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Change your focus, change the world [1]

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Date: 2023-03-21  

The most valuable thing about us is our attention.

Culture is where we put our attention. We might want to be peaceful people, but if we only pay attention to violence, we help to maintain the culture of violence.

The mainstream news media features conflict to keep our attention. Our attention attracts advertisers. The media talk about divides without letting both sides present their own arguments, never mind presenting alternative views or ways in which both sides agree.

Constant exposure to conflict in the media makes us think war is inevitable, part of our natures. Yet most people live most of our lives in peace. Wherever people feel safe in one another’s presence, there is peace. On the beach, in the park, at a concert: we live in peace.

When we can work with people we like, on things we all want to make happen, even through disagreements - there is peace. We explain ourselves, and listen while others explain themselves. Sometimes, when we have heard those explanations, we change our views.

We know how to make peace. We know how to take care of one another. What we haven’t figured out yet is how to organize ourselves for survival. Clearly, national boundaries are a poor way to organize ourselves. Fighting over who owns land leads to war, and war will only destroy us. We need peace for humanity to endure on this planet. We need to identify with humanity, not nations.

We can agree on the direction we need to go: building more housing and fewer weapons; more sharing, less hoarding; greening up in every way possible. But we can’t depend on people with power to lead us there. Such people got their power through the present system, so they don’t want to change it. The present system is the culture of violence and greed that seems to be running away with us like a wild horse.

Yet this culture, and every culture, is constructed from our imaginations. Culture is what we look at, what we buy, everything we do, every interaction with people around us: our shared dream of the world.

Money and power are not fit goals for a human life. We can do better than that, if we don’t lose hope. Without hope for human survival, what’s left to aim for but money and power, to enjoy this doomed culture while it lasts?

The biggest lie is that we can’t change our destructive culture. In fact we change culture every day. Where we direct our attention determines the future course of culture. It’s our attention that will create trends of peace, compassion, and greening up – or maintain their opposites.

If humanity does survive this suicidal culture, it will be by the skin of our teeth, human-style, with maximum drama. It will be at the last possible moment, with the gang all finally working together to change the culture.

Do your part. Watch where you put your attention. Change your focus, change the world.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/21/2159455/-Change-your-focus-change-the-world

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