VOICES #2
Because water pollution is a uniquely local blight, primary responsibility for solving the problem lies not with the Federal government but rather must be assumed and exercised, as it has been, by State and local governments.
The rivers and streams of our country are a priceless national asset. I, accordingly, favor wholeheartedly appropriate Federal cooperation with States and localities in cleaning up the Nation’s waters and in keeping them clean.
Polluted water is a threat to the health and well-being of all our citizens. Yet, pollution and its correction are so closely involved with local industrial processes and with public water supply and sewage treatment, that the problem can be successfully met only if State and local governments and industry assume the major responsibility for cleaning up the nation’s rivers and streams.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower 1960
There is good in the world and it is worth fighting for.
If America is going to survive—and that’s never an assumption to be taken for granted in a republic—we will have to find a way to restore the bonds of community that give individuals a place in the world where they can enjoy the love of family and friends, express their talents, and serve others in fulfilling ways.
We want an America with free speech, religion, press, assembly, and protest—even for those we disagree with. In spite of the endless disagreements that flow from diversity, we want to be free to build local communities where we shoulder one another’s burdens in compassion and generosity.
If we really want to be happy, we must plant roots and tend them. That means, in large part, thinking carefully how to get the best out of the technology that liberates us from inconveniences—without letting our devices cut us off from the richest parts of life.
We’re in crisis.
Senator Ben Sasse “Them: Why We Hate Each Other—and How to Heal”
We’re the richest, most comfortable, most connected people in human history.
And yet . . .
In the midst of extraordinary prosperity, we’re also living through a crisis. Our communities are collapsing, and people are feeling more isolated, adrift, and purposeless than ever before. We’re not talking much about this crisis. Nonetheless, we all have a sense that something’s not right. Our marriages aren’t satisfying, our kids seem hypnotized. We quietly feel that adulthood has been a disappointment. We sense that somewhere along the way, everything went off the rails.
We’re in crisis.
Senator Ben Sasse “Them: Why We Hate Each Other—and How to Heal”
It turns out that the massive economic disruption that we entered a couple of decades ago and will be navigating for decades to come is depriving us psychologically and spiritually at the same time that it’s enriching us materially. The same technology that has liberated us from so much inconvenience and drudgery has also unmoored us from the things that anchor our identities. The revolution that has given millions of Americans the opportunity to live like royalty has also outpaced our ability to figure out what community, friendships, and relationships should look like in the modern world. As reams of research now show, we’re richer and better-informed and more connected—and unhappier and more isolated and less fulfilled.
There is a terrible mismatch here.
Senator Ben Sasse “Them: Why We Hate Each Other—and How to Heal”
Goodness is the deepest truth about the human story.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Charles Dickens Tale of Two Cities
“In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen.
The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.”
George Orwell 1984
“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.”
George Orwell 1984
iPresident of the United States…an alternative reality platform powered by voices where humanity intersects with technology to drive positive change.
An Auschwitz survivor observed:
“I am constantly amazed by man’s inhumanity to man.”
“A country is considered the more civilized the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak and a powerful one too powerful.”
“It is, therefore, necessary to be suspicious of those who seek to convince us with means other than reason, and of charismatic leaders: we must be cautious about delegating to others our judgement and our will. Since it is difficult to distinguish true prophets from false, it is as well to regard all prophets with suspicion. It is better to renounce revealed truths, even if they exalt us by their splendor of if we find them convenient because we can acquire them gratis. It is better to content oneself with other more modest and less exiting truths, those one acquires painfully, little by little and without shortcuts, with study, discussion, and reasoning, those that can we verified and demonstrated.”
“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”
Primo Levi – If This Is a Man
A visionary that saw the internet and social media platforms as a threat to serious thought wrote:
“Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so…full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.”
Why? The televisor is ‘real.’ It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be, right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn’t time to protest, ‘What nonsense! ‘”
Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451
There is a belief that worthwhile knowledge requires effort and patience.
“When I was a boy my grandfather died….He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them just the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. I’ve never gotten over his death. Often I think, what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands. He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.”
“We’re going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we’re doing, you can say, We’re remembering. That’s where we’ll win out in the long run.”
Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451
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Child trafficking is a crime – and represents the tragic end of childhood. It refers to the exploitation of girls and boys, primarily for forced labor and sexual exploitation. Children account for 27% of all the human trafficking victims worldwide, and two out of every three child victims are girls.
Sometimes sold by a family member or an acquaintance, sometimes lured by false promises of education and a “better” life — the reality is that these trafficked and exploited children are held in slave-like conditions without enough food, shelter or clothing, and are often severely abused and cut off from all contact with their families.
Children are often trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation or for labor, such as domestic servitude, agricultural work, factory work and mining, or they’re forced to fight in conflicts. The most vulnerable children, particularly refugees and migrants, are often preyed upon and their hopes for an education, a better job or a better life in a new country. Learn more about child trafficking…
Save the Children
As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves.
