Life after dreams

In my life I have watched Rainforest decline accelerate, 

Along with nearly every other environmental threat that we knew about. 

And so with it our story of the people, the one we live by became ever more threadbare

It became harder and harder to believe in fairies

Harder and harder to believe that all is well

That life is getting better and better year by year

When I was younger our mass media still protected that story

But in the last thirty years the incursions of reality have punctured that story. 

We no longer believe our storytellers.

We do not believe our elites. 

We don’t believe the politicians 

We don’t believe the doctors

We don’t believe the professors 

We don’t believe the bankers

We don’t believe the technologists.

Nor the businessmen.

All of them imply that everything is under control.

And we know that it is not. 

We can see every day that it is not so

We have lost the vision of the future we once had.

Most people today have no vision of the future at all. 

And if they do it is often not a positive one

This is new for our society. 

Fifty or a hundred years ago, most people agreed on the general outlines of the future. 

We thought we knew where society was going. 

Even the Marxists and the capitalists agreed on its basic outlines.

A paradise of mechanized leisure and scientifically engineered social harmony.

With spirituality either abolished entirely or relegated to a materially inconsequential corner of life that happened mostly on Sundays. 

Of course there were dissenters from this vision, but this was the general consensus.

Today that is gone.

Today we need to redefine and create a more useful story

One that we can actually believe in.


At times of transition and uncertainty, we must learn to think in
new and unorthodox ways.

We must have the courage to examine and challenge bequeathed dogmas. 

Recently some thinkers have started to look critically at the very idea of efficiency. 

The current political and business mantra

Is efficiency such an unquestioned virtue that we must bow to it regardless of
the consequences?

To many it is clear that this is not so. 

Less efficiency would be beneficial for society at large.

This is becoming more and more clear

This importantly for all those who must spend their lives under its yoke and for the countless individuals who have little choice.

The unrestrained pursuit of efficiency has led to the destruction of tolerance

To the exhaustion of society and the elimination of many jobs at one end of society

And, at the other end to the accumulation of undeserved riches. 

The diminishment of efficiency would benefit both ends of the society in the long run.

Many will find these arguments startlingly new and unacceptable. 

But we are in the period of new thinking and challenging of old dogmas. 

The whole perspective on what is good for society must be examined and changed. 

The old criterion or rather dogma that the Bottom Line should rule
supreme is a pernicious piece of thinking.

It is evil in fact as it all too often overrides all other considerations.

It should be eliminated in favor of something more worthy of human wisdom.

Intelligent human understanding is:

Love each other and not the diabolical Bottom Line.

Yes it is time to become involved on informing yourself as to our options

And yes we have options

We need not hurtle mindlessly to our destruction

We have choices.