The Purpose of Government? Ours failed long ago

 “That the whole trust, power, and authority of the magistrate is vested in him for no other purpose, but to be made use for the good, preservation, and peace of men in that society over which he is set, and therefore that this alone is and ought to be the standard and measure according to which he ought to square and proportion his laws, model and frame his government.”  – John Locke, An Essay Concerning Toleration [1667]

"Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz., freedom and security.  And however our eyes may be dazzled with snow, or our ears deceived by sound; however prejudice may warp our wills, or interest darken our understanding, the simple voice of nature and of reason will say, it is right.”   Thomas Paine, Common Sense.  Published Feb. 14, 1776. 

"In existing criminology there are concepts: a criminal man, a criminal profession, a criminal society, a criminal sect, and a criminal tribe, but there is no concept of a criminal state, or a criminal government, or criminal legislation.  Consequently, the biggest crimes actually escape being called crimes."  -- P. D. Ouspensky  [Pyotr Demianovich Ouspenskii] (1878-1947) Russian esotericist   Source: A New Model of the Universe, 1931

“In a government of laws, existence of government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.  – Louis Dembitz Brandeis, Whitney v. California [1927]

“The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to,—for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so well,— is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.”  – Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience” [1849] 

“It is a mistake for the government to consider the problems of the sick apart from those of society as a whole.... The broader problem is, in a moral sense, one of promoting respect for the individual and the furtherance of initiative and self-providence; in an economic sense, one of increasing production for the benefit of all citizens; and in a political sense, one of removing government as a battlefield for special favor and substituting cohesion and solidarity for division and disintegration.” – Darryl W. Johnson, Jr.

"That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant."  -- John Stuart Mill  (1806-1873) English philosopher and economist    Source: John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)

"The mission of the law is not to oppress persons and plunder them of their property, even though the law may be acting in a philanthropic spirit. Its purpose is to protect persons and property.... If you exceed this proper limit -- if you attempt to make the law religious, fraternal, equalizing, philanthropic, industrial, or artistic -- you will then be lost in uncharted territory, in vagueness and uncertainty, in a forced utopia or, even worse, in a multitude of utopias, each striving to seize the law and impose it on you."

-- Frederic Bastiat  (1801-1850) [Claude Frederic Bastiat] French economist, statesman, and author. He did most of his writing during the years just before -- and immediately following -- the French Revolution of February 1848  Source: "The Law" by Frederic Bastiat (1850)

"That the sole object and only legitimate end of government is to protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property, and when the government assumes other functions it is usurpation and oppression."  -- Alabama, Declaration of Rights Article I Section 35 

"The government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers. The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of government, but it is the government's greatest creative opportunity. The financing of all public enterprise, and the conduct of the treasury will become matters of practical administration. Money will cease to be master and will then become servant of humanity." -- Abraham Lincoln   (1809-1865) 16th US President

"The difference between [socialism and fascism] is superficial and purely formal, but it is significant psychologically: it brings the authoritarian nature of a planned economy crudely into the open. The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal."  -- Ayn Rand  [Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum] (1905-1982) Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter    Source: “The Fascist New Frontier,” The Ayn Rand Column, p.98

To abide by "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God"? America's Declaration of Independence 1776.  OMG. Our US government must be transformed.  Unfortunately, the majority  "We the People" here lack the wisdom and the virtue.  cw

Happy with the New Year 2026? It’s more of the same insane.

Ensuring security in any nation where the Rule of Law is actually the Law of Anything Goes - if your nation has nuclear weapons and the leader want to use them - like the U.S. Russia and Israel - is simply delusional.  

When will the majority of “We the People” on earth accept the objective Truth exposed by the Director of the newest US Federal agency President Trump created in 2018?  October 29, 2021, CISA Director Jen Easterly said “Everything is connected, everything is interdependent, so everything is vulnerable”... “this has to be a more than whole of government, a more than whole of nation. It really has to be a global effort”.  CISA is the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.  https://www.csis.org/events/next-steps-critical-infrastructure-protection-challenges-cisa-and-congress   FYI: in early 2025 CISA was hacked.

