Here Are the Problems

Posted on 19 June 2015

So long as we rely on a capitalist society to survive, we will have people pushing other people to consume more than they need and more than the planet can sustain.

So long as we maintain a culture of status, whereby we are endlessly jockeying for higher positions, people will find ways to disenfranchise, dehumanise, and dominate other people.

So long as we believe that fear is the strongest and best motivator, people will endlessly manipulate one another, punish one another, and ultimately alienate one another as we come to isolate ourselves out of terror.

So long as we feel the need for absolute control over our lives, we will fight to control others lives, stripping them of freedom, and work toward stamping out the natural world in order to overcome chaos and temporality.

So long as we are fearful of being manipulated we will shut down our emotions rather than learning self-awareness, self-control, and emotional maturity. Without emotions we lose our capacity for bonding and our abilities to care, cooperate, and take action to improve the state of the world.

Fear and control.
Fear and control.

These leave little room for truth, freedom, kindness, cooperation, peace, joy, and love.

We are making ourselves addicted to so many self-destructive things: hedonism, narcissism, sensationalism, fury, terror…

We must find ways to let go of these addictions. We must learn how to extend goodwill to one another and develop mature skills in cooperating and forming friendships. We have to learn how to moderate ourselves, how to care, and how to share.

We need to participate more in bonding exercises such as making music, dancing, producing theatre with groups of people. We need to play more non-competitive games together like hackey sack. We need to celebrate the seasons together without the event being about spending or excess. We need to celebrate the passages of life: birth, childhood to adulthood, adulthood to parenthood, then on to community sage.

I know what a peaceful beautiful world would look like and feel like. We already have glimpses of it now. We just need to teach one another to share the vision.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine


Responses are closed for this post.

Recent Posts

Tag Cloud

constitution environment human rights united nations

Meta

Katherine Phelps is proudly powered by WordPress and the SubtleFlux theme.

Copyright © Katherine Phelps