Things Change. Adapt or perish. Rotary International’s 1959 game plan needs an update.
Rotary
International was founded 120 years ago by a small collection of businessmen
committed to peace. A World War followed shortly. And
then a second world war. Given this mass murder of mostly good
people, some wise souls of Rotary International published a profound book in
1959 to inspire their members and the world with a 60 page book detailing Seven
Paths to Peace.
Understandably
driven by the war that killed over 60 million people, a horrifying genocide of
up to 6 million, and a new terrorizing new weapon capable of vaporizing tens of
thousand of lives in less than three seconds, something must radically change.
Ris 1959
book is now free to the public and anyone still serious about preventing
another world war that civilization might not recover from in decades, if at
all.
Since
then, the evolution of weapons and war has been growing exponentially due to
advancements in technology. And other devastating forces have arose
that threatens every civilization on earth.
Unfortunately,
since the 1948 creation of the United Nations (with RI’s insider
participation), the human mind’s limited linear capacity for learning combined
with its capability of believing almost anything – humanity’s global governance
system has not changed. It remains unenforceable and simply
unsustainable.
The UN
charter basically cemented this dysfunctional system into place. It
prioritized an inherently flawed structure that established the protection of
National Sovereignty over the protection of human rights and the
environment. It codified the illusion of independence in our
persistent and irreversibly interdependent world.
Making
matters worse, national and global politics have changed more in the last two
months than the last 80 years. But not in the direction of might
makes right, great wealth can buy almost anything/anybody, with both Truth and
virtue near obsolete. And in the last 50 days with Donald Trump
clearly winning the 2024 Presidential election, what little stability our
global systems had, is now off the road, flipped over, and sliding backwards
into chaos.
There was
no doubt by the poorest half of humanity that both the global governance system
and its unregulated economic system needed to change. Populist
movements have been winning in so called ‘democratic nations’ because they
could not stop the disruptive global forces that elected independent nations
could not stop with walls or weapons. But that was what ignorant and
delusional strong leaders promised. And now comes the suffering and
hopefully awakening of the need for not just minor changes. But a global
transformation that accepts humanities biological reality that “Everything
is connected, everything is interdependent, so everything is vulnerable.... And
that’s why this has to be a more than whole of government, a more than
whole of nation [effort]. It really has to be a global effort....” Jen
Easterly. CISA director. Oct. 29, 2021. [the Cyber and
Infrastructure Security Agency is our nation’s newest federal agency
established in 2018]. https://www.c-span.org/video/?515706-1/protecting-critical-infrastructure FYI:
Trump created CISA in his first administration. And hired Jen
Easterly as Director. She was only recently replaced. It
may have been because CISA was recently hacked. LEARN THIS! And
share it with others. ‘Everything’ is an autological word – defining
itself. This means every cyber connection, cell in our body, strand
of DNA within them...and every leaf, fruit, and energy source we have or consume.
There
should have been no resistance to changing the ‘Norm’ of the status
quo. And there is no going back to a normal that quietly allowed the
daily deaths of over 11,000 children from easily preventable malnutrition and
infectious diseases -even when there was no war, genocide, famine, violent
extremist killers, or extreme weather conditions. Expect
that number now to grow significantly, because all the non-profit organizations
in the world cannot replace what significantly good US aid agencies and US aid
funding had been doing for three fundamental reasons that benefited all
Americans and the world. Moral, economic, and security.
The
survival and thriving of our species hinge upon humanity coming together with a
grounded sense of reality (fundamental truths, objective truths, Truths we hold
to be self-evident…). United we stand a chance. Divided we’re toast. In this
context humanity must urgently prioritize achieving the United Nations 17
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In 2025 we are now 5 years away - and
with insufficient progress. Our actions must be accelerated to
achieve these with integrity. We must become a united ‘force of
nature for nature’ by prioritizing health over wealth. This
challenge defines our poly-crisis era. And we are running out of time.
"Three
things are necessary for the salvation of man:
to know what he ought to believe;
to know what he ought to desire;
and to know what he ought to do."
-- Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Italian philosopher
and theologian
"People
demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they
avoid." -- Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Danish philosopher
“The
strength or weakness of his society depends more on the level of a spiritual
life than on its level of industrialization. If a nation, spiritual energies
have been exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect
government structure or by industrial development. A tree With a. Rotten Rotten
core cannot be saved. “ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The
illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, but
those who cannot unlearn the lies they have been taught to believe.” - Alvin
Toffler
“It
is the duty of everyman, so far as his ability allows, to detect and expose
delusion and error.” - Thomas Paine
“Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it
produces.” Rousseau
"The earth is degenerating
today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their
parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the
end of the world is fast approaching." -- Assyrian
Tablet Source: c. 2800 BC [also attributed to Socrates]
As
Astronaut Rusty Weikart said, we must act “as crew members on space ship
earth not just passengers.”
"The
purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help
others." Albert Schweitzer
"Service
is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something
you do in your spare time." - Marian Wright Edelman
"No
man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another,
and
this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him." --
Thomas Jefferson
“Our
lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that
matter.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Employ
your time in improving yourself by other men's writings,so that you shall gain
easily what others have labored hard for.” Socrates (a wrestler)
“For
me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than
I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far
that gets you.” - Neil deGrasse Tyson (another wrestler).