As Americans await Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on January 4, attempting to justify his criminal act of kinetic violence against another nation in our Hemisphere, plus the kidnapping of another ‘democratically’ elected President, consider this question.  When will we and the world wake up to the illusion that democracies might work.  They don’t, never have and never will - unless the majority of legal voters favor “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”. These ‘laws’ were clearly offered within the 1776 “self-evident” “Truths” expressed in the American Declaration of Independence.  Laws no nations have yet globally adopted.  And even if just one nation doesn’t...everyone in the world would still at risk of losing their freedom and/or security.  Why?  Simply because the word “everything” means just what it says.  It is an autological word.  Thus, for the world to work as President Lincon asserted, “for everyone everywhere for all time’ we need precise language for developing and enforcing the ‘just’ laws under which everyone has their God given “inalienable Rights” to “Life Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”.

Warning! Around 1776 the word ‘happiness’ had a different definition.  It meant finding one’s bliss in using one’s talents to best serve their community.  A community where virtue was prioritized.  Not looking good, feeling good, and/or prioritizing profit over people.  In our era where most people acknowledge our irreversible environmental linkages to our own health, plus our collective vital need to keep nature healthy, protecting our environment would be another virtue. 

Don’t bet on this from most MAGA voters. Especially those claiming to be Christians.  In Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” pamphlet published months before the signing of the Declaration, he must have realized our global interdependence then.  He asserted that the only purpose for government is to protect people’s “freedom and security”.  Likely because during his time and before it, the diversity of people living within the 13 colonies was as mixed as it is today.  And everyone then was 99.9% genetically human. Regardless of the different nations, religions, or indigenous tribes they originally belonged to.  

In biological terms...strength is not in powerful muscles or weapons; it is in the ability to adapt to the real world in which every species finds itself.  At point in our mind’s evolution, it invented concepts that bonded, greatly benefited the grow of its own tribe. Concepts that usually were at the expense of other tribes.  

Around 1945 with the mind’s invention of nuclear weapons humankind should have adapted a new and better way of sharing this goldilocks planet.  Instead, the winners of WWII created an unenforceable global governance system known as “international Law”.  Done with the majority vote of powerful nations that enabled them to dictate to over a hundred other nations, that the protection of human rights is about three steps down from protecting ‘national sovereignty’, corporate power, unlimited accumulation of wealth, and military power.

The collateral damage of using US military force over the last few months experienced by the Venezuelans’ was not about saving Americans deaths from our nation’s addiction to drugs.  The killing of innocent people in the here or there was the consequence of American demand.  Not drug supply.  In fact, most preventable deaths over the last 5 decades related to conflicts are linked to the US addiction to oil. And ten times that number for lack sensible investments in preventing deaths by infectious diseases and fouled environments. All a product of US voter’s minds and policy makers addiction to protecting the US Constitution.  A document they could change but still lacks justice for all, the protecting human rights.  All a product of our mind’s addiction to believing almost everything it thinks.  The wisdom in our heart and the true American spirit in 1776 knew the “self-evident” “Truths”.

Today America’s flawed truths are ‘peace through strength’, our mind’s belief that military power will best protect our freedom and security, - ‘Democracy if we can just get it right -can protect these.  And the illusion that ‘we can keep our freedom, security, and our ‘independence’ without losing anything.  This is delusional. The insanity of our humanity.  Simply because in reality, “Everything” needs a global effort.

Yet many Americans believe in America First.  And continue to ignore their flag pledge “One nation under God with Liberty and Justice for All”.     Lord help us!  Our mind’s certainty on so much that isn’t true is going to keep killing people killed and the unsustainable destruction to the environmental life support systems all life depends on.

‘Prevention’ appears to be an un-American word.  Yet it is the foundation of all health.  Health of mind, body, spirit, family, tribe, community, government, nation, economy, and environmental systems.  I hope the prayer “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do”, reaches God. If not, prepare for the predictable and catastrophic consequences.  Simply because we humans keep doing the same thing over, and over, and over again...expecting a different result.  

Some wise soul once said prayer is a prelude to action.  If you favor action with or without prayer.  Actions consistent with the laws of nature and of nature’s God, and you are willing to work like hell to sufficiently fund the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals ASAP.  Humankind may yet stand a chance. Especially by uniting on around self-evident Truths - like a child should not die before their parents. 

