Making a case for how the world could be different
What I see as elemental things
If my Substack posts were put together, it could be one document. Each post can stand on its own, but they also link up. I don’t write stories or essays or reports, like other Substacks, but I’m making a case for how the world could be different. As I’m moving from ideas about what we could do to advocacies for actions I propose we take, here’s an overview that pulls together some elemental things.
I know in my heart we're a wave in an ocean of decency in this country – a massive sea of untapped goodness that will yet rise up and reach the shores of electoral power. I’ll continue to strive to serve that vision: the emergence of a coalition of decency that will overwhelm the indecencies of our degraded times and return us to our better selves. -Marianne Williamson
I haven’t found anything being done to work on getting a massive shift of consciousness to happen. It’s what we are due for, so there’s no woo woo about it. Logic would have the devastating weather incidents around the world impelling us to unite in order to take global warming seriously, but maybe what happens broadly, so to speak, doesn’t raise the kind of alarm some single something would. Radical breakthrough has pretty much always come from radical breakdown, like a nuclear incident now.
Humanity has to become cooperative. That’s primary. How can we go from being self-serving to where we have a sense of mutuality and altruism prevails?
The primary factor in determining what will happen in our world is not control of capital, nor control of government, nor control of resources, nor control of weapons, but control of narrative. All the others follow from narrative control. Control the narrative and you control where the weapons will go, where the capital will go, where the resources will go, what the government will do. Real power begins with narrative control. Understand this and you’ll understand why governments, plutocrats and media behave the way they do. -Manuel Castells
How you imagine the world determines how you live in it. -David Suzuki
We awoke in the morning and knew where we were. We could answer the questions of our children. We could identify crime, punish transgressors. Everything was taken care of because the story was there. But now it is no longer functioning properly, and we have not yet learned the new story. -Thomas Berry
What is a story, that goes back to our origins, that has us interconnected as one humanity? A new creation story is in order.
Basic elements I’ve suggested for a system that a cooperative humanity could create:
The wisest people in a council to act as humanity’s brains
A coalition of many millions to carry out the council’s directives as a first idea to act on
A suggestion box for anyone to put out ideas for what to do
I do grow ever more convinced we are in deep trouble, where cooperation now may not be able to avert apocalypse. However, humanity pulling together, with all hands on deck working on what to do, is our best chance. And my offer is still out: $100 for sending me to any what-to-do-now scheming going on.
And, I’m putting eggs in the Marianne Williamson basket for what to pay attention to for getting organized. The link is to my Substacks about Marianne. She so knocks me out, where there’s never anything of hers that doesn’t impress me mightily, like on The Mystic Jesus: The Mind of Love with Benjamin W. Decker she’s talking about her new book and words fail me for how profound her understanding is of the deep truths humanity rests in.
For Americans, even more immediately necessary than getting organized is to vote for Kamala Harris and for Democrats across the board. It is pathetic we don’t have a candidate like Marianne, but Kamala won’t be the end of humanity and Trump could be. So, forget Jill Stein where we’d let a pipsqueak select our President, and don’t stay home, either. It’s him or us and if you want to live you have no choice.
To close, I spent four years in the late ‘70s as ELF Enterprises Unlimiting, where ELF stood for Enlightenment, Love, and Fun, with the motto, “Put the elf back in self,” and We’re Making It All up So It Might as Well Be Wonderful was our song. Then, I spent two years during the pandemic sending A Delight A Day for everyone to get some daily cheer in those dark times. In the spirit of the happy days we could be having if we all were cooperative, here’s a wonderfully delightful high to go out on.
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Thank you for hi-lighting the climate crisis. It is one that needs as much attention as possible. Your'e doing an important service by focusing on it as part of the huge problem we have.
You're right, Suzanne, about the need for co-operation in order to effect real change. Unfortunately, change and the will to co-operate can come about only from the bottom up, never from the top down. I wouldn't put any hope in Kamala Harris or any President, Prime Minister, Chancellor, for that matter. These people represent a system that benefits Big Money: that's how they got elected/nominated, and that's how they stay in power. Humanity appears to be going through a major shift, and we will have to struggle through very dark times before we get to see any light.