Seven Dangers to Human Virtue, also known as the Seven Social Sins or Seven Blunders,
- Wealth without work
- Pleasure without conscience
- Knowledge without character
- Commerce without morality
- Science without humanity
- Worship without sacrifice
- Politics without principle
Mahatma Gandhi
A fearless campaigner for the rights and dignity of all people stated:
If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. We need not wait to see what others do.
If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.
It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there’ll be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.
Mahatma Gandhi
All of the virtues depend upon truth, and truth depends upon them all. Final truth in this world is unattainable, but its pursuit leads the individual away from unfreedom. The temptation to believe what feels right assails us at all times from all directions. Authoritarianism begins when we can no longer tell the difference between the true and the appealing. At the same time, the cynic who decides that there is no truth at all is the citizen who welcomes the tyrant. Total doubt about all authority is naïveté about the particular authority that reads emotions and breeds cynicism. To seek the truth means finding a way between conformity and complacency, towards individuality.
Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom
Central Park, New York City has a statue of a man who decided to use his gifts and talents for the good of society.
“The great event of this year has been…through reading Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs, a sense of my prophethood returned. I felt once more the sacredness of the power placed in my hands, to be used on behalf of the poor, the outcast and the oppressed. It was a gift of renewed faith. I clearly and decidedly grasped the idea that everything is given to one to be employed on behalf of those that have nothing, and that only by the patient laborious unselfish labor of the good can the bad be extinguished, and that my mission was to labor unceasingly, by all methods and in every season, to help on the social regeneration of the people of the world.”
W.T.Stead – Journals – 1875
Researcher Owen Mulpetre documents that the industrial revolution introduced capitalism that had replaced paternalism, corruption and immorality flourished, and poverty was more chronic than at any other time in history. A man fighting for justice stated:
“I felt the sacredness of the power placed in my hands, to be used on behalf of the poor, the outcast and the oppressed.”
“Stylish houses of ill-fame, could only be supported by men of wealth and respectability. It was their “reckless passion” to which “the ruin of the poor unfortunate is due.”
“Society…outwardly, indeed, appears white and glistening, but within is full of dead men’s bones and rottenness”.
W.T.Stead – Journals – 1875
Exploring real issues – real people. Study the past to see the future. Let’s think– connect- change.
A contrarian author that believes fiction is what changes minds…. writes:
“In an era of weaponized sensitivity, participation in public discourse is growing so perilous, so fraught with the danger of being caught out for using the wrong word or failing to uphold the latest orthodoxy in relation to disability, sexual orientation, economic class, race or ethnicity, that many are apt to bow out. Perhaps intimidating their elders into silence is the intention of the identity-politics cabal — and maybe my generation should retreat to our living rooms and let the young people tear one another apart over who seemed to imply that Asians are good at math.”
“They still want credit for being tolerant, without taking the rap for the fact that you only ‘tolerate’ what you can’t stand.”
― Lionel Shriver, The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047
“In the days when money was backed by its face value in silver or gold, there were limits to how much wealth could flow around the world. Today, it’s virtual money that the bank lends into existence on a computer screen. “And unless the economy continually expands, there is no new flow of money to pay back that money, plus interest.” . . . “As it stands now, if banks start loaning money more slowly than they collect debts, the quantity of money in the economy goes down, and it’s impossible to pay back debts. So we get defaults on houses . . . our economy plunges into misery and unemployment. Under our current monetary system, the only alternative to that is endless growth. So one absolute thing we have to change is the whole nature of the monetary system. . . . we deny banks the right to create money.” . . . There’s a challenge with that solution. “You’re trying to take the right to create wealth away from some of the wealthiest people on the planet.”
Alan Weisman, Countdown: Our Last Best Hope for a Future on Earth?
Professor Anthony Andrady taught:
“Since the idea of packaging is to protect food from bacteria, wrapping leftovers in plastic that encourages microbes to eat it may not be the smartest thing to do. But even if it worked, or even if humans were gone and never produced another nurdle, all the plastic already produced would remain— how long? Egyptian pyramids have preserved corn, seeds, and even human parts such as hair because they were sealed away from sunlight with little oxygen or moisture. Our waste dumps are somewhat like that. Plastic buried where there’s little water, sun, or oxygen will stay intact a long time. That is also true if it is sunk in the ocean, covered with sediment. At the bottom of the sea, there’s no oxygen, and it’s very cold. We don’t know much about microbiology at those depths. Possibly anaerobic organisms there can biodegrade it. It’s not inconceivable. But no one’s taken a submersible down to check. Based on our observations, it’s unlikely. So we expect much-slower degradation at the sea bottom. Many times longer. Even an order of magnitude longer. An order of magnitude—that’s 10 times—longer than what? One thousand years? Ten thousand?”
It was Nobel Prize winner, scientist Paul Ehrlich that stated: “Apart from stemming consumption, the most intractable puzzle is why health decisions about Mother Nature—are made by politicians, not by scientists who know how critical her condition is. It’s the immoral equivalent of insurance company accountants making decisions about our personal health.”
Alan Weisman, The World Without Us