No Half-Measures

Think.

I wonder if anyone besides me is ready for a change. After all, what is there to lose? Why is it, do you suppose, we carry each day on exactly as we did the day before? Are we really comfortable with everything being exactly as it is? Do I really need to list the problems of this world and this life in this time, to get your attention?

The way I’ll begin may seem silly, but if you can stick with me for just a short time, your eyes may widen with some degree of interest. The point shall be that the solutions to every problem we have are just staring us in the face, and they have been all along.

Engineers and scientists and even philosophers have long resorted to having a closer look at nature in search of answers. We want to know. We want to create. We want to solve problems. And it always helps to look at the way things work, the way things have evolved and specifically at what creatures, processes and systems have been successful. There is far, far more that we do not understand than what we do, so it makes sense.

So this is what started me really thinking, silly as it may seem. There are feral cats where I live, populating my area because my neighborhood is outside of town. People who don’t want their pets anymore have a bad habit of dropping them off by the roadside, and I have the bad habit of feeding them. One mother of four kittens probably got hit on the road, and her kittens were wandering around on my back porch, looking for her and often finding food, because I pitied them. One kitten had a different idea. She bolted through my back door when I opened it.

Three of the four kittens survived and are now house cats. The single kitten who started it all, I thought might have simply made a mistake; but I know now her move was deliberate. She is by far the most successful of the three, as she is the most friendly, lovable and resourceful. Mew, as I call her, eats butter toast. The others might lick butter from a piece I place before them, but not Mew. She eats it all, wheat bread, butter and possibly a chunk of the paper towel on which I place it. With Mew it’s no half-measures, and she gets it done. Well how about that.

If Mew was a male I’d call him Elon, because there’s a human who gets it done. I honestly don’t know that Mr. Musk is the smartest guy out there, but it doesn’t matter at all. Some of his ideas seem pretty off-the-wall and a lot of it seems impractical and even wasteful, but if he’s got an idea he belts it right out, and people listen. Why? Because it’s plain to see he has, pardon the expression, perhaps the biggest balls in the universe. Look at what he’s accomplished, and in one lifetime. And there’s much more to come.

Everyone makes their share of mistakes during a lifetime, and it’s after-the-fact useless to blame the environment in which we grew up, or a lack of intelligence or reasoning, or anything at all. Let’s look instead to solutions. Could we all agree that education is critical? It won’t stop us from making mistakes, but at least we’ll know what we’ve done wrong. The age of computing is only just now getting a foothold. Ideas are transmitted by only graphics and the written word, and okay, voices in videos. We can do far better than that. We can transmit experiences. You will see. But we can’t even agree on what education should look like, much less deliver it. Why? Because there is no sense of direction across our entire species. We can see pockets of organization we call cultures, but within each there is disarray.

Years ago I wrote a short piece I called The Spell That Binds. I am painfully aware that few people, if any, were able to link the title to the intent, but it was an exhortation to gain some control over our emotions to one common end, humanity’s greatest problem as I see it; to end war for all time. To evolve. Controlling emotions is something at which we do not excel. But I took it one step further, pointing out that lasers are powerful only because the waves, or “wavicles” if your prefer, are in sync. The crests and troughs of all are aligned. Disarray is not part of the equation. The energy is not wasted because it does not scatter.

We waste our energy all the time. Are you frustrated if you reach for something, but fumble and drop it? How much more might we accomplish on any given day if every move was more positive and deliberate? But beyond that, what if we were a little more together on what we need to accomplish?

What if??

Imagine with me for just a moment. If we were of single mind about any issue at all, that issue would be solved. We are capable of anything! If everyone avoided doing business with any single corporate giant for a single month, that corporate entity would cease to exist. Businesses in support of it would crash and burn. Whatever it was doing of which we did not approve, that would end because its existence depended on our patronage. The very same is true of any government. Public opinion, it turns out, has enormous power, but rather than to use it to the advantage of all, there are those who seek to gain financially and politically, to gain power over us and to enrich themselves by manipulating public opinion, and we allow that. It does not matter where you think you are politically or morally, that is something that can only be offset by a well-rounded, free-thinking and informed, educated populace. Where oh where can that be found, in this world?

This is only a blog, written and published by one individual. I am lucky to garner fifty readers in an entire month. Corporate entities and governments have nothing to fear from me, because nobody cares what I think. Are you in that position too? Then pass this along. Maybe someone with some influence will eventually see it. Someone like Elon, who has generated his own all by himself. I cannot help but admire the man.

It hurts me to know that if I had a following like his, it might be possible to not only solve the problem of global warming, but to gain some physical control over planet-wide climate events. I have solutions to both the energy and transportation crises, but lack the formal education and therefore the credentials to be heard.

I have lived too long to change that now.

How about you?

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