I love the simplicity of "Listen to people" and I would add to it, actively take an interest in whoever happens to be in your vicinity, which is of course implied in listening. Get to know your neighbor, and while you are at it, be a good neighbor, which sometimes means offering assistance. Look for common ground, and never assume the other person is not worth engaging with. In my lifetime we have become increasingly tribal, divided along cultural grounds based on religion, education, politics, ethnicity, race, the list is endless. I came of age in the 60s, and the gap between those who strove to be hip and those who identified as mainstream seemed ever widening. I am just now waking up to the idea that my very mainstream neighbors are people, just like me, and I can benefit by knowing them better, and vice-versa. In other words, "Love the One You're With".
I would like to see political debate replaced by conversation. Conversation to me is based upon the assumption that we come to the table with questions, putting aside our pre-fabricated answers, and entering into a field of inquiry with mutual curiosity. That's how democracy should work (according to me). I believe that conversations have the potential to change everything, first on a subtle level and only later in ways that we can clearly perceive. We must start with what is directly in front of us.
Yes to conversation. We aren't talking to each other – I think of that not as neighbors, which is a whole other thing – and we do need to be neighborly in the world to come – but for coming up with what to do. Programs are presentations with Q&As. I have tried Zoom conversations with no success.
Here’s my Substack about an illuminating conversation, between Jeremy Lent and Marjorie Kelly, who wrote "WEALTH SUPREMACY: How the Extractive Economy and the Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today’s Crises," lays out a path, which is the only time I've seen the need for conversation being dealt with: https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/p/get-smart-about-capitalism-as-the:
Marjorie: "I think the first thing that we do is we talk to each other, like this. This reminds me so much of feminists in the ‘70s. You have to recognize how pervasive the bias is that's working against us, and it's in us as well as everyone else, so talking to each other, seeing clearly, I think that's the first thing. It was Donella Meadows who said to intervene to change a system the highest point of leverage is mindset, the mindset out of which a system arises…We are a growing group but I think it's still a relatively small group, and coming together and sharing ideas and developing common language and common vision I think that's where we are and that's where it begins.”
Great to think together, presuming you've returned from just watching the show that you wrote about doing. What's going on so defies logic and reason that it must be changeable. I like thinking smart and what a time this is for that. Very challenging to come up with what to do.
You must know by now that I keep going back to education and the fact it’s corrupt and not turning children into citizens, much less good humans as why we have such chaos. I do not think all of us are equally capable of connecting and being human. Ever since I studied Kabbalah, which takes the position there are x number of souls who keep coming back to grow to be one with God, things made sense to me. We’re here to learn lessons. They explain the child born with handicaps is here for a lesson. Trump is here for a lesson.
Pretty much a non believer in organized religion, nothing helped me more than learning Kabbalah in 1997. I had a horrible teaching job where the administrators were putting themselves over the children and everyone was afraid to expose their wrongdoing. It was my intellectual Harvey Weinstein experience.
Kabbalah helped me understand that my superintendent was a newborn soul and I was an old soul so I set out to expose our schools because they were going to take down democracy not because he was a colossal jerk. The rabbi warned me that if my battle was against him it would be dark. I knew it was not that at all. It was against newborn souls holding power. It was trying to save democracy. And I don’t have to tell you that I didn’t succeed but I’ve met so many good people organizing teachers like me that I created a career that’s been wonderful.
My point is forget about fixing humanity. It was meant to be a kaleidoscope of good to bad. You can’t expect newborn souls to do the right thing.
I didn’t have an enlightened background like you. I so bought into the pre women’s lib ideal that it almost destroyed my life. That’s a story for another time but I too was a top student and did nothing with it because I bought into the ideal woman garbage.
In my honors chemistry class at a top suburban Chicago high school, where I was one of few females, the teacher put a challenging equation on the board. He said let’s see who can figure this out. It took three days and I, not the future rocket scientists and the guys who were the cream of the crop, figured it out. I said to myself I’d like to find a cure for cancer but I’ll have no dates if I’m a scientist so forget that. I had no one in my life encouraging me to use my brains and all encouraging me not to.
So I became just a teacher but let me tell you the key for making humanity work is in education and it desperately needs people with brains but is set up to reject them.
We are never going to make humanity kind and connected. The best we can do is bring the better angels out in the people who are a mixed bag - the middle of the bell curve.
The toddler souls are now running this country. We always dealt with toddler souls but the schools tamed them. They don’t anymore because called-to-reach teachers are pariahs to the toddler souls running our schools. They get rid of us so they are left with souls who don’t challenge or report them.
