Power Number IV:
Solve Collective Problems
The Future is a Work in Progress
Positive Thinking Utopia
Fight for What is Right
Hate Cannot Solve Problems
Learn to Live With Risk
Rumors of the End of the World Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
Review
This section 3,913 words (approx. 15 pages)
The Future is a Work in Progress
The future has not happened yet. Although that seems obvious, many people believe they are fated to a bad future. Rather than being pre-set, the future unfolds spontaneously over a backdrop of natural and manmade circumstances. A good metaphor is competitive sports. The date of a game may be set, and you cannot change the laws of gravity or the rules of the game, but the details of how the game will play out are not predetermined.
It might seem like life would be simpler if you could know how certain situations turn out. However, it would make life meaningless because a predetermined future would rule out the concepts of creativity and free will. Living in a world where the future is undetermined means that we still have the opportunity to make it better.
Although the future has not happened yet, you can see where it is going if you look at the variables in the present. If you analyze the present with absolute clarity, you will see opportunities to change what is ahead. Although you cannot know the details of the future, if you sharpen your intuition by just ten percent, you can prevent many future problems.
One way to make the future better is to project positive thoughts, goals, and plans into the future. Send yourself some good thoughts in the future; pave the way to the future with feelings of security and self-confidence.
A good way to make the future worse is to project fearful thoughts. Therefore, even if you are fearful about a future situation, remember that one positive thought of resolution will counterbalance a frenzy of worry. Train your mind to dwell upon the best possible outcome.
Positive Thinking Utopia
You can plan your personal future with positive thinking, but there is a point where your reality and the collective reality intersect. The world's problems are outside of your direct influence, so you cannot will things to happen out there through autosuggestion. Nevertheless, the outer reality is part of your personal reality because you choose where to put your focus. You create the portfolio of issues, people, and places that make up your outer reality (or they choose you). Although you do not create the issues, people, and places in the world with your thoughts, you can improve the collective situation in the world with positive thinking.
Positive thinking for collective problems is different from regular positive thinking. It works because you take the necessary steps to work with the problems you care about. You have a way to channel your frustration into constructive effort. You are part of a paradigm shift away from the scapegoat story of blame and guilt, toward the positive story of honesty, maturity, cooperation, personal responsibility, and love. As you enter the love paradigm, or positive thinking paradigm, you set an example for others. You will start to recognize other people who have decided to live a new way. Your positive attitude may even draw out the hidden positive side of negative people.
Ernest Holmes (1887-1960), one of the authors of the New Thought Movement, explained why he sees hope in the world. He said,
"We know that the human heart is instinctively kind, that it desires peace, it desires self-expression, it desires liberty and it desires happiness. If we would promote the idea of peace in the world we must begin with our own individual consciousness. The whole nation and the whole community of nations, making up as it does a community of humanity, all are aggregates of individuals like we are."
Although things may look bleak right now, with endless wars, the threat of terrorism, diminishing natural resources, catastrophic weather events, and other serious problems, good things can happen too. If people pull together to make positive changes, a new wave of hope could sweep over the human race. We could all work toward a common and pressing goal - healing our planet - and dedicate ourselves to recovery in the twenty-first century. Imagine a world where the vast majority of people are honest with themselves and respectful toward others and the earth. There are tremendous challenges, but when enough people hold a positive vision of the future, it will happen. Basic human nature will remain. Criminals will still commit dishonest acts. Human beings will still have flaws and make mistakes, but if the number of positive thinkers grows, then hope, tolerance, and love will also grow.
Solving the global warming crisis requires a change in political will. That is in the realm of thought and collective thinking. As victims of bad leadership no more, we will move forward. We need an Apollo Program for alternative energy. Besides fuel, we also need young scientists to look for non-toxic alternatives to solvents, insulation, cleaners, paint, glue, and other industrial chemicals. We need to employ cutting edge technologies - friendly bacteria and organic enzymes - to eat away hydrocarbon waste. We need to start using technology that agrees with nature, instead of mindlessly propping up the toxic petro-chemical paradigm. If we develop a sustainable paradigm, we will survive. One sure way is to look for what nature intended. Therefore, organic, natural products and methods are probably best for our future. Ridding the world of toxic chemicals will solve our health care crisis, as well.
