Looking for the good
Looking around, it’s easy to see the current state of America in 2023 as a dumpster fire at the end of a dark alley on a wintry night. The Cold Civil War has turned hot. People are fleeing the country to escape the gun violence epidemic. The Climate Crisis has turned into a dystopian science-fiction film, and The Handmaid’s Tale has become a documentary.
Will any deeper answers surface about the January 6, 2021, insurrection, and serve to hold those accountable at the top of the political food chain? Will World War III happen in days, weeks, or is it already happening? Can there be an enforceable-multinational agreement that the Climate Emergency demands actionable attention from political leaders, now? While every nation could pull together to put its efforts into saving humanity, world leaders and politicians with backwards views are acting like we have all the time in the world. Or denying the Climate Crisis, even when it’s literally in their own backyards.
Meanwhile, the world clock is ticking.
Each day a part of our minds is wondering about how to create more goodness, more caring, more compassion. Empathy. Joy. Intelligence. Shouldn’t these things also be a part of this version of the future we’re living in?
Building a better world should be near the top of everyone’s to-do list.
For citizens in the US, living in a plutocracy where our healthcare system bankrupts people with dire needs, is seen by the rest of the world as an inhumane tragedy. The standard of living and buying power of middle-class Americans peaked in the mid-1970s. Looking at my calendar, that’s a while ago. Living in a land of increasing inequality, those with less spending power are living in a society where upward mobility seems so far from current reality as to be a sick joke.
In the mid-1990s, technology shifted and was lifting more people upwards. Historical tech changes were altering lives and upending industries. The World Wide Web was connecting the world in a way it had never been connected. Once we could go online, the effect on the working lives of people, and our ability to communicate in new ways—was life-altering on a scale previously only dreamed about.
The Internet was as culture-shifting as Gutenberg’s printing press, evolving how we communicated in the span of a few years. Offering the most potent technology for joining humanity globally, it lifted spirits the way stories unfold in feel-good sci-fi movies. But the optimism and freshness of the shiny new Internet didn’t hang around very long. Dystopian sci-fi themes crept into the picture. Deeply entrenched corruption was able to hold onto social, business, working lives, and corrupt political power. Fast forward to 2023. A handful of social media platforms are now run by billionaire megalomaniacs who no longer even pretend to care about everyday people.
With the Climate Crisis now an undeniable truth and scientific reality, the voices of the young are getting louder, and more effective (no matter which alternate reality the Climate Crisis Deniers are living in). Politicians need to stop pretending that business as usual will cut it during this time of crisis and transition. The same old same old won’t do when multiple warring, autocratic and genocidal regimes are having a field day and our planet is already in Climate Emergency mode.
A short time ago, Greta Thunberg was a voice in the wilderness, and she’s started an awakening and a growing movement. Lesson learned. Make a note of it. Showing up and doing the work can change the world. Living here and now on a Hinge of History, if this historical moment isn’t the time for every voice to speak freely, when is? The question isn’t why people are becoming climate activists, the question is why it took so long for it to happen.
These are historic challenges we’re facing, and it’s often a daily struggle to find focus. There’s a time-stealing program that’s been installed in our brains, continually running in the background. Wired for the quick hit of social media, distraction has stolen our focus, robbed us of our attention. Along with the ongoing pandemic, global cultural shifts, genocide, the climate crisis, women’s rights being stolen, and book banning—we’re living in an age of distraction, which has permeated every facet of our existence. Our smartphones keep us constantly connected to what’s happening in real time on planet Earth. Pausing and thinking without the lies and disinformation churning in the background is a struggle. Turning down false information, and creating our own industrial-strength internal filters has become a necessity.
Once upon a time the news of the world fit on three TV stations; there was a physical limit as to how much information could be delivered into your home. In the age of 24-hour news cycles, push notifications, instant YouTube video delivery, and malignant narcissistic dictatorial world leaders looking to destroy democracy using social media. Technology that we’ve welcomed into our homes and minds has control of us. Delivered in a daily deluge, we take in an overwhelming amount of information each day. We’re operating on a protective default setting as a safety zone around our bodies and minds. Especially when programs and platforms masquerading as news act as cultural agitators and beam propaganda into the minds of people who’ve slowly un-remembered what news is supposed to look and sound like, or never knew at all. The willfully misinformed commentators toss around a steady stream of lies meant to incite and antagonize like they’re tossing confetti around at a private party for a multi-billionaire.
Our deepest instincts tell us to connect to like-minded people, one’s we have common interests with. People who get us. If we were constantly engaging with a passive-aggressive confrontational human being face-to-face, at some point we’d either tell them to piss off or avoid them all together. Problem solved, or at least postponed.
