What it Takes To Change the World
If just one community, somewhere in the world, mastered the equality of voice and then decentralized power to incorporate widespread consent, it would open the doors to innovation and vision the likes of which this world has never seen.
Unfortunately, most communities are faced with power struggles, just like we see in nations, corporations, and just about all organizations. These power struggles get in the way of true vision and the potential within the people to thrive.
Let me be clear. A power struggle occurs when we organize into vertically integrated authority. When we centralize control, we make it harder for others to get involved. Even worse, consent is limited, which means innovation is stifled. New ideas, or dissenting voices, cannot penetrate the power structure and so decisions are made to protect power and not lift people.
When we organize power from the top down, over time we forget to see all that we still have in common and together. We first lose voice and then all power is lost. We follow rather than forge, we subject ourselves rather than support each other. Eventually we forget our cardinal rule, where-we-go-one-we-go-all.
If I am not making myself clear, it is because I am speaking in the context of raw ideas. Most of us connect not with ideas but with human narrative.
While trying to communicate why cultures collapse to a class of students, I had small groups in the class recreate Dante’s Inferno, the actual steps people make to fall into hell. I asked them to recreate Dante’s steps to fit the incremental decay of culture in our time. Here’s is what they came up with, with the first step down to the last.
Laziness leads to…
Lack of accountability, which leads to
Disrespect, which creates more
Exclusion, which justifies
Manipulative tendencies, which causes one to
Lose a sense of self, and this is
Negative, and all negative mindsets produce
Agressive anger and rage, and finally we are left with
Destruction
If you are aware of what is happening in our world, you can see how society is sliding down this path toward self-destruction. It is like an accident in slow-motion, you see everything happening in super up-close high definition but you cannot do anything to stop it. Or can you?
I have come to one conclusion in my life, and I guess you can call it a revised hope. There is still a way to change the world for the better, and the answer is not what many are looking for, but it is the truth. And here it is. It takes three people to change the world. It also takes a constant division of people in order to preserve voice, which I have talked about in other posts and more to come. But as far as needing three people, each of those three has a particular quality.
The first person has a vision
The second person encourages the vision
The third person runs with the vision.