Is There Hope For Today?

A fellow activist and an important friend of mine keeps telling me that the current system has to crash and burn. A system that is as unjust as ours cannot, nor should it, continue. If the system does crash and burn, then the people who pay the highest price are not those like me who is in the old stage of life. Those who will pay the highest price include my children, my current grandchildren, and any future grandchildren. So I hope that my friend is wrong.

However, the more I look at the world, the more my friend seems to be a prophetess. Those who started drunk with power are still guzzling their drinks. Many who speak truth to power do so out of jealousy. While others who speak truth to power are really calling for war by embracing tribalism. And all war does is to either further fortify the status quo or make the new top dogs into mirror images of the old ones.

The last great call for real change came from the nonviolent part of the Civil Rights Movement. For unlike past revolutions where the revolutionaries all too often became cheap knockoffs of those whom they replaced, the nonviolent part of the Civil Rights Movement invited their opponents to change sides and then when it was apparent that that would not occur, they only asked for laws that promoted equality and protected the marginalized from the actions of their oppressors.

But we have passionately embraced tribalism so that instead of inviting one's opponents to discuss and work together, we have demonized them to the point where we cannot possibly believe that we can collaborate with them. All sides cleave to tribalism. Many Leftist groups do as do many Liberal and Conservative groups. And the only possible outcome that can occur when the status quo is challenged from groups that hold on to tribalism is a competition that ends in a mutually destructive war.

Much to my despair due to the all too obvious future of our subsequent generations, my friend not only seems to be correct now, there is nothing on the horizon that could possibly change our current course. And that is despite the wisdom that both secular and religious prophets have shared with all of us. It's as if too many of us are too determined to self-destruct and that our present comforts here only serve as hallucinogens that blind us from seeing the future.