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8.20.2004
Friday, August 20, 2004
Another 8,219 people died of AIDS yesterday. Another roughly 20,000 people died of hunger and hunger-related disease yesterday. While we think so much hangs in the balance in the upcoming Presidential election, they do not much care whether it is John Kerry or George Bush that gets elected President, as neither one of them has mentioned any of these people in their campaign speeches. One would think that America was some small country, completely unable to impact the great issues in the world by the way we completely ignore the great issues in the world. We act as if we are Sri Lanka when it comes to a global agenda. Neither candidate has spoken about America's role in the world, other than to debate whether we should use or should not build global consensus the next time we want to go to war. Neither candidate has spoken about using America's awesome might to bring clean water, nutritious food, and cures for diseases to the poor and starving people of the world. What great leader would not begin there?
The next age, if we embrace it, will see America understanding that we live in a global age and that she is the global leader, and that as such, she must inspire all the world with her compassion, wisdom, and sympathy. This election shows not even a glimpse of that understanding, on either the Right or the Left. The new leaders must show the people the unbelievable opportunity that awaits us by embracing our real destiny. Our current options for leadership are followers of polls. This is the antithesis of leadership. If leadership has any real role left in our society, and I believe it does, it is not to placate the people. It is to challenge them.
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8.19.2004
Thursday, August 19, 2004
"History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies. " - Alexis de Tocqueville
This is an important thought. We all too often relieve ourselves of the responsibility to think originally and freely by instead paying homage to those heroes who truly did through statues and putting their faces on stamps, while we go along conforming.
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8.18.2004
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
" A still small voice spake unto me, thou art so full of misery, were it not better not to be?" - Tennyson, "The Two Voices"
"If today you have no good reason to be happy, then be happy for no good reason at all." - Werner Erhard
"I believe a person is about as happy as they make up their mind to be." - Abraham Linclon
Let go your anxiety for today. Let go your fears about tomorrow. Tomorrow is but an illusion. Give yourself a break today. Go easy on yourself. When the urge comes to work yourself up into a mess worrying over something, go get an ice cream, a massage, take a walk. Refuse to be miserable, just for today. Be happy for no good reason. You deserve to be happy. Your unhappiness makes God unhappy. Make God happy today.
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8.17.2004
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Human beings want new ideas. They do not want old ideas garnished with new poetry, pumped up with artificial enthusiasm. The candidates in the Presidential election have framed this as an election about hope. It seems more a race for who can use the word "hope" more times in their ads and their speeches and their conventions than anything else. Yet it rings hollow for the people. The candidates use the word "hope" yet we feel no actual hope after listening to them. Why? Because there are no new ideas on their agenda. Because you cannot have hope if you remain essentially committed to an old perspective, an old way of doing things, an old box. We want out of this box. We seek a new world. We seek original ideas. We seek a new imagination of our world as it could be. We seek not marginal changes to the existing way. We seek a new way. We want to know what the world can look like outside these old walls that limit us. This is the nature of humanity.
Why, if we seek these things, is no one offering them?
It is because we are not quite ready. It is because we are still frightened to let go of the cultural norms and geo-political rules of the last 100 years. It is not yet an idea whose time has come, just as emancipation in 1840 was not yet an idea whose time had come, and just as civil rights were not yet an idea whose time had come in 1950. But when an idea's time has come, watch out. As Victor Hugo said, "Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come." All the armies in the world cannot stop it.
But we must do what we can to usher it in. It is not a given that it will arrive. It must know that it is welcome. We must do all we can to welcome it. Only then will we know hope.
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8.15.2004
Monday, August 16, 2004
Hey gang. Thanks for being patient during my break. Just so you know, it's my intention to post every day. On the rare ocassions when I am unable to do so, I will post a notice in the future.
So, for today...
The establishment is everywhere. The system is everywhere. The limitations, the status quo, the old ways, the old thoughts, the old cynicism. It is most dangerous in social change work, because there is the illusion that social change is all about a new system. But it is rarely that. The establishment is engrained in social change work. There is cynicism, fear, ego, and clinging to the old even in, and dare I say, especially in, social change work. Take our romanticized ideas about charity for instance. Take the otherwise rebellious AIDS activist who clings to the establishment notion that charity should not spend money on expensive advertising, even if that means it will raise more money for people with AIDS. He is a slave to the establishment! There is, ultimately, nothing rebellious about him at all. He is a megaphone for the status quo, without even being aware of it. Take the activists on the left who are bashing Geroge Bush. They are slaves to the establishment on the left. To be compassionate and understanding to those on the right would be heresy to these people. In that respect, they are helpless to create real change. They are too loyal to an old system.
Take a good look and see if it is not the case that people who claim to want change really want things, at least with respect to their own perspective, their own work, their own comfort zone, to stay very much the same. See if it is not the case that the social change activist wants the way he creates change to remain very much the same.
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