Quinn, I always knew you were dreamy.

But to your point.

The Gospel of Thomas, Saying 70

"If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you."

What is within us that can save or destroy?

You folks are triggering a lot in me - so thanks for that. Naturally, the price you pay is another long comment! ;-)

Lux's Thomas line conjured William Blake from the back shed of my mind, "Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." But let's take Thomas, because he nailed the sense of the dream - which was very much that we could fail to bring forward our own good. Two questions began flowing in me from that - What is the good we should bring forward; and, Why do we fail to bring it forth? The latter first:

FEAR. In my life, I'm quite convinced the greatest negative power has been fear. I've had lots of it, succumbed often, my only victory seemingly being to get back up. But at least I feel I'm aware of its enormous spread, and power. Fear is my most likely candidate, for why we might fail to bring the good forward.

If I was to guess at what we're afraid of, well, the immediate catch phrase is written on our own banner - Change.

We all know damn well, in our guts and minds, that the world we have helped build is destructive of others, the Earth, the future, and ourselves. But we've also felt - those of us >30 years at least - that we had to, to a large degree, play it their way. "Sell out" being the harsher, earlier term, but just as easy to say that we've all "bought in," to some degree.

So the fear of now having to jettison what we've bought and bought into, in exchange for an unknown "new," is actually quite awful - when spoken about ourselves, rather than "the nation." For myself, I put off buying a house 'til my mid-40's. Yet now, when I think of losing the house, the fear is near incapacitating. Similarly with a job. I haven't had 10 minutes jobless in 20 years, yet I seize up like a drum when I consider being unemployed, or having to take that leap into the unknown.

Lux, you know the numbers as well & better than I. We talk about %'s of unemployment. But we're talking millions of people who will need to leave/lose their jobs, often leave their present towns, and even leave behind their training & experience in a particular type of work. Not so easy at 40 or 50 or 60.

Yet if we tell the truth, we know to build something new, something more sustainable, that offers the next generation a better chance, that creates a non-bubble, reality-based world --- it is entirely likely it won't simply be a smooth transition where the next generation steps into these jobs, while we get to stay where we are.

So when we talk of change, and the need for it, we almost always think of it in terms of "We're willing to contribute more, volunteer more, etc." But what if we're asked, called, required, to GIVE UP things, important things? We'll be afraid. And faced with that, I suspect we'll argue for ourselves as a special case. We'll special plead, over-recommend the benefits of the existing system, over-state the risks of the new. In short, we'll cling to the old.

THE NEW DREAM. As for the positive good which we should bring forward, I've thought & read, polled & analyzed, pitched & worked for it. And I suspect most of us know it starts with a basic, powerful agreement that all people are equal - sex, sexual preference, color, ability, age, etc. - but should be free to live differently. Beyond that though, I think it also includes a very different take: On peace & other nations; On the Earth & other species; On our role in creating ideas, public decisions, shared tools; It's open-sourced in some sense, gone global and local, walls busted, out of the box, creating & communicating in new ways.

All of which is vague blah-blah, but I'll bet 90% of the people here KNOW what this blah-blah is about. What has amazed me for 25 years is how strongly this stuff polls, how strongly I see it in friends and family, but then... when it comes to the political system, the business world, or even just to living it out ourselves, how hesitant we are.

We keep these dreams, of the new, in our closets. I think of all those MBA's I knew, in love with solar power, who went on to spend their days spinning straw into nickels (and vice-versa.) All those software wizards, who more than anything else love animals, the earth. All the realtors and insurance agents, who love archaeology and space. All these parts of the dream - amongst many many others - we mostly keep in our closets.

Even though... we sense that these dreams COULD form a better world, that the tools are increasingly there, that the economy can be different, that our communities can change.... But it just got so hard to believe, in the face of the Money Monster that seemed to eat the entire land these past 25 years.

That's the dream, the good, that I see us being afraid to bring forward.

Those the desires we leave unacted, the infants murdered in their cradle.

The point is actualizing that great thing resident in us from which like motes of sunlight all our ideals and aspirations (from the latin -to breathe!)stream out. Aspirations are the breath of our spirits and if we do not breathe we die inwardly.

You see my avatar...? The Source is always occluded, but the nimbus around it are all our best impulses and dreams and hopes shining out. Martin and John and Barack and civil rights and womens rights and world peace and human dignity and an end to hunger and want and a hope that all will be well...that's the nimbus and we so want to join it and swim in it, not knowing we are its very source if we can just lay down the occulting fear.

Hey quinn, think back: was there anyone else in the car? Anyone in the back seat? Behind the driver? Just wondering if it's appropriate to apply Freud, Jung, or if this was more of a vision thing...

For anyone who is preparing to bid this post a tearful farewell as it falls off the list, I have added a link to it in the current 2nd Chance Clearinghouse post.