EDUCATION
An evaluation of our beliefs is always healthy and should be ongoing.
- As we mature, our knowledge grows, our beliefs evolve, and our priorities change.
- That which is antiquated and dysfunctional must be discarded.
That is normal and healthy.
At one time our planet seemed like an immense and limitless place (in contrast to the less than a speck on the blueprint of existence that we now know it to be).
- There was true separation between continents and peoples.
- Huge territories were undiscovered.
- Activities and consequences were confined within definable boundaries.
- As we grew and evolved, we moved beyond self-defined limits, reached out, explored, connected, and interacted.
- We continued doing this as we became increasingly sophisticated in our abilities to travel, communicate, and trade.
Today, we are a global community.
It is clear that the fate of all living things is interconnected.
- We have become responsible for that fate.
- We are guardians of life itself.
We live at a pivotal time: We stand to either learn and benefit from our experiences and knowledge or ignore both, suffer, and eventually perish.
It is essential that we embrace a new way of relating, sometimes referred to as a “shift.”
Whereas the first lesson of evolution was one of conflict, today’s is one of kinship.
We need to evolve into something more than we’ve been.
We are called upon to make a crucial decision: choose either a world divided against itself—engaged in power struggles between its parts—or one whose richly diverse elements work together for their mutual benefit.
The choice is obvious.
It is important that we focus on our common interests rather than on stubborn positions that lead only to conflict.
- Once our interests are defined, options for mutual gain can be explored and developed.
- We can then address the issues that benefit everyone rather than cling to old religious or political ideologies that separate us.
- If we hope to transcend our divisiveness, our attention must be directed at the interdependence of diverse interests.
More than the outcome of any debate, we need to protect this kind of approach and process.
Until we do, we are ill-fated.
We no longer have the luxury of ignorance or greed.
There are too many of us–and adding in excess of 1,500,000 more of us every seven days–on a very tiny planet with fragile ecosystems.
- We now exist in a world community where problems anywhere have the potential to affect anyone anywhere.
- Ultimately, the problems of cities and the environment, of production and consumption, and of crime, health, and world peace are educational problems.
Our task, for which our age is well suited, is education.
An educated and enlightened public will move from alienation to community, from despair to hope, from idleness to action, from ignorance to knowledge, and from apathy to concern.
- People will return to the political process.
- As they do, politics will return to the people.
- Ecological balance will be integrated with human productivity, social welfare will be tempered by individual responsibility, and localism and globalism will share equal importance.