maeghan wrote:I hate to say this, but lately I've been questioning DW.
I would imagine that all honest people working towards the common good of our race would appreciate and even invite questioning because they would not want to hide anything, they would want to get their facts as accurate as possible, and they would want to adapt to anything new they learn in order to get closer to their end-result goals of making a positive impact on humankind.
I've always questioned daniel but not with the purpose of doubting in the credibility of his findings but with the purpose of trying to make a picture of what exactly is going on. We all have different perspectives, experiences, and ways of getting to answers. The more angles we cover a subject with, the clearer the picture. I would say daniel is pretty good at showing different angles of a picture. My questioning is usually with regard to a single angle here or there but no amount of questioning changes what's really going on.
DW seems to focus on certain angles of the same picture that others do not feel comfortable with. In fact, some of those angles, we would even think of as blindspots, not perspectives. But perhaps if we've been in DW's shoes, walked his walk, we would understand him better. What we say and do isn't always a product of the here and now, but more often it is our past that is speaking and acting out in the present. I've found a lot of practical value from what I've learned from DW, and what I can't use, I simply don't pay attention to much. However valid or invalid his angle is. The only stuff that matters is what has practical use to us.
I think we all share an ideal, and that ideal is the tangible achieved maturity of the human race. We might not agree on how to get there, or what we need to get there, but we know for a fact that we can only do it:
1. Together
2. With open eyes and open minds
3. With work
Its interesting to me that even anyone that buys into some external savior or some big event, are always doing stuff to try to improve themselves - like meditating. But only being focussed on self is dangerous, we know where that leads.
But there's a very fine difference between fluffy pink unicorns riding on rainbows and practical idealism. In practical idealism (which I understand daniel applies?), one looks at endless possibilities(goals, ideals), looks at what stops us from achieving them (obstacles), looks at how to achieve them(pathway), and does something about it. And as soon as anyone does something about anything, they find that no one can do it alone.
Practical idealism sets a vision on the future but realizes that cooperation is key - and everything required to make cooperation work.
A proper philosophy is one of understanding dependence and its place (like children growing up), understanding independence and its place (a mature adult), and understanding interdependency and its place (e.g. a family, organization, group working together).
Inproper understanding of dependence leads to irresponsibility and abdication of one's willpower and ability to contribute (like how religion enslaves people), inproper understanding of independence leads to self-centered thinking and in the extreme violent rebellion. Interdependence isn't understood when perverted into co-dependence where there is just a constant down-spiral.
I don't think DW is at a stage where there's inproper understanding of anything of the above. Yes many of us feel that there's a lot more practical value that DW can contribute, but in the end, he is contributing, he is helping, and he's working hard to do it. In the end, its people's own responsibility to know where to draw lines and when to move on to something more useful for them in their personal journey. But many people aren't ready for that yet and DW is a great source of food for those people.
Even myself I'm struggling to digest some of the stuff here. I like to hear facts and new perspectives on things, but I need hope more. If it feels like something takes away my hope, I really dislike it. But its important to know when my hope is in something false, because there's only one thing worse than having no hope - and that's putting hope in something false. Unfortunately, one cannot discover false hope without the willingness to lose and let go of that hope.
How many people are ready for that? If we've even got people here that feels like this, imagine the masses. Its too much to handle.
Hope sells better. Especially easy hope.
But its harder to sell a hope thats not easy. Its harder to sell hope in cooperation. Hope in rapport.
The reason we can't progress as a human race without rapport is because we are interdependent in many ways. But how many humans even understand interdependence? How many humans will have the ability to recognize what the point of rapport is? Most humans simply want to focus on independence. On freedom.
"don't sell me hope if i have to work for it, because that implies I'm not independent. I want to be independent."
We have a long way to go to our golden age. I don't think its around the corner anymore.
