Changing the mental blocks to change

As I read all the wonderful thought provoking comments on this thread…all I could think was “WOW”…and how glad I am to be here and a part of PlanetPOV. Seriously. The thoughts and opinions expressed are so fantastic. I especially appreciated the back and forth between Chaz and Choicelady. Those comments, although they started out with some animosity turned into something really great to read and ponder.

WE all are products of our own upbringing, experiences, genetics, family, social structure, education, sex, ethnic background, etc. As a result we all have the opportunity to present divergent opinions and perspectives on subjects such as this one.

Change is often hard for most, and changing ideas that are so ingrained and in which so many have a vested interest in is quite difficult.

For myself, I have struggled with change. Even if or when, I didn’t even realize I was fighting the changes on a subconscious level. I thought and believed I was more open to the change than I actually was…it was a real eye opener, to accept my own limitations in this endeavor.

I think in some ways many don’t really think about it, they just ‘do’, do what they are expected to do and what they themselves believe they should do, based on many indoctrinated concepts. I think that inhibits the ability for many to really change their ways of thinking or even their ideas about life.

Anyway…this was a fabulous thread. SO much food for thought!

This story seems apropos. I heard it on “House” and followed up.

In 1844, there was a preacher in Vermont who told his followers that the world was coming to an end on April 18. His followers gave away all their belongings and they all stood together in a field waiting for the Rapture. When that didn’t happen, the preacher said he must have made a mistake, and he recalculated that the REAL end of the world was actually on October 22.

On that day, he had even more followers waiting in the field for the End. The sun rose on the morning of October 23 like any other day, and October 22 came to be called “The Great Disappointment.” One follower wrote that “Our fondest hopes and expectations were blasted, and such a spirit of weeping came over us as I never experienced before… We wept, and wept, till the day dawn.”

The preacher never gave up and he and his growing number of followers remained convinced that the End was nigh. Instead of being discredited as a crank, this preacher became famous and popular. After each false prophesy, his congregation grew.

His name was William Miller, and he is credited for founding several major religious denominations, including Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Advent Christians. Later movements found inspiration in Preacher Miller’s emphasis on Bible prophecy. His own followers are known as Millerites.

So go figure.

Chazmania your article makes perfect sense to me, but we all have that cognitive dissonance thing going. The pragmatists wont even allow you to bring up those ideas without writing you off as lost. We often encounter that “surely we can all agree,” to be followed by; the system isn’t all bad, it would be too painful, it’s not the system it’s the people running it, we’re better than them, it can’t be done, and my favorite ‘every day we get a little closer to making this shit taste good.’

It is stunning to me how many folks aspire to humanism but are afraid of the stigma, being seen as weak or prey. Myths and cons fit better into their packaged education and hope only to be included as the chosen ones. “Unsociable social beings” we are, lord forgive me for quoting Kant, ‘just give me more time, less suffering’.

As a kid I bought into Leary’s “tune in, turn on and drop out,” not the drug fueled cliche of charlie sheen but more like ‘listen, act, dissent.’ It didn’t give me the American Dream, had brief moments of empowerment and as I loose my value as a wage slave it is scary sometimes. I know plenty of creative types that went with me but they never had the fear making rent, worry about status or safety, and most of them seem happy and fulfilled so I still have hope. Revolution at the level you are talking about can happen peacefully but for most it will be painful, change seems to be a survival tool not a choice.

chaz, Man is an aggressive animal. Man is also a greedy animal. Of course, the whole of mankind is not, there are some very decent people in this world.
Aggression, greed and the desire for power is what keeps the cycle of violence alive in the world. And I put most of the blame on governments. Greedy, power mad leaders that place no value on human life, other than their own.

“No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion–it is an evil government.”–Hoffer

Great article. Sadly I can’t watch the video…technical issues.

Change is difficult for most people, and especially if they are so invested in their own current view of the paradigms they have been subjected to and have been indoctrinated into believing.

I couldn’t agree more, providing the information and educating is key to making REAL change possible.

SO many thoughts here….I’m not sure how to really get the masses to SEE that the current system isn’t working and that paradigms MUST change.

Thought provoking, chaz – but there is an assumption I’d question in the notion we spend “more time” killing one another and a second that we need a massive realignment in thinking.

History is not linear. It’s not “in every day and every way we’re getting better and better”. We have waxed and waned as people over thousands and thousands of years. We also have “combined and uneven development” in which we, Americans especially, are taught ONLY the history of the top 7 percent or so of the world’s reality. Back in the 60s British, French, and some US historians began digging into
micro history of everyday life. The results were mind boggling. While yes wars were waged over tiny amounts of trade and economic issues, from feudalism to industrial capitalism, everyday life for the majority was remarkable in its egalitarianism, fairness, and absence of violence.

Should anyone be interested, I’d refer folks to Fernand Braudel, E.P. Thompson, Joan Thirsk, Heidi Wunder, et al. for these remarkable (and fairly readable) articles and books on this aspect of very basic history. This 600-year period was graced by a view of economics that asserted the primary, ONLY, reason for economic activity was to create the greatest self sufficiency for the largest number of people. Thompson has denoted the process as the operation of a ‘moral economy’ in which the value of sustainability for the majority was primary.

This view is the antidote to “old, rich, white men” history. That’s the tip of the iceberg and commands very little of human resources until the centralization of governmental power (late 18th c.) and the rise of centralized economic power (early 19th c.) Then all bets are off and yes, we ALL get dragged into the maw of the machine, political and economic.

In our contemporary time, however, what you’re seeing in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya etc. is a manifestation of what Paul Hawken calls, “Blessed Unrest”. It is a GLOBAL movement made of tiny to moderate-sized local movements to take BACK the moral economic authority from this global machine. It’s making surprising headway, and I recommend his book of this title highly.

In other words, while we yuppies and middle class folks may indeed need a “vision cleaning” and a reorganization of perspective, those we rarely see have already done and are doing it. There is once again a combined and uneven development, and it may be the better formally educated that are lagging this time. But it IS happening everywhere. And as with all history, there will be a tipping point at which time the global bloat of corporate infrastructure will become unsustainable to the point that small and more efficient local sustainability will prevail. It is the record of history – smaller IS more beautiful – we have no reason to believe cannot and will not occur – because it already is.

For guidance look DOWN the economic ladder rather than up or even sideways. Our path to liberation of the mind, body, polity, and labors is being forged by people we barely notice. We’d be wise to take notice and learn from them.

I like your drift. The condition of humanity is one of being ‘lost in thought’, and we have to get out of our minds and our comfort zones, see the world as it really is, without fear, and consciously evolve to change what we don’t like in what we see. I believe one of the keys to this actually happening will be when the planet fully wakes up to what really happened on 9/11. That is happening, and won’t be stopped. The hypnotic trance most of us were put into on that day is wearing off – for me that came about seven years back.

We can do a whole lot better than we are doing, and we shall. Humanity Rocks – we just don’t think we do, through religious, cultural conditioning, and so we act that out. Time to wake up and smell the coffee:)