rather than exploiting more, barring a breakthrough in fusion or a massive build out of nuclear energy, both of which would delay treating our behavioral problems.
Harris-Walz looks to be a winning ticket. The type of thoughts we express here must be powerfully communicated to them, and they must put their political necks on the line with a broad understanding and vision of creating a just, post capitalism world. There are road blocks in place from the heinous Supreme Court overturning of the Chevron doctrine, and there will be massive push back against these ideas, but mere policy won't get us there. We must be prepared to march and fight. We've seen the police state on our college campuses over the genocide of Palestinians. This is an undeniable indicator of what we're up against. The tenets of degrowth are an excellent starting point. A better future won't be won with words and pacifism alone.
https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/degrowth-the-vision-we-must-demand
Think more inclusively. This is not just about the USA. Structures of domination in the form of hierarchical governance and institutions, imperial mindsets and control of planetary resources in the hands of seven or eight male topped corporations, is unsustainable. And, to use Riane Eisler's phrase, they are all "trauma factories", producing endless cycles of reenactment and self destruction. Systemic change needs to be planet wide.
It is unlikely to start in an country corporately controlled with a mission for the rest of the world, i.e. enforcing its version of democracy on others... no matter how inspired its somewhat undemocratically elected leaders... ?the electoral college? ... are.
Wisdom Circles/Councils in every place are a more promising possibility of seeding change from the ground up.