The Power of Activism
Many things in this world have fizzled or gone awry because the right person for the job was stuck in self-pity or another similar dead end. The more people trapped in fear and self-doubt, the worse the world is for it. Emile Coué said that if everyone used positive autosuggestion and raised their children with positive ideas, prisons would become obsolete.
Positive, rational thinking on a mass scale would reduce the threat of war. If all the people in one country took on positive thinking, it could change the course of world history. Adolph Ogi, former president of Switzerland and Special Envoy to the United Nations for Sports, said that if we could raise one generation of children with the principles of cooperation, they would create world peace when they grow up.
If you are ready to start working on collective problems, choose one or two issues that you are concerned about. Find out what's going on and learn about the topics, especially what has already been done. That way you get an idea of what works and what other people have tried. If you learn the history of a problem, you will avoid duplicating others' efforts. There are many things wrong in the world, but trust that if you do your part, others will do theirs. All the issues will get the attention they deserve. You cannot solve all the problems yourself, but you can share your successes with activists from other fields and get encouragement from their work. People from the different fields of interest can support each other and pitch in when necessary to help each other out.
Fight for What is Right
In difficult times, people must to stand up for truth. If you know that somebody is abusing something you care about, find out what you can do to stop the abuse. People can abuse ideals, such as freedom and democracy. People can commit financial abuses or emotional abuse. Sometimes it is obvious what you have to do. For example, if you see someone abusing children, you would probably try to intervene or at least report it. Counselors, nurses, doctors, teachers, and law enforcement officials have a duty to report child abuse or they can lose their license. We should all feel a similar duty to do something about corporate and government abuse, abuse of individuals or groups of people, and all sorts of exploitation.
It is much easier to remain passive when you notice abuse, but it is a bad strategy. If you know about abuse but do nothing, you are partly responsible for allowing it to happen. You will carry a measure of guilt as long as you keep the abuser's secrets. Even if you deny the feeling and try to repress it, the guilt will prevent you from thinking positive. If you decide you have had enough of somebody's dishonesty, look at all the consequences and talk to an attorney if necessary. Then make your disclosure in a calm and reasoned state of mind. When you take a stand, you throw off the abuser's guilt and move on in your personal life. Along with saving yourself, you free the innocent people hurt by the abuse and cover-up.
Speaking out against slavery, abolitionist orator Frederick Douglass said, "Find out what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them." A hundred years later during the Civil Rights Movement, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetuate it."
Society still appreciates courage. The 2002 Time magazine Man of the Year award went to Cynthia Cooper, a former vice president from Worldcom, Sherron Watkins of Enron, and FBI agent Colleen Rowley. They were honored as The Whistleblowers for exposing corporate and government scandals. In 2004, similar honors went to the 9/11 families who pressured the government to investigate intelligence failures, and Army Reserve Specialist Joe Darby, who exposed torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Bagdad. Another renowned whistleblower and activist is Dr. Jeffrey Weigand, who told Congress and the world that U.S. tobacco companies chemically enhance cigarettes. He did not sit back and wait for politicians to pass laws to ban secondhand smoke. He went out and made sure it was done. Thanks to his efforts, cities, states, and whole countries have banned smoking in public places.
Anyone who says activism is dead in the twenty-first century must be suffering from denial. The largest international peace demonstrations in the history of the world took place in 2003. The war happened anyway, but demonstrations and public opinion polls made it clear that a majority of people in the world were opposed to the war. When enough people believe in a future of peace, and actively work to achieve it, it will happen.
