NOVEMBER 2008
In this issue:
1. Newsbits
2. November Editorial: “A Conversation with the Future”
3. Preview: Next Month’s Editorial
4. Quote of the Month – Emmet Fox
5. Want to Blog?
1. NEWSBITS
Meltdown Wisdom
Belgium banker Bernard Lietaer is posting papers on his website that shed lots of light on what happened and how to navigate the uncertainty ahead, all downloadable. His website is www.lietaer.com
Foresight Network Discussion on Responses to Meltdown
Last December I stared a discussion on the futurist network on which I am most active, Shaping Tomorrow’s Foresight Network. The name of my Forum was “Query: Why aren’t futurists discussing prudent responses to an empire collapse?”). I closed it last March after I had sufficient input on my query. After the recent market disaster I re-opened the discussion and modified the title. It is now simply “Wall Street in Crisis.” As you might imagine the action has been hot ‘n heavy ever since with futurists from Canada, Australia, Great Britain, China, Brazil, Sweden and the U.S. contributing their thoughts. I wish our politicians and financial gurus were reading it. If you care to sign up come have a watch. Log in and click on “Forum.”
November Blog on “Are Americans Guilty of Willful Blindness?”
I overheard a legal term on a TV show the other evening and it struck a chord about a phenomenon which I have been commenting on in recent years, ever since 9/11. This month my blog at the Global Dialogue Center is looking at the culpability of the average American citizen in the state of our union. Please check it out and post your comments.
Help Wanted
Almost all my writings (except for books) are previewed by a team of ten to twelve volunteers who look them over and offer comments on a time-available basis. Some make general suggestions, some detailed critiques and edits, some simply proofread. At any one time perhaps a third of the team provides me with valuable feedback so they contribute when they can.
2. NOVEMBER EDITORIAL
Hello there! We are those still unborn who will inherit whatever world you leave us. From our vantage point as souls without bodies, we are not exactly excited about what we might anticipate.
Depending upon how far into the future we get born and start our lives on Earth, foreseeable conditions don’t look attractive given the lifestyles you have enjoyed. It appears to us you have been indulging yourselves at our expense. In other words, we will pay the consequences of your insensitivity to the impact of your self-indulgent, ego-centric, technology-driven and adolescent attitudes and behaviors.
We hear so many of you parents claiming you want your children to have it better than you did yet you live in such a manner as to preclude this from occurring, at least for your children’s children and their descendents. You are living in a time when for the first time in human history, younger generations may not enjoy better standards of living than their parents.
This is a plea – a plea to stop doing things we will have to pay for when it comes our turn to be born into the world. Please find some sanity, maturity and wisdom in how you treat each other and your planet Earth – your home and the source of life support – for you and those of us coming after you.
Stop multiplying so rapidly. Having lots of babies doesn’t prove anything. You are rapidly headed for a world population that will be unsustainable when it comes to clean water, food and air.
Stop polluting the environment. You are poisoning your life support system. Why not drink your own waste and inhale the fumes of your precious automobiles right from the exhaust pipe if you wish to die. Why pollute the air and water for everybody else?
Stop trying so hard to be right. Arguing who’s right and making others wrong leads to violence, genocide, climate destruction and misery. This only perpetuates hate and vengeance. Get a shrink! Break these chains of dysfunction or they will lead to your extinction along with these other factors and we will have no chance to be born.
What’s that you say? You can’t do these things? Why’s that?
Because you are only one person? Get over it! Get together with a group and start insisting on major changes now. Start with yourselves. Yes, start with your own life and habits. You will soon see you are really part of the problem, not the detached observer of a sick society but one of the sick ones. Self reflection will reveal the complicity in your own heart. Be ruthlessly honest, please. Our lives are at stake as well as your own.
Because you don’t know what to do? Get over this too! There are many people who have good strategies for systems change that can provide course corrections in just about every aspect of society. There are thousands maybe millions of people and groups you can join and help work toward cleaning up the mess you’ve made. It is time to grow up and account for your actions and the consequences you’ve created or allowed to be created while you did nothing. Take responsibility for being an adult and clean up your mess!
You don’t have the time? This is ridiculous! You must get over this one, now! You are busy because you want to be busy. You make yourself busy and you can make yourself less busy. Stop doing that meaningless crap that occupies your consciousness so much of the day. Stop listening to talk radio, stop watching reality TV, stop going to coffee five times a day, stop surfing the Internet so much. After stopping these things you will find time to do something really meaningful and get into action that moves the course of the future toward a more positive outcome.
Get over all your petty little ideological differences and political spats. Get over this perverse nationalism so many of your wallow in. It is time to think like globalists about the well-being of the commons – the air, water and climate we all share – conservative and progressive, Arab and Jew, Christian and Muslim, blacks and whites, all petty foibles that pale within the context of the future of humankind.
You are all in the same boat squabbling like the children we hope to be some day. It looks so silly from where we sit – like a knife fight in an inflatable raft in the middle of the ocean! Stop it for our sake.
Please allow us to be born into a world that allows us to find meaning and joy and engage in our passions. Don’t leave us a trash heap to clean up, water we cannot drink, air we cannot breathe and people intent on hating us even before we are born. Don’t do this to us. PLEASE!
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3. NEXT MONTH’S EDITORIAL: “Hyper-Capitalism: What Ever Happened to Free Markets?”
4. QUOTE OF THE MONTH:
“Thought is the real causative force in life, and there is no other. You cannot have one kind of mind and another kind of environment. You cannot change your environment while leaving your mind unchanged. This is the real key to life; if you change your mind your conditions must change too—your body must change, your activities must change; your home must change; the color-tone of your whole life must change.” – Emmet Fox
5. WANT TO BLOG?
My blog – “Exploring the Better Future” – is located at the Global Dialogues Center; a new topic every month; take a look and post your comments. I’d love to hear from some of you subscribers!
