Rabble-rousing for a new way

Getting us on the same page

Hi all – I got thinking that maybe you and I could be Margaret Mead’s “small group of thoughtful committed citizens” who could change the world. That would be so sweet!

This is a follow-up to What's on A ROADMAP TO THE FUTURE?, as some rabble-rousing to get us on the same page.

Our overriding societal objective of chasing money, where we run on finance not feelings, on greed not altruism, has gotten us into a disaster zone. Uninterrupted, the rich will get richer and the poor poorer until the center can’t hold and we flip into a better world for all or we get authoritarian rule. Judging from the severity of the breakdowns that are in play, from nature as in the extreme weather we’ve been getting or from human-made fiascos like our current political scene, that crossover point may be immanent. I feel it from the smash and grab robberies in Los Angeles and elsewhere, that out-of-nowhere are rampant now. I think that’s possibly very telling because it threatens the fabric of everyday life. How can stores continue to exist? As Trump created massive unworkability, smash and grabs do that, too, and maybe it will be the final push to get us to change our fundamentals.

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WHERE WE NEED TO BE

We feel alive when we are part of something grand. Can we create that out of whole cloth now? I’m proposing that humanity would go from separation to unity, from opposition to cooperation, from selfishness to altruism, if we saw ourselves in the Universe Story.

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First, get how influential a story is.

“Stories are the coding that shape what we believe, what we choose, who we are – how we think, feel, and act every day. They shape our understanding of the world and the way we act in it, so stories shape the world itself.”

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The Universe Story – from Teilhard de Chardin, picked up on by Thomas Berry and being delivered to us by his students, like my main man, Brian Swimme -- sees the science of our quantum world with visionary eyes. Humans are in an expanding universe, evolving with everything else. That makes us one humanity. We need to come from that wholeness and not from the rugged individualists we still take ourselves to be. We are like other animals that take care of their lairs and nests, but, because we know we also have a planetary home, we get to take care of Earth as well as our shelters on her. Can’t you just feel the majesty, and, I’d say, the sacredness that we are part of when you see sunrises and sunsets and all the things that Richard Attenborough makes documentaries about?

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WHAT WE NEED TO DO

People for the good, joined together, would become a force. OCCUPY sadly dead-ended in the streets, but on the internet there’s no end. Enroll masses who already are keepers of Earth instead of her exploiters, who are intent on changing course. They would be in all-out campaign to teach everyone the Universe Story, each person spreading it how they could. We’d get talk shows to talk about the new tale and the late-night ones to joke about it, ads would have themes about union, billboards would celebrate planetary caretaking. Get our oneness on display everywhere and the zeitgeist changes as people feel their connection. The Berlin Wall fell after years of preparation. We are in prep. The materialist paradigm could give way any day!

For steering this campaign to establish us as one humanity and other actions to follow it, the notion of horizonal leadership is in the air to replace the top-down style that prevails. That radically different kind of system would take years to roll out. But what about now?  

I’ll talk about that next week.

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