Changing the world forever for better

YOU, WRIGHTSTOWN, AND HUMANITY ARE EVOLVING
by Eric Chaet

Like you and I, Wrightstown is evolving — in an evolving region, nation, species, and world — not just an evolving economy.

Of course, each of us, and those making decisions for the Village of Wrightstown, for instance, and for the surrounding townships, and for the various agricultural and commercial enterprises, and households, hope to be in better economic shape, rather than worse, next week, month, year, decade.

But if we have more money then, but aren’t physically, mentally, or spiritually healthy, if we have become entangled in commitments that are draining us of energy, of love, of the possibility of joy, and hurting a lot of people around us and a lot of what we depend on — for instance, the atmosphere, waters, soils, sanitary space, spaces where ideas can be developed and exchanged freely, spaces where beauty calms and nourishes us — even if we have more money after allowing for inflation (that is, more purchasing power) — are we really better off?

The best some people can do, and some communities can do — is to survive and maybe catch up, materially and financially, with people and communities who, we imagine, are better off than we are.

But while we’re trying to catch up to them, they are trying to catch up to someone else.

Most “catching up” — which never ends — is like a cancer: it hurts the cells and organs it crowds and crushes — the other people in the community and in nearby communities. It gains at others’ expense — if its gains are really gains, not just running as fast as you can in order to stay in one place — or actually losing ground.

A lot of youths realize all this, instinctively, without clear understanding, despite being “educated” otherwise. So, one way or another, and usually not constructively — they rebel.

So do relatively wise older people — or just people driven to desperation — who realize they can’t win if they “play by the rules” — and even those controlling governments of nations who find that their nations are failing in the competition to improve material and financial situations — who find themselves forever dependent on people who are exploiting them, more than helping them.

The richest keep getting richer, and there are more and more poor people, living in the midst of enterprises and technologies that cost them more than they gain by using them, and which they are not able to do without, and survive.

You’re lucky: you can catch yourself spinning your wheels, take your foot off the accelerator, park somewhere relatively safe, recollect what has happened to you so far, and what you have decided and done — and the results.

You can re-organize your thoughts and behavior. You are CEO of yourself.

Of course, it will be difficult, because you are a bundle of habits, developed in response to what you have faced so far, much of which you still face.

But it’s much more difficult for a community, like Wrightstown, or a society or a species, like humanity.

You aren’t the only one with habits, reflecting, deciding, changing what you do in hopes of a better outcome.

Absolutely everyone is doing something similar — though most people most of the time are behaving routinely, normally, sort of half-asleep, per previous decisions and entanglements, prompted by road signs and instructions on screens and by the necessity of making monthly payments.

Some people have extra influence — heads of nations and of great corporations, for instance, and people — whether they’re especially wise or not, or even foolish or evil — who many people listen to.

But everyone is trying to modify his or her situation, to be better off than now, and no one is anything like in charge. Even totalitarian dictators have to beware & make adjustments regarding foreign enemies and subordinates who would like to replace them. And their subjects are sullen, shirk responsibility, live secret lives, withhold cooperation.

Pity even the powerful!

Do what you can for yourself. Don’t be ruled by advertisements or propaganda, even by well-meaning propaganda. (Don’t be ruled by this article — think it over, use what seems true and useful.). Don’t pretend you or Wrightstown are better off than you or Wrightstown or the nation or humanity are.

You must survive while you can in the situation you are in — but you must also try to steer yourself, and your community — into a situation in which you are not wasting your life just trying to get rich in the midst of any one of a number of likely catastrophes — of the usual or newly emerging sorts.

Turning Wrightstown, once a kind of blue collar village in the midst of dairy farms — into a blue collar neighborhood of the Green Bay-Appleton megalopolis, with a sprinkling of rich people — that’s war, though maybe only cold war. It’s not a good outcome — and it’s very likely. You don’t need to help to make that happen. Make something better, that has never existed before, happen, instead — just as you do for yourself, with yourself — if you’re wise and able.

Take your foot off the accelerator, park the car. Try to think clearly and, at least for youself, break free of habits, especially mental habits, with predictably bad outcomes. Bit by bit, become freer, wiser, more capable, more effective. Make something better of yourself, that has never existed before. Don’t copy others who never take their feet off their accelerators, and end up in the same mess as one another, while proclaiming how successful they have been. Let others imitate you.

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ARTICLE #4 © Eric Chaet 2022, used in The Wrightstown “Spirit” by permission. To use this article in another publication, email Eric Chaet at chaetsarticles at gmail dot com.