Your mission is admirable but nothing will ever make toddler souls behave like adults if they don’t have to. Our schools were what kept the balance and once they stopped doing their job the balance was gone and people lost the need to behave.
My book explains the role of education and why Trump happened - talk about a newborn soul. Hitler was more likely a toddler. We have a society undereducated and under influenced and it’s slipped toward the bad side.
Education is influence. Good teachers influence. I had my students doing their best and my classroom was magical. I’d go home and my own kids would not let me influence them. Parents cannot do what great teachers do. No one can. It’s a gift teachers like me were given and this society has returned it.
This is why we are so messed up. There is no way to make us all loving people but there was a way to make sure the toddler souls didn’t take over. It’s called-to-teach teachers.
If only you could shift your love for humanity to a love for balance your leadership skills could turn things around. I’m not a leader. I’m closer to an inventor. I’ve figured out education. I know that’s the source of our troubles the way inventors knew cures. It’s really hard for me to explain education in a way that others understand. That’s why I wrote a book as it’s complex. If you knew what they were doing to children along with what I was able to do to children, you’d know.
But first you must accept that humanity wasn’t meant to live in harmony at least until the future. Kabbalah teaches that eventually the spiritual and the scientific will come together. That’s when humanity could live as one. We’re not there. We’re where it can only live decently with the power of education. Once mobsters hijacked it, decency had little chance.
Instead of trying to figure out how to make people think as if they have adult souls when they don’t, help me get the truth about education out so we can get balance back.
WhiteChalkCrime.com has more whistleblowing teachers talking. EndTeacherAbuse.org has hundreds of stories. Help expose our schools so we can repopulation them with great teachers. That’s how we’ll bring civility back. That’s how we’ll have humanity in the lead.
So many reactions. We have the same struggles in different arenas. Thinking about Bhutan. They are so obviously right. From being so wrong, what to do? Even off the charts ideas?!
I like the way you think. It makes me think.
You say, “We’re here to learn lessons.” How about we’re here to develop? Everything is developing. Our bodies are in but our mental body is developing. Humanity is waking up, and each person contributing to that by our development I think is the master game.
What’s mine to deal with is working with old souls. To get this world off the insanity it’s being guided by, we could use leaders. I’ve been thinking about a contest for them. People turn on cameras and be inspirational. Even flood the net, even if not an entrant. Talk to Humanity. Pep talks. Wakeup calls. A TV show like The Voice, for auditioning avatars?
It’s enviable you have a circumscribed field to work with. Sometimes you’re flying and other times bogged down. Definitely not boring.
Teaching isn’t anything I know about but am happy to think about. Of course, it’s significance for the future can’t be overstated.
Suzanne, you have been like a psychodelic Santa-ess bringing us a wonderful, whimsical gift! If you're feeling festive enough for me to quibble, it would be in regard to humanity being "the most advanced creature in the known universe..." It almost brings a "Yo, ho, ho!" to the conversation. I learned as recently as yesterday that the known universe is 93 billion light years across and so far we have not ventured more than1.3 light seconds from Earth, so to go flag-waving on our sleigh through the cosmos as if "WE'RE IT!" shouts of having consumed one too many magic mushrooms. "Happy" Christmas, nonetheless and enjoy the ride! :)
Wrong English. I should have said "in the part of the universe known to us." I'll change it in the archive. The rest is in mystery, where you'd think it's logical, given how huge it all is, that there is a lot of other life, but the conditions for life are so precise that Brian Swimme has said maybe not. Another reasoning could be that the whole universe IS programmed for life to develop, where there are other planets with the precise conditions because it's the master pattern. Oh how we would love to know!
Thank you, Paul, for questioning that statement. Our "known universe" is puny itself, of course (partly because we rely on five senses), but for homo sapiens to be considered "the most advanced creature" is especially anthropocentric and laughably limiting. In evolutionary terms, there are many, many creatures (such as the cockroach) that reached the pinnacle of adaptability long before humans invented "objectivity," "property," and "civilization." We still have a lot of evolving to do before our species is reliably viable.
Way too precious for me. Will put myself in competition anytime with cockroaches and have no doubt as to who wins. Come on, get real. We're talking about what we can do. Earth needs help
What will help, Suzanne, is for us each and all to recognize that "who wins" is not a valid question, and won't be leading us to a peaceful and bountiful ecology. We must humble ourselves to the wisdom of nature's cycles and systems, and quit trying to "fix" everything! Collaboration is far more productive than competition.
