With the Woodward tapes, bypassing Woodward’s ethics in withholding such incriminating information, I am going crazy. How can this be happening to us? Right before our eyes, a depraved person is our President. Could history look back and see this not as our catastrophe but as what actually saved humanity? Unless he kills us all, we could end up thanking him for getting us to deal with how fundamentally things need to change.
Can we start there? Thank you, Trump, for driving us to such despair that we actually grapple with righting the world. Our greatest economy ever, before COVID, was challenging for most people. It’s not just economic bottom lines for our country that are in play, but it’s also how it is for people, and that was terrible for masses of them before COVID. Now, if we had our wits about us, Republican legislators would join with Democrats to immediately remove a mentally disturbed person from the Presidency.
OK, now we would be in the real world. No matter who the emergency President would be, we would need to look for what would turn the world into a cooperative place. What would we need to do to make the well-being of the world as important to people as their own well-being? What would make the most radical change? Could it be a version of Universal Basic Income, that would provide food, shelter, health care and education for every human being on earth? Then, we wouldn’t need wars. Use the military budgets to support everyone. We have enough. What else to do? How about everyone praying? No fooling. Get everyone focused on making this a kinder world. Take one minute a day at the same time in every time zone, so the world is vibing with people being nice to one another. Almost 100 medical schools are teaching that focused intention can have effects in the material world, based on scientific studies which prove it. (Here’s my podcast with Larry Dossey, who got that material into the medical schools.) Get the world to be kinder that way and we’ll have a tool to achieve other ends!
We’ve got to stop pussyfooting. Our pandemic is unthinkably bad, but it could be child’s play compared to what climate change could do to us. For at least a chance to stop those ravages, we have to put up a good fight. This is the survival of humanity we are talking about. It hasn’t happened before. There are no precedents. We can’t keep going with any version of business as usual. We need to break free of all old thinking and everyone who is beyond their own struggle for survival has to show up to help. This is not political. This is LIFE OR DEATH.
Your comments are welcome. Make yours below.
We must begin internal migrations of people away from the coasts. In southern New Mexico houses are being built at a phenomenal rate and people are buying them before they are even finished. There is a lot of land in the states running along the whole west coast. Those states need to hire people to start building the infrastructure for mass migration. If people have lost their homes and have nothing we must begin home sharing. Saving human life and building a viable future for our people is our biggest challenge and we must think in terms of solutions for the most vulnerable..the children. We used to think it quite normal to have multiple families or extended families co-habitating. We may have to do that again.
Very good advice but we haven’t taken the climate situation seriously enough either to deal with the radical things we should be doing to mitigate the threat let alone deal with the consequences of what it will do to us. We need to be on red alert, but, while the profit motive drives us and we are focussed on short term returns, that doesn’t happen. Getting our attention on what is going on so we take it seriously is THE primary thing we need to do and what I’m so passionate about encouraging. One other thing your comment made me think of, in the category of benefits from challenging situations, is how our affluence, where we could afford to hole up with our nuclear families, got us separated to where we lost community. Maybe if we have to live together, because we are not so affluent, that could be a wonderful thing.
Yes, I agree. We might think in terms of a strategic network of overlapping areas of need. The interdependece of climate/health/poverty/education is calling for a massive response from some group. I suggest gathering the women.
Yes,Sue, I agree. Maybe this moment in time is calling for thinking in terms of the interdependence of over-lapping needs. It is a confluence of crises and we must address the situation from many fronts at once. It calls for extraordinary kinds of thinking. I used to be a consultant to The Panasonic Education Foundation, assisting with Large scale reform. I am retired and not looking for a job; just volunteering to help.
Stick with me. I am volunteering to help, too, looking for where I can do the most good. People who are making a living, like the “leaders” who are selling their smarts, tend to be not so avialable for the conversation and co-creation we so need. I hope you’ll be on our chat on Saturday!
I love women’s things and have had my share of gatherings at my house. I don’t have anything like that on my current drawing board, which is full of other things, but I wish someone else would put out a call. There are exclusively women’s big deal things going on, but they are presentational and it’s not so much I want to listen to women as I’d like to talk with them.
Hi Suzanne … Sorry I couldn’t be part of the conversation. It’s my big issue. … I just had Open Heart Surgery and have been a wreck since. However I wanted to say
I love your questions:
“we would need to look for what would turn the world into a cooperative place. What would we need to do to make the well-being of the world as important to people as their own well-being? What would make the most radical change?”
