Originally Published on OpEdNews
We live in times when stark choices confront us. There are those who would have us live our lives based on fear, based on loyalty to "things" and entities that do not serve humanity, that do not serve a positive future. The mainstream media tend to serve those forces of fear and darkness. Even the Democrats and third parties fail, for the most part, to envision positive futures. But that alternate vision is the other choice-- a vision of a glowing, positive, hopeful tomorrow that brings light, peace, growth, cooperation and blessings to humanity. There are threads of this vision "out there" being woven by a small handful of visionary individuals and groups, but few weavers, who can and will take the threads and pull them together. So we end up with an incoherent, tangled mess of beautiful threads. We desperately need strong leadership-- weavers who will pull together the growing throngs of visionaries, the voices of hope and courage. We need leaders who will help define loyalty to the best of what it is to be human-- democracy, justice, peace, fairness, sharing, helping others, hard work, community, synergy, vibrant ecology, love... We have war departments, energy departments-- yet a department of peace, as Dennis Kucinich suggested, has been opposed. We need a department of peace, a department of love, a department of fairness, of community... It might seem that departments for these things should not be necessary. Conservatives might say that these are family issues. But what is wrong with helping families, with doing all we can to empower the values we identify as being most important? Why just fund new technology and drug and medical research? Why not fund integrity, values, character, love, peace? Failure to invest materially in these non-material ideas may be one of the reasons we're finding such a pervasive dark world view. Failure to commit to and support these positive visionary ideals of humanity has led to widespead betrayal of them. People, organizations, businesses, parties become traitors to the best that humanity can be. They become loyal to money, to extremist causes that put power, profit, even armageddon above kindness, compassion, or helping the needy. These forces characterize as weakness, the support for what is described here as the best in humanity. These forces of darkness would have us all base our lives on fear, greed, lust for power, xenophobia... There is no future in this path. The leaders either believe it will lead to a hoped for armageddon or dominative, massive power. There are so many failures amongst religions and religious leaders who have lost their way, amongst corporations that no longer serve mankind-- we need to create a vision-- perhaps through a thinktank-- that describes a positive future where corporations thrive and are rewarded with the greatest profits when they do the most for humankind and the environment, when they support human and biodiversity. We need to define and support churches or faith based organizations that aim for a healthy future for all humanity, respecting differences in belief, without requiring conversion to one faith. We must demand that political parties build platforms that aim to enoble us, our nation, our lives our work. We can do this. The parties can do this. This is an intentionally vague article, without concrete, specific plans. First, We The People must find each other and agree that this needs to be done-- that courage and heroism must be the path our people, our nation, our planet should take. Once we get behind this basic idea, we can meet and define a plan to move it forward. We know how to implement policy, communicate messages, invest in research and development, establish organizations. We first have to decide we want this, get together and support it. The rest will come.