Hate Cannot Solve Collective Problems
Hating a person or situation is a natural reaction to abuse. It may feel like the hate is justified. It may even feel like it will punish the abusers. However, if you allow this violent emotion to take over, you lock yourself into a negative viewpoint. Saying yes to hate means you see yourself in a struggle with a malevolent force that has the power to hurt you. If that's how you see it, then that reality for you. It is a negative attitude that will color your perceptions, influence your decisions, and your behavior.
A dose of righteous indignation is good to get you interested in a problem, but once you are serious, let the anger go. Hate is an unbecoming temperament. Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn said hatred makes your face look ugly. It just makes you feel miserable and old.
If you constantly complain about an abuser, argue with that person's admirers, and waste valuable time generating negative energy, it could mean you are caught in a struggle with your own projections. You can waste years hating the object of your projections, yet never see the personal problems you need to fix. Your drama over your projections may even agitate people who are working to solve the problems you see. If you feel burned out, take some time off. Turn off the news. Drop out of the discussion boards for a while. The world will go on without you. It will go on even better with one less hateful person.
You can make a difference, but you have to be in a good state of mind. Instead of hating a perpetrator or a problem, invest your energy in loving a solution. Do not worry that giving up your hate will excuse a situation or the people who created it. Your hate does not reflect on the situation in any way. It says more about you than about the object(s) of your hatred.
You do not have to forgive a perpetrator, especially if the abuse or the conspiracy to conceal the abuse is ongoing. Perpetrators need consequences that lead them to be judged and pay for their crimes. However, there is no point in hating the sinner.
If you clarify what you are for, then you can fill your consciousness with feelings of desire and love. This sends a message to your subconscious to give you inspiration and more opportunities to help. Changing your viewpoint is the first step toward solving any problem. If you ever find yourself starting to hate somebody and blame somebody for how bad the situation makes you feel inside, just make a note that you have some work to do to rebuild your self-esteem and self-reliance.
If you look for the positive, you will start to notice the people who are already doing something, you may start to hear about positive events and notice hopeful signs. These things would have happened anyway, but you would have missed them because you were looking for things to justify your negative viewpoint. If you tune into the most elevated part of the conversation, you will feel encouraged. You add momentum toward a solution.
Humor is a good replacement for hatred, because it ties your conscious and subconscious minds together in a moment of self-awareness that makes you smile and feel good. All collective problems have an ironic edge. If you can find it, you will feel a sense of relief. Humor breaks down social conditioning, because laughing about a problem builds bridges. Mark Twain said, "Against the assault of humor nothing can stand." Humor can illuminate secrets in a way that defeats hatred and shame.
The Medieval court jester served this purpose. A king's whole court might be afraid to tell him something, but the jester would act it out in a story or joke. A wise king would get the message and nobody's pride would be damaged. Political cartoons and stand up comedians serve this purpose in modern society. They know how to look for the irony in collective situations and entertain both sides. Cartoonists use symbols and words in their drawings that speak the truth to the subconscious mind. Comedians use stories to shine a light on the hidden truth behind a situation. Jesters say things that news anchors and the rest of us are afraid to put into words. They offer an alternative view of difficult situations. Fiction writers may also mirror collective social issues in the stories they write.
If we want to create a peaceful world, then we must set an example of what it is like to live by peaceful ideals. The peace paradigm does not make scapegoats or assign blame. It does not make you feel like you are a bad person because of something you said - some little truth that escaped from deep inside that hurt someone's feelings or got someone in trouble. You can let go of your guilt through the Twelve Step process of admitting what you did wrong and trying to make amends, and by changing your ways.
We're not there yet, but if we start now, someday Earth could become a paradise where there are no enemies, only people who make mistakes. Thoughtless, narcissistic behavior will always be part of human nature, but there are no people so bad that they deserve to be extinguished. To quote Mark Twain again: "There's a good spot tucked away somewhere in everybody. You'll be a long time finding it, sometimes." Some individuals will create more problems than others, but these people are just symptoms of the dysfunctional scapegoat and fear-based system we run on in the post-9/11 era. In the peace paradigm, humanity is one people and everyone is part of the whole. You cannot obliterate your enemies and still have a complete whole. The goal is to find a way to get along.
