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5/16/2005
My Vision of a Better World
The World We Want asks:
  • What is your vision of a better world?
  • What are the conditions needed to realize it?
  • What are the obstacles?
  • Based on your experience, what parts of the vision are realistic and what ideas, strategies and plans can make it so?
These are all questions about what it means to humanize the earth (the way I interpret "better world" in my life). A better world is one where the human being is the central value, more important than money, more important than power, more important than violence and more important than religion or any other institution.

This is a world where each human being has an identical opportunity to pursue a true meaning in life, a world where people are able to overcome their fear and actually connect with the best in themselves and thus are able to see and celebrate the best in each other.

The most important obstacles for me are the internal ones, my fear of failure, my fear of appearing foolish, my inability to articulate the deep meaning that I touch on every once in a while, my inability to touch on that deep meaning more than for a fleeting moment, my lack of connection with myself, etc. Of course there are also external obstacles as well, such as the American Dream, that tells people that if they're unhappy it's their own fault for not working harder, even when they're working harder. This prevents people from working together as much as they might otherwise. There are lots of other external resistances as well, but the internal ones are the ones I can do something about.

Realistic? Well, none of it is actually realistic, but that doesn't make it any less necessary, or in fact mandatory, for me to keep working in this direction. It's my meaning in life, after all. How to go about it? Well, it's about this blog, it's about connecting with the people I live with and the people I meet, it's about continuing to invite people to my weekly meeting on Thursdays at my house and a periodic conference call for those not able to meet in person, it's about intentionality.

I invite you to intentionalize your own vision of a better world, especially what you can do today. And tomorrow.

Other responses: Scratchings | bmoPHAT | Gerry