Introduction
admin August 28th, 2007
I’ve finally figured it out. I am not overwhelmed, depressed, confused, or bewildered by our world gone mad. I’m ready. I’m past ready.
I just want to go for it.
Why can’t we have a nation - why can’t we have a world we’re proud of? Why can’t we stop wringing our hands over poverty, hunger, species decimation, genocide, and death from curable disease that we know is all needless? The truth is there is no reason we can’t.
They say - whoever the “they” are - that as we age, we mellow. I don’t think so. I’m getting less and less patient.
Why? Because I realize that humanity has no excuses anymore. In the span of my own lifetime, both historical evidence and breakthroughs in knowledge have wiped out all our excuses. We know that we know how to end this needless suffering, and we have all the resources to do it. From sociology and anthropology to economics, from education and ecology to systems analysis - the evidence is in. We know what works.
“Soft” psychology as well as “hard” neuroscience also confirm that we humans come equipped with a moral compass - with deep needs and sensibilities that make us yearn to end the suffering. Yet we deny these feelings every single day at huge cost to our society and to our world.
No physical obstacle is stopping us. Nothing. The barrier is in our heads. We are creating this world gone mad, not because we’re compelled to by some deep flaws in our nature and not because Nature itself is stingy and unforgiving, but because of ideas we hold. Ideas?
Yes. This is one of the most startling discoveries - awakenings - of the last century: Human beings are in fact creatures of the mind. Our ideas about reality determine what we see, what we believe is possible, and therefore what we become. And we also now know that human beings can change our core, life-shaping ideas, even our ideas of democracy, of power, of fear, and - yes - of evil itself.
As we do, we no longer have to settle for grasping at straws - wild acts of protest, or tearful acts of charity, or any other short-term, feel-less-bad steps. We become open to the possibility of real change, And, when you think about it, how could we ever believe “the world” can change unless we experience ourselves changing?
So this little book is about learning to see the killer ideas that trap us and letting them go. It’s about people in all walks of life interrupting the spiral of despair and reversing it with new ideas, ingenious innovation?and courage. It’s about finding that mixture of anger and hope to energize us for this do-or-die effort. Why not go for it?
Frances Moore Lappe
Cambridge, May 2007
Very inspiring.
Looking forward to your talk in Madison, WI
thanks so much for being willing to express such a radical concept, and one I’ve beleved in for many years. In my peace work, I’ve found that we DO have all the money, all the resources, all the knowlege we need. Every child, woman and man on the planet could have a decent life, education, health care, reproductive choices, jobs, clothes, homes. All we have to do is truly believe we want it that we can do it, then turn around the machinery of despair and destruction that now guide our “civilization.”
Take all the money we now spend on greed and war and we can do it all! But I don’t feel the “democracy” here in the USA has the power to harness our love instead of our hate….
Lance,
Thanks for your comment.
I agree, and that’s why we need the deeper idea and practice of democracy - Living Democracy - now emerging.
Frances
Frances, I’m a 19 year old rap poet from South Africa. Your talk at the ‘Be the Change’ conference has given me the inspiration needed to empower myself as a person and do everything in my power to ‘change people’s frames of reference (…presidents bow down in deference; I am a messenger of the global idea whose time has come)’. Your ideas are huge Frances, thankyou for cutting through the fog of uncertainty and reaching straight to the essence, you have given me the courage to get on and do it.