Yes, my layperson knowledge got me caught, but with the date and not the essential info about what the Hubble telescope taught us.
From NASA: "In 1983, the Large Space Telescope was renamed in honor of astronomer Edwin Hubble, who proved [earlier in the century...ST] that there were other galaxies in our universe and that they are moving away from our Milky Way galaxy at increasing speed the farther away they are."
Nothing monumental arises without lots of precedence. Brian Swimme, my main man, goes into how everything that has been is embedded in everything "new." Your Wikipedia citations are that in so many spades!!!!
I love the ideas you shared here. I would adore joining into the conversation and bringing people I know in as well. Things don’t have to be this way!❤️
You’ve sparked an idea. I looked at your activity and what you Like is what I like, plus, from what you’ve written I get that we figure to be simpatico. I miss the in-person conversations I had before Covid, and I wonder if anything comparable could happen online. We all know Zoom now, but I haven’t been in any that take up the slack in my life. I’d see it as a simple check-in from each person and go from there. The essential would be that all the participants are paying attention to the world and care about what’s going on.
How about collecting people here? I’ll write an invite in a Substack post and you go fish out those friends of yours to subscribe who say hello here in this chat – not with long bios but with enough to get the flavor of who a person is. People can engage in making comments till we have a decent size bunch for a Zoom. it wouldn’t be for observers but everyone would be a participant. And, although my posts give springboards for commenting now, I could see rotating chairs, where it’s not in my shadow but all are equal owners and leaders.
... or maybe even as "one humanity," maybe we'd still be set apart from "one God" and/or "one Earth." Separation is an illusion, and it runs very deep.
That brings to mind Edgar Michell seeing Earth on the ride back from the moon as just one beautiful globe with no separations -- embedded in the rest of the cosmos, evolving together, including the unseen creative force, all sacred.
I love the simplicity of "Listen to people" and I would add to it, actively take an interest in whoever happens to be in your vicinity, which is of course implied in listening. Get to know your neighbor, and while you are at it, be a good neighbor, which sometimes means offering assistance. Look for common ground, and never assume the other person is not worth engaging with. In my lifetime we have become increasingly tribal, divided along cultural grounds based on religion, education, politics, ethnicity, race, the list is endless. I came of age in the 60s, and the gap between those who strove to be hip and those who identified as mainstream seemed ever widening. I am just now waking up to the idea that my very mainstream neighbors are people, just like me, and I can benefit by knowing them better, and vice-versa. In other words, "Love the One You're With".
I would like to see political debate replaced by conversation. Conversation to me is based upon the assumption that we come to the table with questions, putting aside our pre-fabricated answers, and entering into a field of inquiry with mutual curiosity. That's how democracy should work (according to me). I believe that conversations have the potential to change everything, first on a subtle level and only later in ways that we can clearly perceive. We must start with what is directly in front of us.
Thanks for the invitation to ruminate!
Yes to conversation. We aren't talking to each other – I think of that not as neighbors, which is a whole other thing – and we do need to be neighborly in the world to come – but for coming up with what to do. Programs are presentations with Q&As. I have tried Zoom conversations with no success.
Here’s my Substack about an illuminating conversation, between Jeremy Lent and Marjorie Kelly, who wrote "WEALTH SUPREMACY: How the Extractive Economy and the Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today’s Crises," lays out a path, which is the only time I've seen the need for conversation being dealt with: https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/p/get-smart-about-capitalism-as-the:
Marjorie: "I think the first thing that we do is we talk to each other, like this. This reminds me so much of feminists in the ‘70s. You have to recognize how pervasive the bias is that's working against us, and it's in us as well as everyone else, so talking to each other, seeing clearly, I think that's the first thing. It was Donella Meadows who said to intervene to change a system the highest point of leverage is mindset, the mindset out of which a system arises…We are a growing group but I think it's still a relatively small group, and coming together and sharing ideas and developing common language and common vision I think that's where we are and that's where it begins.”
You are uniquely positioned Suzanne, all your past experiences got you here.
I am interested in joining up , sharing ideas etc. We seem to be on a similar mission 💓
Great to think together, presuming you've returned from just watching the show that you wrote about doing. What's going on so defies logic and reason that it must be changeable. I like thinking smart and what a time this is for that. Very challenging to come up with what to do.
You must know by now that I keep going back to education and the fact it’s corrupt and not turning children into citizens, much less good humans as why we have such chaos. I do not think all of us are equally capable of connecting and being human. Ever since I studied Kabbalah, which takes the position there are x number of souls who keep coming back to grow to be one with God, things made sense to me. We’re here to learn lessons. They explain the child born with handicaps is here for a lesson. Trump is here for a lesson.
