What was I hoping to accomplish?
Some commenters to this blog originally asked – quite rightly- what I was hoping to accomplish by writing my semi-scathing list of (untrue) things that most of my fellow Americans believe. One person pointed out that one doesn’t see, for example, a football coach telling his team “ah, you guys believe a bunch of crap, but anyway, then, go out and win!” and expecting their team to go out and be completely victorious after a “pep talk” like that.
That part of their point is fair enough. Nobody inspires their team to win by saying or implying that they’re a bunch of idiots. (Which was not my intention anyway, but never mind.) However, there are many things that don’t quite reach the mark in the way that I see things- with the analogy there. First of all – life on planet earth is not a zero sum game. It’s not, for example a cake that we’re trying to divide here, and if you get a bigger slice of cake (life) then I get a smaller slice.
In my view, as far as I can understand, it doesn’t work that way. This is an abundant universe, an abundant planet, and there is enough for everyone. Of most things. This is a spiritual truth. There is enough food on this planet; no one needs to die of starvation. Yet we let children do so, every hour of every day. How we sleep at night when we allow this is beyond me – but that’s not the topic of this post.
Fossil fuels being a probable, notable exception with regard to the “things that there are enough of for everyone…” but I digress, again.
The reason for my pointing out the commonly held misconceptions (and I’m hardly alone in that, people are trying to point out such mistaken ideas every hour of every day…) is that in order for us, as a culture, as a country, to improve from where we are right now – we’ll have to start by having a good idea of where we actually are – rather than living in some sort of la-la, unrealistic, cuckoo-cloud land.
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