A constant stream of misinformation broadcast as truth is a cancer to the health of a culture. We can’t forget the past, and we most definitely have to stop celebrating ignorance. If teachers aren’t free to teach the truth about a country’s history, as an essential understanding of why and how we’ve reached this point, things are so far off track we’ve been derailed on a frozen plain in the wilderness. If communication is broken, and opinions masquerade as truths, something’s got to change. Systemic racism has been embedded in our culture from the start, and passed down from generation to generation. This is a historical fact. Facts should be taught, and understood. History is happening all around us, at a faster pace every day. But if we don’t understand and learn from the past, we’re ill-prepared to deal with the multiple challenges we face during this New Now. History isn’t usually pretty, and can rarely be tied with a neat little bow. The history of the world as we now experience it is in flux beyond what any of us have experienced in our lifetimes, and the immediacy of information transmission has given us unparalleled access to any horrendous or amazing event as it happens, anywhere on the planet.
People leap onto the next smartphone or the latest next generation gaming system, as a way to be tuned into the world or escape from it. But there’s another side to the story. More and more people are choosing to balance their tech addictions with real life, and are gravitating in ever increasing numbers to meditation and holistic health care. It seems the more access to technology we have, the more we need to be in touch with our primal biological wiring to maintain a balance. The Internet’s now being used to get people off the Internet, and guide them back to real life.
Sometimes one must find answers in the past to discover the way forward. History books are written for a reason; everyone can learn something from those who lived on this planet, whether they were here a century ago or 50 million years ago. What did our ancestors do then that’ll help us now? It’s time for a bit more clarity, for all of us. Picturing the longer view—by either looking backwards or forward is a good mental exercise. If the new ways are doing us harm, the ancient ways might provide some much-needed wisdom.
When you’re stressed out, you make worse decisions; that’s a scientific fact. In a time of rampant stress-related illnesses, adding meditation to your daily routine might literally now be a life-or-death decision/prescription. A daily meditation break can literally save your life. Taking 20 minutes to sit and recharge your nervous system will rewire your brain. A walk in the woods is now doctor recommended.
There was a time when we dreamed of that happy-go-lucky Global Village when the Internet first connected us as a tool of mass communication. If you live in a part of the world where you can choose what you want to think, breathe a sigh of relief.
In this moment in history, in the most authoritarian murderous regions on the planet, it often feels like that globally interconnected village is on life support in an ICU Unit.
In the day-to-day world of living a life, people want to move freely along the sidewalk of life, love the people in their lives, make a good living, and do their part to create a more peaceful world.
A few years ago, we were isolated, asked to go into lockdown to save our own lives, and some of us saw this global reset as a pathway to a better world.
In the violence-torn Divided States of America, many of us wonder what happened.
Two alternate realities are competing for center stage. The state of democracy and freedom of thought, and of the press is at stake.
We must each do what makes sense to us. We can’t put the genie back in the bottle and there will never be a new normal. Whatever normal life was to you, pre-pandemic, we’re living in a New Now. Normal died along with the Twentieth Century version of the American Dream. We need to rebuild, reinvent, and start anew.
As of this writing, in early 2023, the 2022 US midterms happened a few months ago, and Democrats kept control of the Senate. The Midterms were historic. Never underestimate the power of one vote. It’s time to finally update what voting in a democracy means in the United States. It’s time to change to a one person equals one vote system of voting, and at long last get rid of the outdated, outmoded, and especially un-democratic Electoral College.
Speaking of free and fair elections, it’s time to pass a federal law to stop gerrymandering districts and let people vote knowing they’re truly voting in a state that values each voter. Hiding ballot boxes and changing the voting rules from year to year on a whim is the exact wrong way to run a democracy.
A massive problem in US elections is big money. To get our political system back in good working order, the first major step is to get big billionaires and corporate money out of politics, fast. That’ll go a long way to fixing our broken political system. With historically larger voter turnouts being a part of the New Now, counting the votes accurately will become a multi-week, or month-long endeavor. Action meet reaction. Especially in a time when portable tech is so addictive some people sleep with their mobile phones under their pillows (as if a futuristic Tooth Fairy will visit them as they drift off to dreamland, sending the good news of the day they desire, or gift them with the newest mobile device of their choosing.)
It’s hard-wired into us to seek equality and fairness. Remember, it’s not just America having problems, several other global regions are also at the tipping point. Along with cultural awakenings in Iran, Russia, Venezuela, England, America—the social and Climate Emergency upheavals aren’t going away anytime soon, for anyone. This problem is bigger than all of us. It’ll take a collective vision—and collaborating with love, caring, intelligence, and empathy are the only things that’ll get us through this historical time period. Along with that, it’ll take massive numbers of citizens voting for level-headed empathetic politicians to steer the ship of state. By not just looking for the good, but creating as much of it when we can, we’ll create a better world.
The New Now
Manifestos, Reinventions & Declarations
Revised & Updated
by
Russell C. Smith
Michael Foster
Well-stated, Russell (and the other guy).