Can We Change the World?
by Susan Scharfman
“All generalities are false, including this one.” – Dwight David Eisenhower
When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak designed the Apple I in 1976, conventional wisdom was that personal computers could not be marketed. Today encoding and distributing analog and digital information happens globally at hypersonic speed. In the age of Information conventional wisdom has become the default position.
While the military keeps pace with advances in Information Technologies to counter potential adversaries, the same demands exist in private enterprise, which frequently does business with Defense and other government agencies. With the mass media, public media, check it out in Wikipedia, there’s no shortage of Information. We should be the best informed public on the planet.
Information or Obfuscation
Smart people figured out that sound travels five seconds per mile while it only takes light one second to travel 186,000 miles. Through the auspices of nature’s sound and light we’re bombarded with Information--someone’s opinion about one thing or another, one person or another 24/7. Television and radio commentators speak with the authority they believe they are. Just ask them. Blog, tweet and chat them; listen to them in drive-time and call in or tweet your own opinions. Opinion/Information is king, but can it change the world? We cannot change the world, only our perception of it.
Independence of Mind
President Obama’s 2008 campaign rhetoric was to enlist the American people to pay close attention and be more involved. He said it was the only way we could make change happen. I think he meant we the people; not the President, not the government, not Wall Street. Graphic artist and children’s book illustrator Mary Engelbreit is known for many of her quotes. A favorite of mine is: “If you don't like something change it; If you can't change it, then change the way you think about it." Dr. Wayne Dyer writes: “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Granted, these suggestions are conceptual - pointers that light the way as opposed to following “conventional wisdom” over the cliff with the other lemmings.
Conventional: (1) lacking originality or individuality; (2) what is generally held to be acceptable at the expense of individuality and sincerity. —Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary
Attitude is Everything
The late Austrian Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl was in a situation he could not change. Tortured, beaten and starved while imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, everything was taken from him–family, possessions, human dignity. He realized the one thing they could not take from him was choice. Only he could choose how to react to the horror of his situation. He discovered that “attitude isn’t something, it’s everything.” Thousands of Frankl’s inmates gave up, laid down and perished. In realizing who was in control, he survived and wrote his memoirs, “Man’s Search For Meaning.” Actress Drew Barrymore attributes his books to changing her once dysfunctional life.
Know Who You Are
If you believe everything in life happens as it is meant to, you know the Divine Creator doesn’t make mistakes. The default position is the option of hopeless people who feel helpless, or do not pay attention to what’s happening in front of their eyes. When still alive and breathing, humans survive barbaric situations and natural disasters by how they react to a given circumstance.
In Victor Frankl’s case, he was about to go to the gas chamber when told to remove his clothes and put on dirty rags from a former victim. In one of the pockets, he found a tiny piece of paper with a scribbled prayer from Deuteronomy 6:4-9; it gave him a reason to live:
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts …”
The Soul of America
Are Americans that different today from those that gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 “to form a more perfect union?” The country was in worse shape then than now. The answer is that we are the same. America is the sum of its people in the form of one consciousness. We only have to look at the nation’s humanitarian response to the cataclysms around the world to know who we really are. When impassioned we respond from what we call our gut, but it is our soul. We do not need media or government or corporate entities to tell us how and what to think; to tell us who we are. We have only to act from our nature, our core, God, the Lord, our Divine essence.
Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle tells us, “You are not your mind.” Are you your body, your outer physical manifestation? While the body comes and goes, there is ‘something’ that is eternal. When you stop what you’re doing to be still and take some deep breaths, you energetically feel a certain silent ‘something’ within you that is vital. That aliveness is who you are. We give it labels like creative intelligence, consciousness or awareness because it is formless.
Are you your thoughts? Thoughts are mental noise that will always come and go like the clouds. You are like the sun and the sky, a ‘powerball’ of infinite intoxicating presence. You are who is watching and listening, the One eternal silent witness. Imbibing this presence, an enlightened America can do anything. The world will go on, but we can change the way we perceive it. There rests liberation and peace.