The good news?  Humankind already has a global Health plan.  A comprehensive and holistic plan globally agreed to in 2015.  The UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals.  And if progressive movements (Peace, Environment, and economic/social Justice) unite within thousands of local communities - to measurable advance a few of the 169 subgoals within the 17 SDG’s in 2026, miracles can happen.   Achieving the SDGs comprehensive by 2030  would be the near equivalent of buying the 30 Rights listed in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Its purpose was to prevent another world war, another genocide, and the use of WMD.   

Failing this, it won’t matter how AI complicates our future.  Fact is AI could actually help us create heaven on earth, if that’s the goal of humankind’s collective will.  Otherwise, don’t plan on any more Happy new years.  You can try to survive these years but there won’t be much thriving.  You might find some time to regret that our species once had the possibility of flourishing.  Once imaged as a garden matched by Eden.  One in which we used our mind’s to engineer our world using the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God – the Golden rule.  Instead of using it to defend outdated and deadly concepts like nationalism, different religions, unregulated capitalism, freedom without virtue with no consequences.   

If ready for action in your US local community email Project250@earthlink.net.  If outside the US bless yourself and email MoM2026@earthlink.net

Why Don’t We Do What We Know We Should Do?

"Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the "latent spark"… If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?"  -- John Adams  (1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President   Source: the Novanglus, 1775

This question sits right at the intersection of neuroscience, philosophy, and lived human occurrences — Here’s layers: reasons, clichés, and then some human Truths.

1. The Brain Is Not a Single Decision-Maker:  Your “knowing mind” (prefrontal cortex) and your “doing mind” (limbic system) often disagree.

• The prefrontal cortex plans.
• The limbic system wants comfort, certainty, or dopamine now.

Knowing is cheap. Self-control is metabolically expensive.

 2. Present Bias (The Tyranny of Now):  We systematically overvalue immediate rewards and undervalue future consequences.

• Cake today beats health next year.
• Silence now beats conflict later.

Evolution favored survival, not long-term optimization.

 3. Cognitive Dissonance Avoidance: Acting against what we know creates psychological pain.  So instead of changing behavior, we: 

• Rationalize
• Minimize
• Redefine the problem

It’s easier to adjust beliefs than habits.

 4. Fear of Social Cost: Often we know what’s right but fear:

• Rejection
• Ridicule
• Loss of status
• Being “the only one”

Humans evolved in tribes; isolation once meant death.

 5. Habit Beats Intellect: Behaviors are established and faster neural circuits.  Logic interrupts these — but arrives late.  That’s why insight rarely equals transformation.

 6. Learned Helplessness:  Repeated failure teaches the brain: “Why bother trying?”  This isn’t laziness — it’s protective shutdown.

 7. Moral Licensing:  After doing one good thing, we subconsciously “spend” the credit.

• “I exercised today… dessert is earned.”
• “I vote… so I don’t need to stay informed.”

Well-Worn Clichés Persist for a Reason:

• “Knowing is half the battle.”  (The other half is doing — which is the hard half.)
• “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
• “I know better, but…”
• “Easier said than done.”
• “Old habits die hard.”
• “Do as I say, not as I do.”
• “Tomorrow is another day.”  (Which mysteriously never arrives.)

Deeper takeaways of these predicaments:

Democracy fails for the same reason individuals do:

• Knowledge without restraint          Power overrides accountability
• Desire outruns virtue                       Comfort beats discipline
• Intelligence disregards wisdom      Safety ignores courage.

Our human problem is not ignorance.  It’s acting against what we already know.

Why Don’t We Do What We Know Is Right:  George Washington understood something modern societies prefer to forget- free government depends less on intelligence than on character. Knowledge alone does not produce good behavior—either in individuals or in nations. The same weakness that causes a person to act against their better judgment is the weakness that causes democracies to unravel.

Washington warned that the greatest danger to republican government would not come from foreign armies, but from internal decay—specifically the loss of civic virtue and the rise of factional passion. He understood that human beings often know what they should do, yet fail to do it because of desire, fear, and habit overpower restraint.

