Changes in Society
No matter what you think or feel, this form of society is going to end. No matter whether you or I or any of us do anything about it, this form of society will end. It’s a little like evolution. Evolution “experiments,” “tries” things, and things keep changing. We’ve had different forms of societies, and new forms will keep developing, even if no one is thoughtful. It’s an unthinking process, like evolution. Our particular form of society has created conditions that threaten its survival.
What we get to do in this circumstance is think and act. We get to Co-Counsel so that we can think ever better about it, figure things out, and plan what we’d like to see happen. We get to reach for enough people and help interrupt enough bad policies so that there’s a chance, when a critical moment arrives and changes can happen, that the changes won’t be unthinking and destructive.
We get to play this role. It isn’t that change waits for us—rather it’s that the better we do our work, the more likely it is that thinking people will get to shape the changes, making them less destructive and more human. Changes are going to happen. And the interesting part is that we get to see how big an influence we can have in making them thoughtful. We are doing this as we go out and spread the tools of RC and give people the chance to lead good, human lives.
Maybe the next big change will be the one that is thoughtfully accomplished. It will be the first big change since a sizeable number of people have figured out how to help people really think consistently. Maybe that will be enough. Maybe it will take more. But it’s inescapable that at some point the change will be thoughtful. An interesting part of the development of the universe is that a piece of it is getting more and more complex. We are on that wave of that developing complexity. Rigid societies do not continue that process well. They are fixed, rigid forms.
This developing complexity encourages intelligence, and I don’t see any way it can be derailed. This process, evolving around us, is making things more interesting, more interconnected and complex. Rather than believing the worry caused by distress, we can instead be enthralled and fascinated. We can decide which challenges to take on.
All we need is to be alive and thinking. That, by itself, makes things inherently hopeful for us, and probably for a much larger piece of the universe as well.
We simply have much enjoyable work to do in ending, as quickly as possible, the influence of distress-caused irrationality on us, other humans, and our societies.