A Vision for the New Year and Beyond, Part 3

Dealing with these systems in isolation, ignoring the interrelationships and interdependence is bull shit! It’s a big part of the problem and its solution. We just can’t afford to keep doing that. The lack of parenting skills (you need a license to drive, but not to be a parent or own a gun), violence, child and spousal abuse, being macho, drinking, eating junk food and soda (cause they’re cheaper), stress at work, no work, guilt about being on ‘welfare,’ the disappearance of the so-called ‘safety net’, the cost of insurance—car, home & medical, the disappearance of retirement benefits or even the option to retire, too much leisure time or not enough leisure time, more crime, more prisons, more money for prisons, prison corporations and their lobbyists in legislatures, boring classrooms, too much emphasis on testing, the disappearance of parks, libraries and community spaces, lack of preventative medical care, polluted air and water, global climate change, all of these things are interrelated and interconnected and we pay for them (especially their lack of performance – it’s like paying twice—once to get them to perform and the second time when their lack of performance impacts some other ‘system’), don’t kid yourself, one way or another they cost and we pay, front end, back end, on line or offline, they cost and we pay.

 

But in spite of all this, we can have more of what we want and less of what we don’t want; we can get there from here, but only if we think differently about how things are and take responsibility for making them as we want them to be. If we always do what we always did, we’ll always get what we always got. We have the technology, the technology that is rapidly disrupting our traditional views of politics, society and economics. We can use this technology to have more of what we want and less of what we don’t want. It’s up to us to choose. We can see the disruption of traditional relationships as a breakdown or failure, or we can choose to see the disruption as an opportunity for reform and the birth of new sets of relationships more consistent with our ideals. Now is the time! Now is all there is. Try breathing for five minutes into the future. If not now, when?