This is not a flaw of education; it is a flaw of human nature.

In individuals, we see it when immediate comfort overrides long-term well-being. In democracies, we see it when short-term political gain overrides constitutional limits. In both cases, the mind knows—but the will yields.

Washington’s concept of virtue was not moral perfection. It was self-restraint: the capacity to limit one’s own power, appetite, or passion for the sake of the common good. He believed no constitution, no law, and no election could compensate for its absence. That insight explains modern democratic backsliding.

Today, democracies rarely collapse through coups. They erode through legalized impatience:

• Laws bent for convenience
• Norms abandoned for advantage
• Truth sacrificed to tribal loyalty
• Rights treated as conditional or negotiable

Just as individuals rationalize behavior they know is wrong, societies rationalize actions they know are dangerous—until the damage is irreversible.

The parallel: What habit is to the individual, faction is to the republic.  Both are easier to excuse than to discipline.  Washington’s farewell was ultimately a warning about self-deception. A people convinced they are virtuous no longer practice virtue. A democracy convinced it is stable stops protecting its foundations. The lesson is neither cynical nor nostalgic. It is preemptive.  Free government requires what human nature resists most: restraint exercised willingly, before forces make it unavoidable.   Stated plainly for our time: Democracy does not fail because people don’t know better.  It fails because knowing better is not the same as doing better. 

 The core argument anchored over historic across 2,500+ years.  

Why We Don’t Do What’s Right:  George Washington understood what many modern societies resist: knowledge alone does not produce good behavior. Free government survives only when citizens and leaders exercise virtues like restraint over impulse with harmony between factions and over self-interest. The problem is not ignorance—it is human nature.  This is ancient.

“The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.”  — Aristotle, Politics   He warned that democratic systems fail when passion overwhelms proportion and justice.

 Majorities, like individuals, often confuse desire with what’s right.  Washington echoed this concern in his Farewell Address, warning that faction would become a “frightful despotism,” not because people were uninformed, but because they would surrender judgment to passion.

“The spirit of party… serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration.” - George Washington, 1796  This mirrors the individual moral struggle: we know the better course, but choose the easier one. Societies do the same—rationalizing short-term advantage at the expense of long-term stability.  

 “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.”  — Edmund Burke    Burke’s insight explains modern democratic backsliding. When citizens reject self-restraint, they invite external restraint. Laws expand when virtues contract.  This pattern is consistent across centuries: “The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.” -Montesquieu

Today, democracies rarely collapse through force. They erode through legality.  The bending of laws, weaponizing norms, and excusing behavior that would once have been unacceptable.  This is nothing new.  “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.”  — Cicero   The treason Cicero described was not always criminal—it was moral: the abandonment of duty for convenience.

Washington believed that constitutional mechanisms could slow decay, but never eliminate it. Without virtue, the republic becomes procedural but hollow.   

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”  — James Madison, Federalist No. 51.   Madison’s insight cuts both ways: because men are not angels, power must be restrained—but because citizens are not angels either, democracy itself must be restrained.

Democracy doesn’t fail because people don’t know better.  It fails because knowing better is not the same as doing better.  And history keeps reminding us:  Freedom survives only where self-restraint arrives before force.

 

Why don't we see the obvious? We are too smart. And it's killing us.

Why are there so many well-worn clichés/idioms for missing what’s right in front of us.  Most of us are not idiots so why didn’t we see it coming?  Biases! They blind us.  Especially when ‘When we think we are so Freaking smart!!!!’ ;-)  And that is going to get us all killed.  We need wisdom. Not more intelligence. 

