The Key Emotions Required to Change the World

28770656704_2989fd7a23_bLike it or not, there are powerful forces in today’s world that are working hard to further enrich a very few people at the expense of the health and safety of the other 7.6 billion people on this planet, and that of all future generations as well. We see these forces in action every day when we read about the destruction of our educational system, the desecration of our environment, U.S. military aggression, and the systematic removal of social services for the elderly, the ill and the impoverished.

What will it take to become change agents for the good?  Well, as Emerson told us, “Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.”

Times may be tough for people of kindness and compassion, but if we’re going to turn all this around, we’re going to need to move forward with the pure exuberance of the three gorgeous dolphins shown here.

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One comment on “The Key Emotions Required to Change the World
  1. marcopolo says:

    Craig,

    Doom, doom and despair! You seem locked in a world of symbolism and fantasy dating back to a sort of sixties philosophy.

    Like many frustrated Democrats, assorted leftist and other deluded liberals you imagine your enemy is your country and it’s imperfections, ignoring the very real challenges far more determined enemies surrounding the few islands of old fashioned liberal democracies surviving in the world.

    While you dream of wise, peaceful, elegant dolphins (which in reality are savage cruel predators who bully and even kill other members of their own species).

    Anti-Americanism hasn’t gone away with the fall of the USSR and the old totalitarians, instead it has been replaced by far more dangerous foes.

    The rise of mass technology has been both a force for freedom and enslavement. Technology has far greater impact than the old crude political ideologues imagined.

    Technology is becoming all pervasive with the blend of beneficial and insidious being so seductive and subtle it’s beyond the average person to be properly alarmed at losing freedom by tiny increments.

    The subtleties are not lost on the new ruling elite within the CCP.

    The peoples Republic of China have developed a state system run by a technocratic elite of highly educated bureaucrats under CCP control.

    This is not new, before it fell into decay, this was the old imperial system. Any attraction for western-style democracy and free-market capitalism brought about by China’s economic reforms, has long since withered.

    The inherent instability of freely elected leaders and uncontrolled economies frightened the Chinese leaders and the vast range of controls provided by technology to control populations in very subtle and unemotional ways has produced a different mindset.

    The Chinese CCP claims that basing a society on the rights and freedoms of individuals, is both wasteful, unstable and inherently unachievable.

    The CCP argue it’s also selfish. Removing the destructive power of small groups of dissenters or individuals is necessary and the prime duty of any modern state.

    Mass technology makes this not only possible, but removes the corruption and brutality of older systems of totalitarianism. individuals are to easily corrupted, weak or fallible to control each other.

    The ant colony is the model of the tech savvy apparatchiks. Happy ants, all conforming in harmony but with the illusion of individual lives. Safety and material security, without the vexing questions posed by anti-social individual dissidents.

    The CCP elite believe China is under attack from the US. On some issues the Chinese understand the American position. China believes the US simply sees China as a threat to US economic and military hegemony.

    On other issues, such as trade, China thought they the US and the West. The current trade war baffles and frustrates the CCP leadership.

    The American aims seem incomprehensible. For the Chinese, President Donald Trump is an enigma. They’re not sure he even wants a deal.

    The American President has proved impervious to the usual blandishments, flattery or even corruption. Is his aim just conflict for the sake of conflict?

    The top officials and party strategists are as unsure of his true agenda as the President’s domestic opponents.

    What frightens Beijing is the sneaking feeling the US President is not the fool or buffoon his opponents so desperately portray him. He may just be that weird, eccentric sort of individual western society produces even so often, a combination of a deeply flawed personality but possessed with shrewd insight and determined purpose.

    Like it or not, the US is the last fortress of individualism. These ideals are under attack from without and within.

    Like Churchill, Trump may be the right man, in the right place, at the right time. He’s an unlikely choice, but that’s sort of the point isn’t it? Maybe he’s symbolic of the unlikely combination of imperfections in our system of compromises we call “liberal democracy”.