If I’m So Sane the World Must Be Nuts!

Either I’m insane or the world is! Since I feel pretty much okay, I surmise that the world around me in certifiably insane.

Remember that old saw about the definition of insanity: continuing to do the same thing expecting a different result each time?  Well the collective consciousness we call society-as-a-whole appears to either insist upon or at least condone doing things we know don’t work. Yet we keep doing them, over and over again!

We resort to war when we know wars don’t resolve the conflict. We claim to want a better life for our children and heirs yet we continue sacrificing the environment and spoiling the ecosystem which future generations need for sustained life on Earth. We demand freedom, democracy and human rights yet we enslave ourselves with debt and a variety of addictions that rob us of free choice. We demand fairness and social justice but witness gross injustices without muttering a word of protest.

Most of the systems we have created are compromised. Their primary purpose is no longer what we created them to do but simply to survive. In systems lingo this means “not change” or remain stable. So the legal system may not be just. People may get ill in hospitals. Deaths increase when doctors take holidays. Democratic governments forget to serve the people and start serving themselves. Aggressive war decrees against drugs, terror and poverty results in escalating their use not diminishing them. Schools stunt learning in children. These are just a few of the examples of systems gone astray from their original purposes.

Our revered sciences tell us that we’re all interconnected yet we act as if we are quite separate from one another, almost alien to one another! We rush to fundamentalist viewpoints of all varieties despite knowing that it polarizes rather than integrates us. We engage the complex systems we have created with childish naiveté, as if the problems facing us can be solved simplistically. We are so in love with our technologies that we rush to put them to work for us without concern for the long-term effects they will have on life as we know it. If we possess the ability to do something, we feel compelled to do it! Discernment be damned, “progress” at all costs!

And, despite the feedback and the gross breakdowns we keep doing it over and over again!

Just who is insane here?

There’s been talk among modern mystics of a coming Age of Wisdom, when a more mature human surfaces to bring wise counsel to the widespread adolescence running amuck in the world today. But where are these wiser, more mature people who would bring sanity to today’s dominant cultures? Where are the elders who will show the rest of us what impact our insanity will have on us, our children and our children’s children?

Are these prophesized wise elders going to show up and save the day like modern day superheroes? Or are they already here, quietly pretending to be sane like the rest of us? Does this Age of Wisdom depend on people who haven’t yet arrived on Earth or is it living in potential within all of us, waiting to be called forth like the innate adult strength that resides in the older teenager, able to be tapped as soon as adulthood is fully embraced.

Are we all pretending everyone else is nuts so we can feel sane? Are we waiting for someone else to take the lead and save us from ourselves? Or, are we denying that we are the ones on whose shoulders our future depends? Are we avoiding the responsibility of invoking sanity and maturity in our world so our children and their children have a decent chance of lives worth living?

No wonder people choose to believe that God will rescue their butts, given the insanity that prevails in our world. No wonder others choose to believe that if they kill infidels they will be rewarded in the afterlife. Both of these extreme views rely on a next life to make the insanity in this life more tolerable, to justify an existence that is otherwise intolerable.

If the world is nuts, we might accept any beliefs that promise respite, consolations or temporary vacations from the insanity.

My choice is different. My choice is to ask us all to tap that mature adult that lives within each one of us and ask him or her to stand tall for a sane approach to affirming life here on Earth, now, transcending the dysfunctionality of the systems we have created, shaping a future that honors and respects all life, is spiritually fulfilling and environmentally sustainable.

Let’s all try sanity for a change and start acting more like the mature and wise adults we know we can be. Then our world will start looking better and the future will be much more promising.