And I thought: what, within their lives, makes them grow as people? What do we have in place, within our system, to encourage the growth of the people who create the ideas which are digested, regurgitated, and fed to the masses?
When I watch a football game, if there is a clear pattern of dominance on one side or the other, I assume I can predict the outcome, and most of the time I am right (unless frickin’ FSU wakes up in the second half, and runs a TD in from their own end zone).
When you look at any large scale pattern, it is informed by the principles which inform it, by the institutional patterns, the default assumptions, default decisions, biases, tendencies, gravity. Within Chaos can always be found orders, and sometimes one or only a few Orders.
The people at top seem to have jettisoned moral virtue, common sense decency. They seem animated by a recidivism into the intrigues and crimes of the past. All that we have built, morally, they want to wash away, destroy.
Do you believe that our power elites have in mind for us universal freedom, universal prosperity, and an on-going march in the direction of learning as societies and as a world how to give and receive uncritical, unrestrained, sincere love? Do you think this?
Or do they use this rhetoric in pursuit of tawdry, old goals, of the sort the kings of old pursued in substantially every nation on Earth, goals of temporal power, pride of status, unique privileges and rights, and wealth?
How do we build a society in which the best among us are preoccupied on a daily basis with cognitive cleansing, moral purification, self exploration, and personal growth?
This is a good question, and that is a start.