How can you be so right and so wrong at the same time?
You are right about the need for us to change our way of life and your are so wrong if you think that will happen voluntarily.
Hi Tim, thank you for taking the time to respond.
As to the first question, it could be the case that I am right because of what I wrote, and wrong because of how you read it. 😊
But rhetorical questions aside, I think you may have missed that this article is part of a book, and thus you didn’t read the material that led up to this piece in which I presented a new way to overcome our lazy stupidity that has us staring like cows chewing the cud as disaster can be seen racing towards us.
You perhaps didn’t see that, or the supporting dialogs, that give evidence for why the subject matter of this book may be a new way to approach our problems. There are links at both the top and bottom of the article.
You are mostly right, we — most people today — will do nothing until it is forced upon us, in part because things are so rigged against us that we cannot do so in any case, and the standard way to force people to do things is to create dictatorial authorities that will “make us” do it — or at least impose “solutions” upon us whether we want them or not. But that has never, ever, worked in the past, so sticking to this idea is, well, as the saying goes, just insane.
There is also a new sheriff in town — according to the advanced marketing materials — and it is “The Workshop” (key infrasound for effect here…). That is just the same old scientific enterprise trying to rebrand itself in order to escape from the stains of past errors, the allegations of “science for sale,” science only “advancing one funeral at a time,” and the normal occasional individual incompetence, as well as the occasional unethical cheating that so fits our times. Apparently, it is up to The Workshop to save us this time and we should be focusing on its brilliance and past successes in all manner of things, and all be heralding the Good News about our new Savior.
But we are oblivious to what is staring us in the face — there are people, even today, that do things themselves — not voluntarily, but because of the way they are developed, whether by nature, nurture, moral training, or events in their lives, which doesn’t allow them to react in any other way.
So I argue instead that “saving the world starts and ends with each of us individually” and I think you took that to mean that I am arguing that we must do so voluntarily. I’m actually arguing that we need to change how we instinctually operate, instead of once again doing the same things we have done in the past when someone gets exasperated at how stupid people are and decides to take hold of the reins and make us — the “common herd” — do what he thinks we should do. Because none of us are that prescient, or even wise, enough to accomplish such a thing.
I argue that “It’s time that we become that which we otherwise believe ourselves to be: wise humans — Homo Sapiens (“wise man”)” and that “We have great potential as a species, but until we develop it, we remain the sorriest excuse for “intelligent” life imaginable — we remain only Homo Sapiens Potentialis (“potentially wise man”).” The development I am talking about is the subject of the book, which is here on Medium.
In short, I am an optimist who knows we are all fucked, but having stumbled upon something that might modify the man in a way that will change the calculus of our problem-solving, I thought I would try to share it in order to reduce some of the obviously approaching suffering. It’s not a magic bullet, and takes a lot of weed-whacking on each of our parts to escape from our inculcated stupidity.
It’s already too late — as The Workshop has been pointing out to everyone of late— to stop what’s coming, but the answer isn’t some extreme, bankrupting, sure to backfire, crazy technological attempt to save the Earth, that will probably result in its early euthanasia, just so that we can keep doing the same things that brought us to this point. That idea assumes that there is only one cause for what is happening — which is a naive understanding— and like the good doctors they are, they will attempt to treat one symptom at a time until the patient, or their insurance, expires — just like in the Lascaux cave example I wrote about in this article.
This change isn’t for everyone. Just those who might be smart enough to be able to work their way out of being the victims of the imposed beliefs of others — and I’m talking about the beliefs of our technologist-saviors here, not religions — rather than just sleeping through what comes. You see, what I am sharing won’t “fix the problem,” but it might lessen the suffering — and that is all I care about.
I hope you might look into some of the rest of what I’ve shared, Tim, because we are not that different — it seems — and we are facing this together.