Also, I have a suggestion to what would make the most radical change, a way to facilitate the many solutions you describe: “Universal Basic Income, that would provide food, shelter, health care and education for every human being on earth? Then, we wouldn’t need wars. Use the military budgets to support everyone. We have enough. What else to do? How about everyone praying? No fooling. Get everyone focused on making this a kinder world …”
I recently video’d a 50 min “presentation” on what I call “Society’s Breakthrough” … And created a 3 min trailer to it.
Solving the Climate Crisis with Jim Rough and Kristi Slotemaker … 3 min https://youtu.be/6Bwxr7VeNdw … http://www.wisedemocracy.org/solving-climate-change……..https://youtu.be/XdVxMYWTaV0 …
God bless the miracles of medicine and hopefully you’ll be ship-shape soon. Good to see you are looking at how to get everything to shift. After the trailer and your incredible website. which looks to be a technological marvel for how you do all those breakouts, I’m left with a question. In your model for how change can happen, where would the wisdom councils get the power to have an impact? How would you even get enough of them to be operational whereby in two years we’d have a different world?
“where would the wisdom councils get the power to have an impact?” …
The highest authority for change is all-of-us speaking as one. There is no higher authority than “We the People”, capable of outranking (in the U.S) the President, the Congress, the Courts and even the Constitution itself. Plus, we know from hundreds of examples (mostly in Europe) that the Wisdom Council Process can facilitate this at very large scale.
“How would you even get enough of them to be operational whereby in two years we’d have a different world?” … We only need ONE at each level of society. That is, for global society to be transformed we only need one Wisdom Council Process
In principle it’s we the people, but I’d think there would have to be buy-in by many millions to make any impact. If it’s just ordinary people with no inherent power, how can one council in each level of society change the world? Am I missing something?
Thanks for following up …
Each Wisdom Council has a voice in two different public conversations. … First, there’s the normal political discussion where many voices compete to be heard. And each voice has different weight according to who is speaking. For example, experts, the president, columnists, and celebrities all have weighty voices. But sometimes, in the right context, ordinary people can have immensely important voices, like Greta Thornberg for instance. She’s just a little girl in Sweden who speaks about climate change, yet who somehow captured the attention of the the world. The voices of this first conversation generally seek to influence “decision-makers”, sometimes by “demanding” a change in policy. Or in the case of Greta Thornberg, by scolding adults, hoping to wake them up to the extent of the problem.
With the Wisdom Council Process we set things up so that, maybe for the first time in history, there is legitimate symbol of all the world’s people. It’s a random group of individuals who speak in unity on some difficult issue like climate change. So, in a sea of special interest voices, this voice is unique. It is the one lone legitimate voice of the public interest, presenting a clear position on the issue. And this position is resonant with practically anyone who hears. When the Wisdom Council speaks, it tells a story about how this unified position was achieved through shifts and breakthroughs.
Other unique aspects of this voice … even in just this first conversation … are: 1) This process creates a shared “truth” about what’s going on. 2) It creates a shared vision of what needs to happen. 3) Because this voice is unified, it can create breakthrough strategies that are not possible through the normal political channels.
So even in this first conversation, each Wisdom Council has a uniquely powerful voice …even with few people paying attention.
The second conversation is more important. It is the missing “We the People” conversation, where we all step back out of normal politics, check in with one another and speak authentically about how things are going. In this conversation we face society’s most critical issues, not just to interest “decision-makers” or to pass some laws but to see what a real solution might require. Since unity ie the only possible result of each Wisdom Council, the results symbolize the highest authority in the land, all people speaking intelligently with one voice. To the extent that everyone is resonant with this voice, “Decision-makers”, the constitution and all institutions can find alignment.
Currently, this “We the People” conversation doesn’t exist. It has existed briefly at certain points in history, like in the founding of the United States. But it’s gone now. And it must return. The current set up of the U.S., with an 18th century Constitution as the ultimate authority of our society today, we are doomed. What’s needed is for some way to gather as “We the People”, to check in on how things are going, and make adjustments. The Wisdom Council Process can facilitate this at a national or global level.
Of course, when each Wisdom Council speaks we want lots of people to pay attention and to join the conversation and to feel resonant with the conclusions. For just ordinary people, maybe not corporate representatives, that’s the normal response. .… And with adequate media partners nd money we can arrange things so that this happens in large measure. … But it doesn’t have to happen all at once. The Wisdom Council Process is ongoing. So each subsequent Wisdom Council draws more interest and more support.