Reality
“It’s easy to find fault but difficult to find solutions.”
John W. Malenda
Friends and loyal readers, I will be “off-line” for a couple of weeks but don’t despair, I will return!
John’s Blog
To explore and evaluate the true causes of social and environmental problems and how prejudice and emotion prevent solutions to those problems
In our current world - categorized by an author I am currently enjoying as insane, most of our problems come from the fact of our point of view. By this he means the programming which forms our perceptions - how we see our environment - is the source of all conflict. This programming comes from our parents (how did they learn to raise children; what was their ‘manual’?), from our social group, which obviously includes religion as well as schooling, and from all other influences we encounter growing up in any society - politics, news, and media of all sorts.
Finding fault could be considered simply noticing another’s point of view doesn’t correspond with one’s own perception, and since one’s own perception is generally considered the ‘right’ point of view, the other person is ‘wrong’. If both parties persist in maintaining the ‘rightness’ of their perspective, then, yes a solution is difficult. When the opposing parties are two groups - two Irish factions, two Lebanese factions, Iraqui Sunnis and Shia, Catholics and Protestants, Russia and the US - the list is too long - who have decided there is no flexing on the point of view, the belief, the politics of ‘right’ versus ‘wrong’, the result is insanity. It is the escalation from the most basic of me/my/mine on the individual level to the most dangerous on the international level, with people killing each other over the ‘perception’ or point of view.
Suppose we start on a one-by-one program to de-program this insanity? What could we do to get some form of acceptance of the other’s right to a perspective, as long as that was a mutually agreed upon rule of engagement? How do we listen to people we don’t agree with, and still work toward a common goal - a goal perhaps as radical as avoiding self-annihilation?