With respect, I'd note that - despite your protestations - you also paint with too broad a brush. You may be correct in the aggregate but you overlook the thousands of individuals (tens of thousands?) who TRUST and believe in others around them with their lives and very being in a place where there is no theory but only the hard reality of the moment in fire or flood or hazardous environment. One may not particularly like an individual but when that person is part of your team searching above a fire without a hoseline you TRUST them, political and theoretical differences be damned.
Perhaps I've misunderstood your intent, and I'd willingly learn more.
Genuine trust, in the midst of personal difference, absolutely exists within our culture and well-beyond the scope of the theoretical. If you haven't experienced that, I can suggest a couple different venues where you might learn it, if so desired. Sadly, there would be a hell'uva personal cost in so doing, though it would make a difference.
Thanks, Bob. Your considered responses and insights are always deeply appreciated.
I understand that trust still exists at a micro level. I
HAVE experienced
that kind of trust. I do,
still, experience that level of trust. If I had not, I would not be able to recognize the value of such, and to evangelize for the value of such.
I'm just saying that person-to-person trust at that micro level is NOT sufficient. Trust at that level must be so profound and assumed as ooze into and suffuse the entire culture. We must have a general sense that we are all pulling on the same rope in the same direction.
Sadly, trust at the personal level is, more often than not, predicated on tribal affiliation. The idea that WE trust one another based on our commonly understood fight against THEM. WE share a mission that no one else understands. WE, therefore are important.
Alignment of force is the key to
any successful organization; from a sports team or platoon, to a company, to a nation, to a planet-sustaining global civilization. WE must educate to align all of OUR efforts toward what serves ALL of us; In such a way that I can trust somebody I've never met to have
my best interests in mind in the same fashion that I have
his best interests in mind. There is no US. There is no THEM. There is just OUR common goal.
In our current world "we" are rapidly. intentionally being directed into devolving into a humanity of distrust and hate. A humanity of "Fruit YOU! I've got mine!"
That will NOT end well. It never has. We have AMPLE historical evidence for that statement. Some will say, "well, yeah, that's just how it has always been". Well, for most of human history, it
had always been that we moved around the world -not too far- by walking. I'm NOT a believer in how it always
HAS been. I'm a believer in progress. I believe we CAN improve. We CAN do better. I have trust in that. I have faith in that.
The problem now is that "WE' peasants are intentionally being seduced into building almost ALL of our human systems based upon a false religion of selfish opportunism. We are intentionally and systematically being enticed to assume that ME matters, that GREED is good, and that therefore, we peasants must of course distrust and hate each other, and especially hate "those others". WE are being incited to hate "the other".
I'd argue that, instead of allowing a few rich folks to inculcate all of us poor people with the idea that getting and hoarding is the goal of a human life, we might much better teach the people of the world to trust each other in the same way we trust a sibling or a battle buddy. WE might do well to support EACH OTHER in pursuit of what what we all NEED, and give up believing in the futille fantasies of those who try to convince us to WANT, and to WANT, and to WANT...
Needs can be met. Wants are insatiable; that's their whole point.
Ultimately, we are ALL on the same side. We ALL live downwind and downstream of ALL the rest of us. There IS no hiding, regardless of how many energy chits (currency) one has collected.
We ALL live on a small, vulnerable, living and life-giving chunk of rock in the midst of an infinite, cold, harsh, empty place. We were, by most origin stories, given divine powers. I suggest we stop fighting, pooping where we eat, and putting ALL of us -and other species- at existential risk. Rather, let US assume a more appropriate manifestation of our god-like nature. If we don't, we're just neo-post monkeys hoarding Ferraris instead of bananas. And, if that's the case, we deserve just what we get.
Yet, if we don't change our ways... If we don't assume our divine nature... If we don't act smart... We will
still be guilty of the murder of billions and the murder of many, many other species, many of which we haven't even bothered to discover yet as, instead, the super wealthy spend OUR money trying to flee US for the "freedom" of Mars.