Enemies exist for a reason. There are not evil, but just damaged and split off parts of society. They are the outcasts who embody what we don't like about ourselves. They need to be integrated back into society. All people have value, even if they are suffering and spreading their pain to others. This does not mean cover up for dishonest or cruel people, but hold a compassionate vision of healing.
If everyone quit seeing each other as enemies, enemies will cease to exist. We have many, many people in our culture who are emotionally wounded. Just look at the numbers of child abuse victims, crime victims, divorces, deaths, wars, and other suffering in our world. It is only natural that people fight each other. It sometimes seems like hell. But if people would cooperate to help each other, or at least do no harm, then the level of violence would decrease.
When more people see themselves as part of the whole of humanity, it will become more common to see enemies with more empathy. A deep sense of compassion would be to see their suffering and why they behave as they do, and what bad results they are asking for through their behavior. Instead of letting your mind demean them even more, try to see them as part of humanity that is hurting. Your fate is tied in with the human race, so their suffering ultimately affects your ability to have a good life. Once you see your enemy as part of you, you can easily "defeat" them and prevent them from hurting you. You learn to use their energy as a lesson. If you are at peace with everyone in the world, you become a leader and a source of inspiration. You take a step toward a higher destiny. You will face collective problems realizing that everything happens for a reason. Usually the reason is repeated failure to learn from history. Solving problems does not depend on how well you hate, but on how well you learn from experience. A wise person acts from a genuine center of compassion, even in the face of provocation.
Learn to Live with Risk
Admittedly, there is hypocrisy in high places and potential disasters looming in the future. Terrible things have happened and can happen at any moment. It is easy to be negative. Risk will always exist; we will never make our world completely risk-free. The challenge is to look at the danger and decide how to handle it with courage. Reflecting on the increased perception of risk since 9/11, Fenton Johnson, author of Keeping Faith: A Skeptic's Journey (2003), puts forward the thesis that risk is the nature of reality. He said we can take all the necessary precautions to prevent terrorism, but "at some point, we must declare to ourselves that we prefer risk over fear, life with liberty and faith in each other over more government intervention." We can still plan a good future, despite all the challenges the new century presents.
There is a difference between wishing for something and being ready to receive it. If you believe a thing first, then it can happen more easily. Therefore, open mindedness is essential. A closed mind is closed down to faith, courage, and solutions. The best way to prevent world disaster is to start solving problems. The chaos will subside over time if people work together. Either future generations will thank the people from the twentieth century for our courage in turning things around, or they'll have to forget about any help from us and do it themselves when their time comes.
It is easy to lie to yourself and feel optimistic through wishful thinking. However, history will not be so kind. Either we will do something now to solve the problems or we will have to share in the blame for creating them. If we turn our backs on the future, the world could become more polluted, with fewer natural resources to go around, more poverty, and more wars. The world is good now, compared to how it might be in fifty or a hundred years. The dire consequences create an urgency to get started.
The first thing to do is choose the issues you want to take on. Locate organizations that are doing positive work in your field and get on their mailing lists. Note every victory. Write letters to the editor and elected officials. Even if the problems are extremely frightening, working on the solutions will make you feel better than if you stand on the sidelines as a critic, or worse, break down in despair. If there is nothing going on in your area of concern, start something.
During the McCarthy era, an all-time low for freedom in America, one middle-aged woman decided she had had enough. She set off on a walking pilgrimage in 1953 to preach a simple message: "Overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth, hatred with love." She wore a tunic that said "Peace Pilgrim" on the front and "25,000 miles on foot for peace" on the back. People called her Peace Pilgrim and she said, "I feel that's my name now - it emphasizes my mission instead of me." She was vegetarian and believed in new thought values.