1) Vision & Blindness: 

“Blind as a bat” (often unfair to bats, but the point stands)

“Turning a blind eye”

“Can’t see the forest for the trees”

“Blind to the obvious”

“Sight unseen” (when used ironically)

2) Proximity & Nearness:  

“Right under your nose”

“Staring you in the face”

“Hiding in plain sight”

“Missed it by a mile” (even when it was inches away)

3) Objects & Metaphors: 

“Elephant in the room”

“Low-hanging fruit” (when ignored)

“The writing on the wall”

“The obvious answer” (usually said after it’s pointed out)

4) Mental & Cognitive:  

“Too close to see it”

“Can’t connect the dots”

“Missing the big picture”

“Overthinking it”

“Lost in the weeds”

5) Mildly Humorous / Colloquial

“Couldn’t see it if it bit them”

“Walking past the solution”

“Face-palm obvious” (modern, but already cliché-adjacent)

THEN sometimes the hardest thing to see is the thing we’ve decided not to look for. Why do we decide not to look for it?  Here’s 12 Biases that might explain this.   

1. “Can’t see the forest for the trees”   Bias: Attentional bias / Narrow framing:  What’s happening? We over-focus on details and lose sight of system-level patterns. Common in policy, engineering, and committee work.  Related research: Systems thinking failures; bounded rationality (Herbert Simon).

2. “Hiding in plain sight” Bias: Inattentional blindness What’s happening?  If we’re not expecting something, we literally don’t perceive it—even when it’s visible.  Classic example: The “invisible gorilla” experiment (Simons & Chabris).

3. “The elephant in the room”  Bias: Pluralistic ignorance / Social conformity bias  What’s happening?  Everyone sees the problem, assumes others accept it, so no one speaks.  Why it persists: Fear of social cost > fear of being wrong.

4. “Turning a blind eye”   Bias: Motivated reasoning  What’s happening: We ignore information that threatens our identity, beliefs, or interests.   Key insight: This is not stupidity—it’s emotional self-defense.

5. “Right under your nose”   Bias: Familiarity bias    What’s happening:  The closer or more familiar something is, the less we consciously evaluate it.   Irony: Repetition breeds invisibility, not clarity.

6. “The writing on the wall”  Bias: Normalcy bias    What’s happening: We underestimate change and assume tomorrow will resemble yesterday.  Seen in: Financial bubbles, climate response delays, institutional decline.

7. “Missing the big picture”  Bias: Reductionism / Analysis paralysis  What’s happening:  Breaking problems into parts without re-integrating them into a whole.  Result: Elegant answers to the wrong question.

8. “Overthinking it”  Bias: Cognitive load overload   What’s happening:  Too much analysis crowds out insight; simple signals get buried. Related law: Hick’s Law—more options = slower decisions.

9. “Couldn’t see it if it bit them”  Bias: Confirmation bias  What’s happening:  We actively screen out evidence that contradicts what we already “know.”   Key danger: Intelligence often makes this worse, not better.

10. “Low-hanging fruit (ignored)”  Bias: Effort justification bias    What’s happening: We distrust easy solutions because we equate difficulty with value.  Cultural note: Especially strong in expert and academic circles.

11. “Lost in the weeds”  Bias: Tunnel vision   What’s happening:  Immediate tasks crowd out strategic thinking.   Seen in: Bureaucracies, crisis management, long meetings with short agendas.

12. “Face-palm obvious” (after the fact):  Bias: Hindsight bias  What’s happening:  Once we know the answer, we believe we “should have known it all along.”  Danger: Leads to unfair blame and poor learning.

Summary:  Most failures to see the obvious are not failures of intelligence, but failures of attention, incentives, and social courage.   The obvious, it turns out, is often obscured by perfectly human thinking.

Well, 2025 is over. Looks like keeping our sanity in 2026 will be harder.

Three YouTube videos to maintain your sanity:

Required listening for souls committed to humankind and nature’s sustainability. 

Below are three 'must watch and LISTEN to' YouTube videos.  Seriously!  If you don’t like reading or hearing the surge of important daily news events, these two people condense the accumulated knowledge you would have - if you closely followed the last few thousand days of key news events. 

And now, how your personal experience of ‘why our civilization’s decline in caring' and our cognitive understanding of the cumulative disruptive consequences -- due to our species lack of collective inaction, is mostly explained by two people. 

Humankind’s future now depends on treating our desensitization of empathy and Truth decay. Disinformation, misinformation, and lack of wisdom is causing increasing Moral Injury in most people. Moral Injury is different than fear-based PTSD. This injury is that discomforting feeling we get when vital governance systems that we have always depended upon - are failing- and literally killing people. 

