But thinking makes it so

For those of you who aren't convinced, I'm not necessarily trying to persuade you to believe anything in particular, rather, I'm only asking that you stop for a moment and think about what it is you believe, and even more than that, to think about why you believe whatever it is you believe. That's really not too much to ask, is it?

What we think we deserve, what we think people are responsible for (whatever "responsible" means in that context), who we are accountable to, or if we're accountable at all, what it means to have "earned" something, what role luck plays in our (and everybody else's) lives ... these are all topics (or issues, if you will) that we all need to think about. Why? Because they form the basis of the kind of world we end up living in. The world in which you find yourself is just there ... it happens to be where you woke up, if you will recall, but does it have to be the way it is? Is there anything we can do to make it different?

Most of you know full well that things do change and can change and that individuals, or at least groups of them, can effect that change as well. That's what the Civil Rights Movement, for example, was all about. It's also what Nazism and fascism in general was about. It's what feudalism and capitalism are all about as well. All of these things "just are", on the one hand, but they are also things that were not there once, were there, and are not, or may not be there at some later time. We all know things change, some in and of themselves, and others because the changes are consciously made. Change just is, as well. It can be a good change, it could be a bad change; it could be to our advantage, or it could be to our detriment.

Shakespeare, of course, has something to say about this, just like he has something to say about most things that matter. To him (as he puts it in Hamlet, Act 2, sc. ii:

... for there is nothing either good or bad,
but thinking makes it so.

Yes, "but thinking makes it so". Yes, we decide. It is our duty to decide. But, as I look around these days, I don't see a lot of deciding going on. I see a lot of accepting. I see a lot of averted glances. I see a lot of folks looking down at and shuffling their feet. Yet, not only don't I see a lot of deciding happening, I don't even see much of discussion going on either.

What does that say about our own thinking? What does that say about us? What does that say about what we might "deserve"? The extent of injustice, inequality, unfairness, and illegality that we see in abundance around us says a lot about who we are and who we have become. I don't like what I'm seeing. Do you? If not, what are we going to do about it?