Toward the end of her twenty-eight year mission, she spent more time lecturing and sharing her ideas with influential people than walking, but she continued to travel. Friends of Peace Pilgrim, Inc., a non-profit organization was already forming by the time she died tragically, but instantly, in a head on car collision in 1981. Her departure left a void in the hearts of those who loved her, but her work continues through the organization that publishes books on her life and teachings.
Peace Pilgrim is a national treasure and her journey was a remarkable story of courage. You cannot imitate what she did, but you can change your mind like she did. Peace Pilgrim was a vital part of the resistance movement of the 1950s. She said, "A few really dedicated people can offset the ill effects of masses of out-of-harmony people, so we who work for peace must not falter." She never told people to quit their jobs to follow her, but advised them to look for something they could do in their own lives to promote peace. She said anything you do in the name of peace adds to the total peace picture. She usually encouraged people to change their bad habits and settle their old feuds.
The McCarthy era is over, but irony and hypocrisy are back. People still fight over flags. The label "terrorist" has put people in jail and driven countries to war, just as the word "communist" did in the past. It is negative to ignore collective problems. Peace Pilgrim said,
"Collective problems must be solved by all of us, collectively, and no one finds inner peace who avoids doing his or her share in the solving of collective problems."
Rumors of the End of the World Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
The most effective way to crush hope is to give up. That is why the end of the world scenario is so destructive. Most religions have a dissolution story, just as they have a story of creation. That's natural, but taking the story literally, as though the end of the world is happening right now, makes it pointless to plan a positive future. Ever since the crucifixion of Jesus, religious figures have been predicting the end of the world. If you look for evidence that the end is near, you will find it. The subconscious will help you identify proof to support anything you want to believe.
Negative thinking is contagious and if enough people believe it is the end of the world, it actually makes the future more dim. Instead of fixing problems, people just hunker down and wait. Ernest Holmes wrote in the 1950s,
"We are at that place in scientific discovery where it is possible for this world to destroy itself. I am not worried about that, because if it does it does, and if it doesn't, it won't . . . . However, I do think it would be rather an inglorious final exit from this mundane universe and undoubtedly an unnecessary thing."
Many positive thinking authors addressed the frightening issues of the Nuclear Age. University of Georgia business professor David J. Schwartz wrote his positive thinking book, The Magic of Thinking Big (1959), to help ease people's fears. In the foreword, publisher Melvin Powers said,
"Man has justifiable reasons to believe that the bomb, at least with all its potential capacity to kill, will never be used [again], but the machines that he has created are already thrusting him aside and afflicting him with a sense of inferiority so pervasive that he feels powerless to save himself."
Powers said that we could either become paralyzed with fear or we could see the feeling of alienation itself as the enemy. We still must live, knowing that there is terrible hatred and violence in the world. Powers' message was that weakness and fear are self-imposed. He said it was a "paradoxical quality of human nature" that we tend to downgrade ourselves when we feel frightened of the enormous challenges in this world. Instead of feeling frightened, in the positive thinking paradigm people will feel a sense of duty to confront the problems.
The truth about our destiny is one of the themes in the Celestine Prophecy series, by author John Redfield. He offers a positive alternative to the "end of the world" scenario. His entire series was written to prevent negative thinking about the future. If you see a gloomy future, pick up one of John's books or watch the movie.
Review
If positive thinking catches on, the world could become a utopia. The more people who think positive, the better things will get.
Positive thinking can change just about anything in the future, as long as it is in the realm of physical possibility.
Along with better thinking habits, you can take direct action toward creating a better future. To start out, pick an issue, and learn everything you can about it.
Positive thinking includes standing up to aggressors, rather than remaining passive. Society appreciates people who stand up for the truth.
Hate cannot cure collective problems. If you are burned out, work on your own problems first, then return to the larger problems.
Trying to stop all sense of risk is irrational. There will always be danger in this world. Positive thinking helps you accept the risk in life.
There are numerous predictions about the end of the world, but these might be metaphorical or thousands of years in the future. Refuse to give in to fears about the end of the world.
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