Re-imagining Broken Systems
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“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking”
In today’s world being staunch and decisively adamant in a position is oftentimes more celebrated than being flexible and humble enough to learn, grow and evolve.
One cannot help but wonder how much of the former attitude has played into the current hyperpolarization of global Western politics into left and right-wing loyalists.
The word moderate is synonymous with profanity in current thinking.
It has become akin to blasphemy to be both against abortion and for higher taxation for the wealthy, against abolishing the police but for racial justice and reconciliation, against trickle-down economics but for raising the minimum wage.
This pervasive all-or-nothing, winner-take-all mentality is ripping apart the social fabric with few to none standing to benefit from the fallout. Yet, we persist.
I like to indulge myself in magically thinking from time to time. Call me a daydreaming dope, nevertheless, it often occurs to me that none of our failing structures is unchangeable.
Sure, it will take behemoth, world-scale efforts to turn some evils around — like ending world hunger, abolishing racial and gender inequality, outlawing billionaires, terminating all nuclear programmes, the list could go on.
But it is also true that achieving such an aim will be monumentally beneficial for the largest number of human lives on the planet
I will also confess to lurking in activist and advocacy groups. I enjoy the proximity to minds that are willing to dream in the most idealist and radical ways. Ways that upend the current system for the purest alternatives unencumbered by the detritus of the old.
Unlike me some of the activists I follow are out there on the front lines, putting their bodies where their politics is to see the changes they want to happen.
I believe these unsung heroes are the fuel that will power any lasting, positive shifts that we will see in the coming generations.
