100th Monkey
New member
When you look at the natural world, don't you think: how beautiful it is... All the bounties of nature, vision, sound and symmetry, laid before us like an immeasurable feast for the senses...
So much of our world is beautiful too -- art, architecture, technology, toys, food -- these all delight the mind, the soul and the senses.
But above this beauty -- threatening to eclipse and extinguish it -- is a growing darkness that we cannot contain.
War, debt, imprisonment, violence, abuse, corruption -- these all stain our world, often increasing, seemingly without end.
Our world, the world of the West, of freedom and philosophy, trade and democracy, is hanging by a thread. Europe burns. Riots escalate. Birthrates plummet. The youth rot, or flee. Currencies dissolve. Economies collapse. Unemployment swells. Prisons expand. Families crack and break apart. The debts of the dead strangle the unborn.
Come on - we all want to fix what is broken, but you must have noticed that every solution we try just seems to make things worse.
We tried to solve the problem of poverty, and created a permanent underclass.
We wanted less economic inequality, we now have more.
We created institutions to achieve economic stability, but still suffer through endless booms and busts.
We tried to get rid of drugs, and drug use expanded.
We wanted to give kids a good education, and ended up with record dropout rates, illiteracy and the forced drugging of children.
We tried to make healthcare affordable and available to everyone, but just drove the price of medicine higher and higher.
We tried to help people save for their old age, only to hand them empty IOUs that enslave their children.
What keeps going so terribly wrong?
Well -- when every problem we try to solve gets worse, everything we think we know must be re-examined...