This discomfort even harms the immune system.  Neil deGrasse Tyson’s ‘three types of truth” (personal and political truths in our mind, and cognitive Truths based on reality) offers us a powerful means of addressing this injury.  Any species failing to adapt - will have increasingly lethal consequences.  In biology, species that fail to adapt to change are called extinct.

 

#1. TEDx Duke, "We’re all being lied to: here’s why no one cares anymore." Skylor Hughes. 15 minutes, 30,000 views., 13 days ago  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9b7ZQh28GY&t=21s

What happens when lying no longer shocks us and dishonesty becomes normal? In this mind-opening talk, Skylar Hughes, a journalist and psychological researcher, explores why our outrage at fake news has faded and what this means for democracy. Hughes reveals how repeated exposure to lies changes our brains, shifts our social norms, and threatens our moral compass. She is a Robertson Scholar at Duke University, combining psychological research with frontline experience in combating misinformation. As part of CNN's fact-checking unit, she verified over 100 articles, broadcast packages, and scripts, serving on the Republican National Convention live fact-checking team. Her expertise extends to the Poynter Institute, where her content reached over 150,000 people.

A Kenan Ethics Fellow, Hughes has explored the moral dimensions of misinformation and digital communication. At Duke’s Marsh Memory Lab, she secured grant funding to lead experimental research on misinformation correction. Her interdisciplinary work provides critical insight into how misinformation shapes society.

Skylar believes accurate information is a right, not a privilege. Upon graduation, she aims to merge her experience in journalism and psychological research to study misinformation’s impact in the 21st century. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

#2 Yuval Harari:  True wisdom only comes away from the clamor of society “Why the Wisest Minds are Quietly withdrawing" – YouTube  ‘Future of Being’, two weeks ago.  21 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=tTzMiC3Abik 

He covers why most thoughtful minds no longer speak, no longer debate, no longer try to be heard?   In this powerful reflection his ideas explore the quiet fading of true wisdom from public life — and the unsettling forces driving it.

It reveals why many highly conscious thinkers are stepping away from society, choosing solitude over noise, and depth over digital chaos. From Seneca to the modern world, history echoes the same pattern — and this time, the silence may be lasting.

 

#3 Yuval Harari.  In 2026, Most Will Break Psychologically — For Not Understanding This 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-fQRQcusmY

24 minutes 52 seconds YouTube video

A silent psychological collapse is coming—and if you don’t understand this one truth, you’ll feel lost, anxious, and mentally overwhelmed in 2026. This video exposes Harari’s most disturbing insight about the human mind, AI pressure, and emotional survival.  Watch now before confusion becomes your new normal.

What You’ll Learn: how AI reshapes identity, why most minds crack under uncertainty, and how to stay mentally strong when reality shifts fast. Timestamps:

 00:00 😨 The unseen mental crisis—why awareness is urgent 

05:42 🧠 Identity under attack—why minds feel unstable

12:18 🤖 AI vs meaning—why confusion grows

18:07 🔥 Emotional survival tools—why this saves you

24:52 🌍 The choice point—why understanding changes everything

Why Watch This Video?

✅ Feel clarity instead of fear

✅ Turn anxiety into awareness

✅ Prepare your mind for 2026

 Consider hosting a face-to-face viewing/discussion with friends or colleagues committed to adapting to this evolving reality.  Our need to adapt, if we intend to survive, thrive, and perhaps flourish in the unimaginable times ahead, is vital to understand that our existing systems are outdate and have been for decades.

 

Below is a C-span program on the media and our need for Truth.   

Walter Cronkite Awards for Excellence in TV Political Journalism   https://www.c-span.org/program/public-affairs-event/walter-cronkite-awards-for-excellence-in-tv-political-journalism/670381  

Recipients of the 2025 Walter Cronkite Awards for Excellence in TV Political Journalism participated in an award ceremony in Washington, DC. Winners included comedian and The Daily Show Host Jon Stewart, former CBS Evening News Anchor John Dickerson, NBC News Chief White House Correspondent Peter Alexander, "60 Minutes" Correspondent Scott Pelley, MS Now host Rachel Maddow, Telemundo news anchor Julio Vaqueiro, and other journalists from PBS Newshour and local stations.

