Though I tend toward pessimism (just ask anyone who's known me for the past, say, 20 years), I'm not necessarily a cynic. Oh, I have my moments, just like anyone else, but it's not my normal state-of-being. My kids would label me a "curmudgeon", perhaps a "grumpy old man", and that's fair enough ... after all, there really isn't a whole lot to be all that happy about these days. And things are not getting better for the vast majority of us. And that's the difference between me and the optimists: I know that for the vast majority of us, I have to repeat, things aren't generally getting better.
Sure, we can argue about whether or not we are complaining on a very high niveau, but that's beside the point. When you consider what is possible, with our technology, with our knowledge, with our ambition, well, we just come up short. I'm a full supporter of Buckminster Fuller who has reminded us again and again that there is more than enough for everyone, even in these days of overpopulation ... but only if we are willing to share. Too few have too much and are too unwilling to do just that. But, that's another issue for another day.
The real problem we're dealing with has nothing to do with politics or policy, nothing to do with culture (be in American, German, or Chinese), and it has nothing to do with anything else that seems to dominate our current discussions. No, it's much simpler than that (the big issues usually are). No, we're talking about attitude, no more, no less. The real problem we have is with our attitude.
We've got some pretty screwed up ideas in our heads and they drive us to do things we might not do otherwise. I've touched on some of them from time to time (like, the notion of "property", for example), and others are so obvious they are not worth talking about at all (like, resource depletion, oil dependency, income inequality, and more). And the more uncertain the world around us becomes, the more we try to hold fast to whatever it is we may believe, regardless of whether it's worth believing or not. That's what I mean by attitude: what you are willing to believe, even in the face of ultimate collapse. We're so afraid of what may be that we fail to see the real possibilities that lie before us.
It's good to belong to something. That's what really constitutes families. Someone once said that our family are those people we have to love, whether we like it or not. But that's changed. How many families are torn by strife? How many families simply shred themselves when mom or dad dies and everyone else is left to fight over what's left? How many folks do you know who simply hate their siblings, parents, relatives ... whatever, because of all the bad that has happened to them? There are too many. But, there are even more families that are either intact or have some semblance of togetherness. That's somewhere to start.
My question is, why stop there? Everyone who is "not-family" is an "other", and it is high time that we realize that not every "other" is a threat, a nemesis, or a potential enemy. Instead, what is "other" can be highly beneficial. The problem with American, industrial agriculture, for example, is its monoculture nature (some areas only corn, others only wheat, still others only cattle). These cultures are simply not sustainable. We need -- and this is a great lesson that nature teaches us -- a certain level of diversity, a certain variation of culture in order to survive. You'll notice, I did not say, live ... no, it's a matter of survival.
Our current attitude is "different is bad". This is simply short-sighted. Though the question still remains: how much diversity is necessary?
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