“All generalities are false, including this one.” – Dwight David Eisenhower
When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak designed the Apple I in 1976, conventional wisdom was that personal computers could not be marketed. Today encoding and distributing analog and digital information happens globally at hypersonic speed. In the age of Information conventional wisdom has become the default position.
While the military keeps pace with advances in Information Technologies to counter potential adversaries, the same demands exist in private enterprise, which frequently does business with Defense and other government agencies. With the mass media, public media, check it out in Wikipedia, there’s no shortage of Information. We should be the best informed public on the planet.
Information or Obfuscation
Smart people figured out that sound travels five seconds per mile while it only takes light one second to travel 186,000 miles. Through the auspices of nature’s sound and light we’re bombarded with Information--someone’s opinion about one thing or another, one person or another 24/7. Television and radio commentators speak with the authority they believe they are. Just ask them. Blog, tweet and chat them; listen to them in drive-time and call in or tweet your own opinions. Opinion/Information is king, but can it change the world? We cannot change the world, only our perception of it.
Independence of Mind
President Obama’s 2008 campaign rhetoric was to enlist the American people to pay close attention and be more involved. He said it was the only way we could make change happen. I think he meant we the people; not the President, not the government, not Wall Street. Graphic artist and children’s book illustrator Mary Engelbreit is known for many of her quotes. A favorite of mine is: “If you don't like something change it; If you can't change it, then change the way you think about it." Dr. Wayne Dyer writes: “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Granted, these suggestions are conceptual - pointers that light the way as opposed to following “conventional wisdom” over the cliff with the other lemmings.
Conventional: (1) lacking originality or individuality; (2) what is generally held to be acceptable at the expense of individuality and sincerity. —Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary
Attitude is Everything
The late Austrian Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl was in a situation he could not change. Tortured, beaten and starved while imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, everything was taken from him–family, possessions, human dignity. He realized the one thing they could not take from him was choice. Only he could choose how to react to the horror of his situation. He discovered that “attitude isn’t something, it’s everything.” Thousands of Frankl’s inmates gave up, laid down and perished. In realizing who was in control, he survived and wrote his memoirs, “Man’s Search For Meaning.” Actress Drew Barrymore attributes his books to changing her once dysfunctional life.
Know Who You Are
If you believe everything in life happens as it is meant to, you know the Divine Creator doesn’t make mistakes. The default position is the option of hopeless people who feel helpless, or do not pay attention to what’s happening in front of their eyes. When still alive and breathing, humans survive barbaric situations and natural disasters by how they react to a given circumstance.
In Victor Frankl’s case, he was about to go to the gas chamber when told to remove his clothes and put on dirty rags from a former victim. In one of the pockets, he found a tiny piece of paper with a scribbled prayer from Deuteronomy 6:4-9; it gave him a reason to live:
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts …”
The Soul of America
Are Americans that different today from those that gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 “to form a more perfect union?” The country was in worse shape then than now. The answer is that we are the same. America is the sum of its people in the form of one consciousness. We only have to look at the nation’s humanitarian response to the cataclysms around the world to know who we really are. When impassioned we respond from what we call our gut, but it is our soul. We do not need media or government or corporate entities to tell us how and what to think; to tell us who we are. We have only to act from our nature, our core, God, the Lord, our Divine essence.
Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle tells us, “You are not your mind.” Are you your body, your outer physical manifestation? While the body comes and goes, there is ‘something’ that is eternal. When you stop what you’re doing to be still and take some deep breaths, you energetically feel a certain silent ‘something’ within you that is vital. That aliveness is who you are. We give it labels like creative intelligence, consciousness or awareness because it is formless.
Are you your thoughts? Thoughts are mental noise that will always come and go like the clouds. You are like the sun and the sky, a ‘powerball’ of infinite intoxicating presence. You are who is watching and listening, the One eternal silent witness. Imbibing this presence, an enlightened America can do anything. The world will go on, but we can change the way we perceive it. There rests liberation and peace.