Pretty much a non believer in organized religion, nothing helped me more than learning Kabbalah in 1997. I had a horrible teaching job where the administrators were putting themselves over the children and everyone was afraid to expose their wrongdoing. It was my intellectual Harvey Weinstein experience.
Kabbalah helped me understand that my superintendent was a newborn soul and I was an old soul so I set out to expose our schools because they were going to take down democracy not because he was a colossal jerk. The rabbi warned me that if my battle was against him it would be dark. I knew it was not that at all. It was against newborn souls holding power. It was trying to save democracy. And I don’t have to tell you that I didn’t succeed but I’ve met so many good people organizing teachers like me that I created a career that’s been wonderful.
My point is forget about fixing humanity. It was meant to be a kaleidoscope of good to bad. You can’t expect newborn souls to do the right thing.
I didn’t have an enlightened background like you. I so bought into the pre women’s lib ideal that it almost destroyed my life. That’s a story for another time but I too was a top student and did nothing with it because I bought into the ideal woman garbage.
In my honors chemistry class at a top suburban Chicago high school, where I was one of few females, the teacher put a challenging equation on the board. He said let’s see who can figure this out. It took three days and I, not the future rocket scientists and the guys who were the cream of the crop, figured it out. I said to myself I’d like to find a cure for cancer but I’ll have no dates if I’m a scientist so forget that. I had no one in my life encouraging me to use my brains and all encouraging me not to.
So I became just a teacher but let me tell you the key for making humanity work is in education and it desperately needs people with brains but is set up to reject them.
We are never going to make humanity kind and connected. The best we can do is bring the better angels out in the people who are a mixed bag - the middle of the bell curve.
The toddler souls are now running this country. We always dealt with toddler souls but the schools tamed them. They don’t anymore because called-to-reach teachers are pariahs to the toddler souls running our schools. They get rid of us so they are left with souls who don’t challenge or report them.
Your mission is admirable but nothing will ever make toddler souls behave like adults if they don’t have to. Our schools were what kept the balance and once they stopped doing their job the balance was gone and people lost the need to behave.
My book explains the role of education and why Trump happened - talk about a newborn soul. Hitler was more likely a toddler. We have a society undereducated and under influenced and it’s slipped toward the bad side.
Education is influence. Good teachers influence. I had my students doing their best and my classroom was magical. I’d go home and my own kids would not let me influence them. Parents cannot do what great teachers do. No one can. It’s a gift teachers like me were given and this society has returned it.
This is why we are so messed up. There is no way to make us all loving people but there was a way to make sure the toddler souls didn’t take over. It’s called-to-teach teachers.
If only you could shift your love for humanity to a love for balance your leadership skills could turn things around. I’m not a leader. I’m closer to an inventor. I’ve figured out education. I know that’s the source of our troubles the way inventors knew cures. It’s really hard for me to explain education in a way that others understand. That’s why I wrote a book as it’s complex. If you knew what they were doing to children along with what I was able to do to children, you’d know.
But first you must accept that humanity wasn’t meant to live in harmony at least until the future. Kabbalah teaches that eventually the spiritual and the scientific will come together. That’s when humanity could live as one. We’re not there. We’re where it can only live decently with the power of education. Once mobsters hijacked it, decency had little chance.
Instead of trying to figure out how to make people think as if they have adult souls when they don’t, help me get the truth about education out so we can get balance back.
WhiteChalkCrime.com has more whistleblowing teachers talking. EndTeacherAbuse.org has hundreds of stories. Help expose our schools so we can repopulation them with great teachers. That’s how we’ll bring civility back. That’s how we’ll have humanity in the lead.
So many reactions. We have the same struggles in different arenas. Thinking about Bhutan. They are so obviously right. From being so wrong, what to do? Even off the charts ideas?!
I like the way you think. It makes me think.
You say, “We’re here to learn lessons.” How about we’re here to develop? Everything is developing. Our bodies are in but our mental body is developing. Humanity is waking up, and each person contributing to that by our development I think is the master game.
What’s mine to deal with is working with old souls. To get this world off the insanity it’s being guided by, we could use leaders. I’ve been thinking about a contest for them. People turn on cameras and be inspirational. Even flood the net, even if not an entrant. Talk to Humanity. Pep talks. Wakeup calls. A TV show like The Voice, for auditioning avatars?
It’s enviable you have a circumscribed field to work with. Sometimes you’re flying and other times bogged down. Definitely not boring.