GET quote Regarding 1st Amendment and the role of the Media. !:  Martin Kaplan is an American professor and former studio executive and writer. He teaches at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and is the founding director of the Norman Lear Center for the study of the impact of entertainment on society.

 

Democratization not Democracy! Words matter!!! If you're seeking humanities' sustainable progress on our gifted planet?

 

Everyone but dictators love democracy.  But throughout history, democracy as a noun has never worked.  It has some potential as a verb.  Over the last 30 decades I’ve a gathered over 140 quotes (none from ChatGPT) going back the last 3000 years (email MoM2026@earthlink.net for the entire list).  Each offers one or more reasons why democracy has not worked.  From my grounding as a biologist delving deep in to cognitive issues it is clear that this noun is not a fundamental principle, a “self-evident” Truth, or a “Law of Nature and of Nature’s God” as an “inalienable Right’.  Historically it’s a relatively recent invention of the human mind.  A logical idea for making rules that people must live under, or up to.  Because without human input into such laws people can get very unhappy when the laws do not protect them.  Especially laws that are not applied to everyone equally (our biological sense of injustice).  Add to this any laws that don’t protect the fundamental need of human “freedom and security” which according to Thomas Paine’s pamphlet “Common Sense” is the only legitimate purpose of government.  And without all three of these basic elements (democratization, justice, and protection of inalienable Rights), no government can be sustainable.  Together, these represent another phase we use, and you read about all the time.  The Rule of law.  It was expressed but not specially named as humankind’s foundation - yet backed by the wisdom in the 1776 Declaration of Independence - within the simple but profound phrase “the Laws of Nature end of Nature’s God.”  In a 10-word summary using common language, ‘keep people and nature healthy’ - ‘don’t believe everything you think’.

So please replace the word ‘Democracy’ with ‘Democratization’ of ‘just’ and ‘essential’ laws for humankind’s desire to survive and thrive on this gifted planet.  Maybe we can finally flourish with the global ‘rule of law’.

What follows is the life and death consequences of US democracy and in the lack of the Rule of Law in the United Nations 'international law' with its lack of protection of inalienable rights and nature. 

UN Foundation newsletter 12-18-25

“The humanitarian system’s tank is running on empty – with millions of lives hanging in the balance.”  Twenty years after the UN’s Central Emergency Relief Fund started, the UN Secretary-General’s words strike a chord. The world’s lifeline in humanity’s darkest moments is faltering. 

UN leaders rally the international community to step up support for the Central Emergency Fund at its 2026 pledging event.

As the international community rallied last week to mark the Fund's 20th anniversary and commit to saving lives in a time of critical need, one message was clear:  This is not the moment for apathy or indifference — but for solidarity, compassion, and action.

CERF has delivered nearly $10 billion in life-saving assistance across more than 100 countries — reflecting a central promise of the UN’s Charter, “to achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character."

That mission remains more critical than ever. 

//// What's the word used to describe an expectation of something different - after doing the same thing over and over again without making any changes.? 

Below are the comments made in today's Washington Post letter to the editor regarding the current violence going on all around us.

“Our hearts are durable, made to be filled with love as they are made to be broken, but resilience is the key to our survival in the face of loss and horror. Our capacity to feel, and to grieve is our strength as human beings… Stripped of everything – even of hope during the darkest of times – we could still choose our attitude in facing pain; this is one of Victor Frankel‘s great moral Insights from surviving Auschwitz and losing his parents and brother to the Nazis.

Frankel also taught that we are compelled to act when it is possible to improve an outcome. Ahmed al A Hamed who stopped one of the killers of Jews at Bondi Beach, manifested that moral principle Christianity teaches that if we act as if we have faith, faith will be granted us, having faith does not imply the certainty of any particular outcome – but do not act diminishes our own humanity. We must act because without action, our world is eclipse by indifference and cruelty.  Eric Rafael, Santa Fe.

FYI: The word 'perdurable' means enduring, constantly, unperishable

For action you can take in your local community that can have a global impact...email MoM2026@earthlink.net.