What are these little essays in the face of the real problems of the world? We are confronted with an ocean of desires.
Here I persist in going on about the petty little problems of being self doubting psychics. But don't we have much worse problems? What about tyrants who exploit, starve and oppress their peoples? And what of the future of our children? And the suffering of those who are denied quality education? And the environment with it's toxic effects on all of us because of pollution? The carbonation of our oceans, {CO2} making sea water too acidic to sustain coral? Etc?
And of course what about our beautiful dying oceans? We are confronted with an ocean of desires. Sometimes it seems impossible to maintain. But are we going to give up? Desire in this situation is a very good thing. Do we not want to keep holding on to the good? "Desire is what keeps things in place." (Quoted from my teacher, Steve.) Apathy is much worse than Heroine. Much worse.
I have a friend insists we about three years left before we are all dead. I must confess that this is not he first time the has thrown this kind of doomsaying in my face. In principle I can agree, things are bad. But as I had first said to him decades ago, "The world goes out with a whimper, not a bang." Quotation not mine. (C. S. Lewis? Gertrude Stein? T. S. Elliot? I don't remember.) Theoretically, we could already be too late. But that's not what I saw, then or now.
Not being a Monotheist, I easily reject this eternally postponed Apocalypse. If I'm going to be writing about a future I believe I have seen, the rational person will want to see proof that we are going to get there together. I can wax poetic about our beautiful undiscovered truth. But what does it mean in the face of so much suffering? These problems are not going away on their own.
"Do not take away hope." The fact that my pessimistic friend has been VERY WRONG in the past, is no guaranty that he is going to be wrong this time. Any sense of pride or comfort I might derive from his skewed intuitions is quite empty. Not just because these problems aren't going away, but a "Let It Be" attitude is what gets us into these problems in the first place. There is real evil in the world. But complacency is much worse than Heroin.
I can sound foolish insisting, "It's all good" or, "We should be so lucky." But I tell Mark (name changed,) "Only these things will change us and get us off our butts, and a sudden end would be much too good for us." But my instincts have been entirely correct up too this point, and maybe my visions of the future is right too. For those of us who suffer with a liberal guilt, we do feel responsible for the suffering of the world. And I believe that even this must have some positive good.
Essential problem set? Let's go back to the dynamic dyad and the shifting of mutually defined opinion biases. This is where I think my work can make a difference.
Did Mark change my opinion? No bloody way!!!!! I still believe our species will solve this problem the same way we are healing the Ozone Layer.
Did I change Mark's opinions? I certainly don't think so. That's not the problem anyways. "Societies General Opinion Biases change faster than do peoples individual Personal Opinion Biases." My much younger friend Sean says that, "Popular paranoia isn't as prevalent in youth culture as it was in the decades past." Fascism isn't as fashionable in most of the rest of the world as it is here in the U. S. Hell, most of the old farts who are responsible for the evils of the world will be dead soon anyways.