Teaching isn’t anything I know about but am happy to think about. Of course, it’s significance for the future can’t be overstated.
Suzanne, you are a "Doer" in the most magnetic sense...
I loved reading this. What an amazing life--and what an amazing person you are!
I was thinking writing this how you have live a long time to have this bank to withdraw material from!
Loved the Santa as Shaman! Very illuminating!
Listen to people, especially people who are different from you. It works even better when you take turns.
Always good advice. We make progress that way.
A very moving personal story
Suzanne, you have been like a psychodelic Santa-ess bringing us a wonderful, whimsical gift! If you're feeling festive enough for me to quibble, it would be in regard to humanity being "the most advanced creature in the known universe..." It almost brings a "Yo, ho, ho!" to the conversation. I learned as recently as yesterday that the known universe is 93 billion light years across and so far we have not ventured more than1.3 light seconds from Earth, so to go flag-waving on our sleigh through the cosmos as if "WE'RE IT!" shouts of having consumed one too many magic mushrooms. "Happy" Christmas, nonetheless and enjoy the ride! :)
Wrong English. I should have said "in the part of the universe known to us." I'll change it in the archive. The rest is in mystery, where you'd think it's logical, given how huge it all is, that there is a lot of other life, but the conditions for life are so precise that Brian Swimme has said maybe not. Another reasoning could be that the whole universe IS programmed for life to develop, where there are other planets with the precise conditions because it's the master pattern. Oh how we would love to know!
Thank you, Paul, for questioning that statement. Our "known universe" is puny itself, of course (partly because we rely on five senses), but for homo sapiens to be considered "the most advanced creature" is especially anthropocentric and laughably limiting. In evolutionary terms, there are many, many creatures (such as the cockroach) that reached the pinnacle of adaptability long before humans invented "objectivity," "property," and "civilization." We still have a lot of evolving to do before our species is reliably viable.
Way too precious for me. Will put myself in competition anytime with cockroaches and have no doubt as to who wins. Come on, get real. We're talking about what we can do. Earth needs help
What will help, Suzanne, is for us each and all to recognize that "who wins" is not a valid question, and won't be leading us to a peaceful and bountiful ecology. We must humble ourselves to the wisdom of nature's cycles and systems, and quit trying to "fix" everything! Collaboration is far more productive than competition.
Hi Suzanne - please add me to your "big thinkers" list. You can find me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/upgeya-pew-8a5b9016/
You have the distinction of being the only Upgeya Google has ever heard about, so you are already a #1. How about a little say here about yourself?
Uhm, it was not 1990 we learned there was more than one galaxy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_knowledge_about_galaxies,_clusters_of_galaxies,_and_large-scale_structure
Yes, my layperson knowledge got me caught, but with the date and not the essential info about what the Hubble telescope taught us.
From NASA: "In 1983, the Large Space Telescope was renamed in honor of astronomer Edwin Hubble, who proved [earlier in the century...ST] that there were other galaxies in our universe and that they are moving away from our Milky Way galaxy at increasing speed the farther away they are."
Nothing monumental arises without lots of precedence. Brian Swimme, my main man, goes into how everything that has been is embedded in everything "new." Your Wikipedia citations are that in so many spades!!!!
I love the ideas you shared here. I would adore joining into the conversation and bringing people I know in as well. Things don’t have to be this way!❤️
You’ve sparked an idea. I looked at your activity and what you Like is what I like, plus, from what you’ve written I get that we figure to be simpatico. I miss the in-person conversations I had before Covid, and I wonder if anything comparable could happen online. We all know Zoom now, but I haven’t been in any that take up the slack in my life. I’d see it as a simple check-in from each person and go from there. The essential would be that all the participants are paying attention to the world and care about what’s going on.
How about collecting people here? I’ll write an invite in a Substack post and you go fish out those friends of yours to subscribe who say hello here in this chat – not with long bios but with enough to get the flavor of who a person is. People can engage in making comments till we have a decent size bunch for a Zoom. it wouldn’t be for observers but everyone would be a participant. And, although my posts give springboards for commenting now, I could see rotating chairs, where it’s not in my shadow but all are equal owners and leaders.
What do you think?
... or maybe even as "one humanity," maybe we'd still be set apart from "one God" and/or "one Earth." Separation is an illusion, and it runs very deep.
That brings to mind Edgar Michell seeing Earth on the ride back from the moon as just one beautiful globe with no separations -- embedded in the rest of the cosmos, evolving together, including the unseen creative force, all sacred.