“[O]ne
of the most refined (and rare) certainties of liberalism is that historical
determinism does not exist. History has not been written so as to
negate any further appeal. History is the work of men, and just as men can act
rightly with measures that push history in the direction of progress and civilization,
they can also err, and by conviction, apathy, or cowardice, allow history to
slide into anarchy, impoverishment, obscurantism, and barbarism. The culture
of democracy can gain new ground and consolidate the advances it has
achieved. Or, it can watch its dominions shrink into nothingness, like Balzac's
‘peau de chagrin’. The future depends on us--on our ideas, our votes,
and the decisions of those we put in power. Mario Vargas Llosa, Liberalism
in the New Millennium [2000]
"Everything
is backwards; everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health,
lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy
freedom, the major media destroy information, and religions destroy
spirituality." -- Michael Ellner
"We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real
danger that exists is man himself. He is the great danger. And we are pitifully
unaware of it. We know nothing of man ... far too little. His psyche should be
studied -- because we are the origin of all coming evil." - C.G. Jung
"We
have it in our power to begin the world over again." - Thomas
Paine
"There's
a man who is my brother, I just don't know his name.
But I know his home and family because I know we feel the same.
And it hurts me when he's hungry and when his children cry.
I too am a father, and that little one is mine."- John Denver
There
is a photograph of the Earth, dated February 14, 1990, taken by Voyager
spacecraft from 4 billion miles away. It is a pale blue dot, smaller than
a pixel, surrounded by blackness. Sagan wrote: “Look again at that dot. That's here.
That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone
you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The
aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions,
ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and
coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant,
every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor
and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every
"superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner
in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a
sunbeam.
The Earth
is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood
spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they
could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless
cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the
scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their
misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their
hatreds.
Our
posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some
privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale
light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our
obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from
elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth
is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least
in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not
yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has
been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There
is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this
distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to
deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue
dot, the only home we've ever known. Carl Sagan, Pale Blue
Dot, Copyright © 2006 by Democritus Properties,
LLC. November 26, 2024 One Page Perspective #99
“One of
the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough,
we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in
finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful
to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a
charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” – Carl
Sagan
The only
good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance. Socrates
"All
our lauded technological progress - our very civilization - is like the axe in
the hand of the pathological criminal." - Albert Einstein
"The
purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be
compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived
well." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"What
we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little
consequence. The only consequence is what we do." - John Ruskin (1819
- 1900)
"I
alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to
create many ripples." - Mother Teresa
"You
may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be
reduced by them." - Maya Angelou
"I
speak not for myself but for those without voice... those who have fought for
their rights... their right to live in peace, their right to be treated with
dignity, their right to equality of opportunity, their right to be
educated." Malala Yousafzai
"The
aspiration to such uniformity and order alerts us to the fact that modern
statecraft is largely a project of internal colonization, often glossed, as it
is in its imperial rhetoric, as a 'civilizing mission'."
-- James C. Scott Source: Seeing Like a State: How Certain
Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1998), p. 82
The
quotes above and those below are from people I consider heroes. Charles
Darwin is another. His observations of life on this planet led him to a concept
that allows us to understand the origins of the characteristics of most life
forms today…and why they persist, evolve - or go extinct. I’ve tried to apply
his approach to whatever level I can to reducing human suffering or prevent a
massive loss of human life or native plant/animal species. Most
preventable deaths and suffering today are perpetuated by the flawed
characteristics of our national and global political systems. These persist in
exerting increasing complications into our world’s natural system’s,
accelerating disrupting trends. And ‘we the people’ mostly allow
it. We have forgotten that as long as humans remain tied to earth -
mother nature will always have the last vote.
“If the
misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our
institutions, great is our sin.” Charles Darwin
"A
human being is a part of the whole, called by us, "Universe," a part
limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as
something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his
consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our
personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task
must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion
to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody
is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in
itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner
security." - Albert Einstein
"Man
can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting
himself to society" Albert Einstein
If
Einstein were alive today, I believe he would expand this pearl of wisdom to
include that recognizing and accepting our interdependence is ‘essential to
sustainably maximizing humanities freedom and security.” And the
survival of our species.
The
things to do are: the things that need doing: that you see need to be done, and
that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own
way of doing that which needs to be done - that no one else has told you to do
or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside
a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or
imposed by others on the individual. R. Buckminster Fuller
"You
do not belong to you. You belong to the universe. The significance of you will
remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume you are fulfilling your
significance if you apply yourself to converting all you experience to highest
advantage to others. Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest
possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or
the disadvantage of anyone." ~ R. Buckminster Fuller
“My belief is to make the world work for 100% of
humanity, and the shortest possible
time, through spontaneous cooperation, without
ecological offense or the disadvantage
of anyone.” ~ R. Buckminster
Fuller
"Are
you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honour and
reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest
improvement of the soul?" -- Socrates (469-399
B.C.) Greek philosopher & wrestler.
“From our
orbital vantage point, we observe the Earth without borders, full of peace,
beauty and magnificence, and we pray that humanity as a whole can imagine a
borderless world as we see it, and strive to live as one in peace. William
C. McCool, Pilot. Last flight of the Columbia Space Shuttle.
“Never
has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on
political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and
self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity" - Hannah Arendt,
The Origins of Totalitarianism
"The
most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things
out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.
Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under
is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to
change it. And if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent
among those who are." -- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
American Journalist, Editor, Essayist, Linguist, Lexicographer, and Critic
Endorse Project 250.
The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
‘for everyone, everywhere, for all
time’ Abraham Lincoln.
If you do NOT know what it is, please
email Project250@earthlink.net
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