We can do better

The world we live in is a product of the best and worst of our natures, but what all of them should have proven to us by now is that impossible is a direction not a static truth. We have used our ingenuity to push what is possible and have guided it in our kindness and in our depravity. We can solve problems in ways never imagined and expand conditions of destruction and suffering to every corner of the Earth. We are not limited, except by our belief in our own limitations. Science is showing that personally we are all full of more potential than most of us have ever pursued. Labels of athletic or intelligent, creative or social, and all their antonyms are instead of static conditions bestowed at birth, complex potentials that can be unlocked or ignored by the interplay of our environments and our thought processes. The body is dynamic and so is the mind. As it is with the individual, so it must be for the society. We are imposing and letting others impose limits on our human potential, while like the consumption of junkfood, our easiest and worst natures are given free reign to run amok. We let greed be the driving force in our economies and our societies because we choose it to be, not because it has to be. We let apathy, depression, and fear be our determining characteristics not by some natural truth but by the smallness of our own vision for ourselves.

I have another vision. I see nearly seven billion humans not as a liability to our world, nor as a resource for the growth of capital, but as an endless supply of human creative force. We are all geniuses, masterful athletes, loving caretakers, world changers. Anything less is a false limitation. We have the power to encourage the growth and development of every human on this planet to be a problem-solver, taking advantage of their full potential. This will never happen in the world as we have limited it today because those limitations do not accept it as a possibility. The truth is that our own ingenuity will force a decision for change. We are not valuable for our physical strength, machines are superior, and the continuing loss of jobs based on that strength makes that clear. We are not valuable for ability to store and access information, computers are superior at that, and the job market will steadily show this to be increasingly true. Our value is in our minds' creative potential to solve problems and in our emotional potential to care enough to solve them. As it is, the world will become increasingly impersonal, the mass number of people will be viewed as less and less valuable, and their sole market value as consumers will only degrade the Earth and create the conditions of their own misery, driving them into debt, inescapable as the jobs will not exist to free them. These limitations and the future they promise are unacceptable.

I believe the first limitation we must overcome is that of the They. There is no they. There is no right or left wing, no rich or poor, no smart or dumb. These are the roles we play, and which we have given ourselves to play. Do not hate the rich investor who has gambled with our resources, as he was only playing his role in the system. He was looking out for his own interests, and from the standpoint of the system, has done nothing wrong. That is why he is protected by it. The wealthy and powerful are our enemies only for so long as they are our heroes; as long as some part of ourselves wishes to be fabulously wealthy and hold power over others we are creating them. Every political line is an illusion taking advantage of our social differences to hide the many ways we are the same. We all care about our fellow humans until we let ourselves believe the limitations we have placed on them and see them as less. We allow religion, ethnicity, culture, and even geography to be used against us by those of us who are in power. We encourage enmity at all levels of our society and use it to justify everything wrong we see around us. It is always their fault; but it's not. Every day that we limit each other and ourselves it is our fault, regardless of the role we play, as leader or follower, rich or poor, educated or uneducated, conservative or liberal. There is no enemy.

There is also no endpoint. We cannot allow the system of limitations to continue. There is no perfect world, but there will always be solutions to help make a better one. We will never be done, and that is the beauty of it. We are perfectly capable of always changing, always collaborating, and always caring enough to continue. I believe this is a path. I believe we have been walking on it every moment of our history. However, too long we have been carrying these burdens which weigh us down, causing us to hate ourselves, and hide our real goals.

Although there is no endpoint we have real goals. We want to be healthy, given the chance to breathe clean air, eat good food, and live a long healthy life. We want security, so that we need not fear for our loved ones. We want challenge; to be able to go out challenging ourselves, or being challenged, to be better, do more, and work towards our visions. We want freedom, to pursue these goals and live our lives with those we care about and in the way we believe will make our lives good. We all want those things, work for those things, fight for those things, and blame others and ourselves for not having them. We must believe that there are ways to find them for everyone, and then once that belief is held, we must direct all of our greatest human potential towards finding them. Only once the limitations are stripped away and this possibility embraced, does there exist a chance for it.

I believe we have answers and will come up with many more. I believe we can accept that this is for all of us, not just some, and that we are all on the same side. I believe we can do better than our limitations have allowed. I believe we need not have our societies, communities, and ourselves guided by our worst natures, but instead encourage our best. I believe this so strongly that I am willing to work every day for the rest of my life to help everyone's limitations be dropped, their potential be reached, and this world set free of the corruption we have allowed for so long because we saw no other way. We are all the revolution. There is no perfect answer, but we must strive for a better one.