Nudging for changeful thinking

More ideas for things to do

Vintage me, circa 2009

We need a paradigm change to some place of arrival, where instead of struggles to overcome things we become a humanity that understands its oneness and works together to create the utopian world we could have. Change how people think about themselves and you change what they do. Rugged individualists create the world we have, but sacred creatures in a sacred universe would create the world we want.  

I recognize that massively changing everything has an air of pie in sky and chasing rainbows, but not to me. I think I’m being realistic. Last week I offered $100 for leads to people or places looking for system change, and this week I’ll risk the farm on there not being anything like that going on. Wherever you are in the world, there’s a zeitgeist. It’s how it feels. There are cold places and there are warm places. There are friendly places and impersonal places. There are places where everyone takes pride in their hometown or their home country and places where people live in fear. And there are creation stories that underlie those airs. Famously, indigenous cultures know they are of nature, of Earth -- not on it to use it but as it to be it. We won’t become creatures of the jungle now, but just remember when we took pride in being American, historical warts and all, and compare that to how we are feeling now. See, these aren’t permanent situations; they can change! We make Earth a terrible time. We are nuts.

That it’s dire now is on the mind of anyone who isn't delusional, but people are catatonic about what to do. Everyone feels helpless. And there isn't any movement for taking collective action to get a big change to happen. We have the internet, yet no power figures have created a coalition for the good. Looking for what to do is what I write about -- not how to wise up the crazies but how people with their lights on can think together. We believe it’s what “they” do that’s making us miserable, but you could say it’s us by what we don’t do.

Just today I discovered some new nuttiness. It’s the Democratic platform -- and it hasn’t even caused a ripple:

“…2024 foreign policy platform includes nothing about ending the sale and shipment of arms to Israel…the Democrats removed sections about ending the support for the Saudi war in Yemen, about moving away from misguided forever wars, about sanctions undermining our interests, about cutting military spending – as well as criticizing Trump for being too soft on Iran…The Democratic platform abandons the progress made in 2020…in 2020 it said that Democrats would avoid the trap of a ‘new Cold War’—language that does not appear this time around…the platform doesn't call for abolition of the death penalty and for the first time since 2004 there's no mention of the death penalty at all.”  It’s “an ominous portend of what it could look like in a Kamala Harris administration.”

Here are some things I’ve come up with of late for things to do:  

• Set up conversations between the presidential candidates. The vice-presidential ones, too. Just two chairs and two people, to discuss what they would do or however they would choose to spend the time. Maybe ask questions, or issue critiques for responses. 

• How Was Your Week, Mr. President? Different from speechifying, it would be a fellow human talking to us like family. Not scripted, it would be bragging about accomplishments, sharing worries, giving tidbits – a quote or a joke. Biden could start that now.

• Operationalize an idea from an award-winning essay, Benches and Snacks, where handy people put up benches all over that foster conversation.

• A conversation to be having is to try to understand the MAGA mind. Seeing how it is that people think that way would give us clues about what in society needs to change.

• Kamala’s stance could be key. Let her be real to how disgusting she finds Trump. If she is in her disgust she'll be in her power, and she'll get a whole other kind of communication going than just countering Trump with facts. “Donald, now now, you aren't thinking clearly..." for a shot at how that might come out. She's a normal human being having a conversation with a freak. It’s not to accuse him of being a freak but to talk from that knowing.

• Trump being such a monster, why does he have any support, let alone so much???? All the exposing of him we do is to the choir, and I’d think it would be productive for the choir to try to get to the bottom of how this insanity can be. What’s so fundamentally wrong with how we are thinking and what we are doing that half our population is off the rails?

• I have an offer out where I'd fund what stands a chance to bring about system change now. How to change the way humanity thinks, where we stop clubbing each and become a cooperative species?

• If all goes as well as things could go, we'll have 8 years for Kamala followed by 8 for the coach of presidents we the public never selected. Let’s talk about the food for thought that is, of how it doesn’t match with democracy.

• People in the world you and I travel in, besides the rare ones who’ve come from poverty, don’t have the experience of the paycheck-to-paycheck world that’s in Two American Families: 1991-2024: "Filmed over 34 years, it follows two families struggling to survive in a changing American economy." It was a gut-punching eye-opener for me.

• Someone recommended Nate Hagens as a fellow-thinker about system change. Although I haven’t been able to get a response from him, when I went looking for him I found Geoffrey Deihl. We are in touch, and, as I expect there will be more to come on his front, while you wait you can give yourself a gift by checking out his brilliant analyses of what’s going on.

• Another person to read is James Fallows, a primo old-school journalist who is piercingly observant about the foibles of the day. Although he points to what journalists should do, they are things for us to be aware of in the whole milieu of what can be done. This is from what he wrote Monday, a brilliantly informative critique of our leading papers that will make your blood boil, where he asks, “why the NYT (and other leading media) have not followed up on last month’s WaPo scoop about a $10 million payoff from Egypt to Trump. Why none of them has committed resources to investigations of ‘Trump’s cognitive fitness for office,’ while all of them did so about Biden. Why there is no follow-up on Trump’s hallucinatory claim of his helicopter flight with Willie Brown. Why there was extended blanket coverage of Russian-hacked emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, but none about Iranian-hacked emails from Trump’s. Why there is no press demand for medical data or records on what happened to Trump’s ear during the shooting in Butler, Pa.”

Keeping you busy till next week, while the hundred bucks offer to find me allies working on system change is permanently in play…

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