I can't help it.
I'm just not a pessimist.
I can't be. I love history and can clearly see the upward-turning curve on the feel-good graph for all of humanity.
That is RIGHT!
Things are not getting worse, they are getting better and better by the day.
YES, there are wars and hunger and murders and pain galore.
YES, we all feel helpless rage before the things we can't change.
BUT...Look back, if you please.
A hundred years ago the poverty levels were 5 times higher; most people lost a child in infancy to a myriad curable diseases; women faced childbirth as a life-threatening process; the life expectancy for the average man was in his mid-forties; most people could not read (and here I am talking about the Civilised West!); and expectations of personal happiness or achievement were scant; the technology that brings so much ease, safety and magic into our lives was no-where in sight.
The pursuit of happiness we all peevishly proclaim as a RIGHT, was a dim fantastic flight of fancy - a Utopian dream. The truth is that the last one hundred years have brought more change and radical improvement into human lives than any other period in History. We have leap-frogged over thousands of years of stagnation straight into a roller-coaster of social evolution.
Now...
Ask yourself why we forget these things?
Turn on your TV.
Tell me what you see: blood, gore, despair.
Do some zapping. Tell me where you pause. Be honest with me.
What draws your eye, keeps your attention?
Blood, gore, despair. We see what we want to see.
Don't blame the TV. The Media is a business like any other. They give their customers what they want, what sells.
And what sells is blood, gore and despair. TV series about murder and monsters are what sells best. Oh the Romans had us pegged! We sit in the dim arena of our own lounges and greedily guzzle up the same fare, and if the blood we see is real? Oh the more we like it! We revel in the dark side. We buy into it.
But the light is shinning, people!
Brighter and brighter. We are on the edge of a fantastical age of magic and mystery!
For the first time in history technology and art are indistiguishable. We spent ten thousand years crawling in the mud, now we are learning to fly. Nation-hood and current forms of government are taking their very last breath. We are becoming a community of light, linked together by an invisible web.Our lives are changing, and we are changing our lives. Here, in this new and evolving society we choose what we accept, and we must take responsibility for what we seek out.
The magic is: what we imagine is what we become.
Nothing is impossible.
What we can emcompass with our minds can become real; so it's time to decide: do we take the old path? or do we look for the bright side?
Do we look for affirmation in growth, awareness, kindness and love? or do we wallow once again in the confirmation of the seductive darkness feeding our pessimism? Is the picture you see of the world negative or positive? Black or full rainbow-bright? Please don't let the only colour you let into the dark-adapted eye colour the world the dirty red of blood.
Open your eyes, and choose carefully what you see; what you let into your mind and into your life, that is what will become your reality.
Wake up, open your eyes.
It's time to decide.
Manuela Cardiga
I'm just not a pessimist.
I can't be. I love history and can clearly see the upward-turning curve on the feel-good graph for all of humanity.
That is RIGHT!
Things are not getting worse, they are getting better and better by the day.
YES, there are wars and hunger and murders and pain galore.
YES, we all feel helpless rage before the things we can't change.
BUT...Look back, if you please.
A hundred years ago the poverty levels were 5 times higher; most people lost a child in infancy to a myriad curable diseases; women faced childbirth as a life-threatening process; the life expectancy for the average man was in his mid-forties; most people could not read (and here I am talking about the Civilised West!); and expectations of personal happiness or achievement were scant; the technology that brings so much ease, safety and magic into our lives was no-where in sight.
The pursuit of happiness we all peevishly proclaim as a RIGHT, was a dim fantastic flight of fancy - a Utopian dream. The truth is that the last one hundred years have brought more change and radical improvement into human lives than any other period in History. We have leap-frogged over thousands of years of stagnation straight into a roller-coaster of social evolution.
Now...
Ask yourself why we forget these things?
Turn on your TV.
Tell me what you see: blood, gore, despair.
Do some zapping. Tell me where you pause. Be honest with me.
What draws your eye, keeps your attention?
Blood, gore, despair. We see what we want to see.
Don't blame the TV. The Media is a business like any other. They give their customers what they want, what sells.
And what sells is blood, gore and despair. TV series about murder and monsters are what sells best. Oh the Romans had us pegged! We sit in the dim arena of our own lounges and greedily guzzle up the same fare, and if the blood we see is real? Oh the more we like it! We revel in the dark side. We buy into it.
But the light is shinning, people!
Brighter and brighter. We are on the edge of a fantastical age of magic and mystery!
For the first time in history technology and art are indistiguishable. We spent ten thousand years crawling in the mud, now we are learning to fly. Nation-hood and current forms of government are taking their very last breath. We are becoming a community of light, linked together by an invisible web.Our lives are changing, and we are changing our lives. Here, in this new and evolving society we choose what we accept, and we must take responsibility for what we seek out.
The magic is: what we imagine is what we become.
Nothing is impossible.
What we can emcompass with our minds can become real; so it's time to decide: do we take the old path? or do we look for the bright side?
Do we look for affirmation in growth, awareness, kindness and love? or do we wallow once again in the confirmation of the seductive darkness feeding our pessimism? Is the picture you see of the world negative or positive? Black or full rainbow-bright? Please don't let the only colour you let into the dark-adapted eye colour the world the dirty red of blood.
Open your eyes, and choose carefully what you see; what you let into your mind and into your life, that is what will become your reality.
Wake up, open your eyes.
It's time to decide.
Manuela Cardiga
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