Preview
To get to a better and brighter future, we first need to understand where we are starting from. We can start to do that by looking at our past and looking at where we presently find ourselves. Once we understand where we are, we can better decide where we want to be in the future. Then, to get to our desired future, we need to map out a path that will solve our current problems, will avoid new problems, and will get us to our chosen future in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of effort and cost.
In the subsections below and the other sections of this chapter, I will preview some of what will come in the later chapters, including information about our real problems, past, present and future, and my ideas and solutions. We will start with some of our most pressing problems and then look at a preview of what our future might look like.
There are many of us who are unhappy or even angry about where our nation and our world have been headed, and we want some changes made. Here in the United States, this became even more evident starting with the 2016 election of a new president who was a political outsider who had promised some big changes. However, those promises came without any real forethought or plan. In fact, many of the changes promised could not be achieved with the methods proposed or were instead bad for our country and our environment. Although we want change, we need to make the right changes to create a better future for ourselves, our environment and all the living things with whom we share this world.
Although the truth has been somewhat lacking in our political system for some time now, it has become even harder to find since the 2016 electoral season. Unfortunately, starting with the 2024 electoral season, it has gotten even worse. There are now so many exaggerations, misstatements, half-truths, fake news stories, disinformation and outright lies coming from our representatives and others that it would be hard for any of us to learn what is true and what is false in all cases. Even with my best efforts to look for reliable sources and to filter out what is false, I still find it hard to be sure of the truth or to form positive opinions of any of our politicians or other government leaders.
All the negative campaigning in these elections and all the continuing exaggeration, disinformation and lies have divided our nation even further than it was and has left many of us with a lot of mixed feelings about where we and our nation are headed. In the coming years, this divide could lead us into a lot more turmoil and pain, or it could hopefully spur more of us to stand up and to work together towards creating a better and brighter future for all of us.
One problem is that most of our representatives seem to care more about themselves, their party and their donors and what they want, than what would be best for us. That means they are willing to lie and to cheat to try to manipulate us into voting for them and letting them get away with dictating how we can live our lives. We need to encourage and to support those politicians who tell the truth and who care about all of us.
Another problem is that it is not always easy to find out the truth and too many of us do not make a real effort to find out the truth. None of us should want representatives who are willing to lie and to cheat to get what they want, since they will ultimately end up doing things that could hurt all of us. We need to become better informed so that we can see through all the misinformation and learn the truth so that we can take back our power and push for real meaningful change that will make our world a better and brighter place.
I have never really been happy about voting for any political candidate, since it seems most of them were more interested in representing the interests of themselves, their political parties, or their campaign donors, than in what was in the best interests of the constituents that they were elected to represent. In addition, many, if not most, of the policies of all the existing political parties seem to be focused more on helping the members of their party and their donors than all their constituents.
Furthermore, the emphasis of most of our representatives seems to be more on what is wanted by their own party leadership or some faction within the party than on what is wanted even by the party's other members. Of course, even listening to all the members of their party is not enough. In fact, our two main political parties create a lot of our problems. They divide many of us between two extremes and do not allow those of us in the middle to have much of a real say in our governments.
We need representatives who are focused on policies that will help all of us and all living things. By not focusing on everyone, they are dividing us rather than bringing us together. If we can eliminate the divide created by our two main political parties, then we will have a much better chance of having governments that work better towards what is in the best interest of all of us.
It is my hope that we can all come together to work towards creating a better and brighter future for ourselves and all living things, here and around the world. The way to do that is to elect representatives who will, above all else, "do no undue harm", "protect everything from undue harm", and "allow all living things to live their lives their way" and will abide by the principles of Options, Respect and Balance.
However, for us to elect better representatives, we all need to be knowledgeable and well informed, and to be involved in our political process. I provided some information that will help us to be more knowledgeable and better informed in the sections of the previous Foundation chapter, and I will talk more about this in the upcoming chapters.
In addition, we will need some changes in our electoral process that will help us to elect better representatives. We want to elect representatives who will represent the best interests of all of us. The best way to do that is to eliminate our political parties, reign in special interest groups and eliminate the need for big campaign doners so that the people we elect will listen to all of us instead of just to a political party, to a special interest group or to some big campaign doner. I will talk more about this and more in the next chapter which deals with our Political Issues.
The world we live in today still has many problems that we do not seem to be able to solve. These include, but are not limited to, poverty, hunger, crime, disease, drugs, discrimination, hate, war, terrorism, corruption, partisan politics, pollution, non-renewable energy, extinctions, and climate change. We have made some inroads into solving some of these problems, but often at the expense of making other problems worse. In addition, we are constantly creating new problems for ourselves and for all the living things with whom we share this planet.
Although many of us today live longer, healthier and better lives than our ancestors, many of our lives are now not improving or are getting worse. In addition, the improved lifestyles that some of us enjoy have come at the expense of our environment and have caused the extinction of thousands of species of plants and animals.
Given the world's current expanding population, and our current unsustainable lifestyles, our very existence is at risk. This risk comes from our increasing dependence on our need for improvements in crop yields, our need for advances in medicine and in many other areas and our dependence on non-renewable resources that are being depleted. Therefore, any failure to reduce our population, to keep advancing and to switch to renewable resources would likely result in more global famine and war, and even the collapse of human civilization entirely.
Up until now, we have mostly been able to keep advancing fast enough to keep improving our lives. However, there are some major impediments to our continuing advancement that we are rapidly approaching or have reached. These include limited available resources and the limits imposed by the laws of physics, chemistry and biology. In addition, our current political environment is preventing us from making the changes that we need to solve our problems.
Even though we have made and are making some progress in solving some of our problems, much more needs to be done, sooner rather than later. If we cannot start making some significant changes very soon, we will run out of time, and once it gets going, our decline could start to accelerate very rapidly.
Every day, we need to make decisions that will help to determine how good or how bad our lives will be today and in the future. We may make some decisions that will make our lives better today but will lead us into trouble in the future. We may make other decisions that will make our lives more difficult today but will make our future much better and brighter.
In some cases, our decisions will only affect our own future or our own family’s future. However, in many cases, our decisions will help determine the path that our society will take into the future. Our future path will help decide the eventual fate of our society, of our species and of our world.
We need to start making decisions today that can help us create a better future for all of us, for our environment, for our world, and for all the other living things with whom we share this world. Some of our decisions may make our lives a little more difficult in the short term but will make our lives much better in the long term.
To solve our problems, we must commit to doing something. To do something in the most efficient and constructive way possible, we will need a comprehensive plan. This plan will need to include the effort needed to identify what we want our future to look like, to find the real causes of our problems, to find viable solutions to our real problems, and to find the best path we can take to get to our desired future.
We want to transform our world into one where we humans and all other living things would have a brighter and more sustainable future. Since everyone is different and may want something different for their future, there is no single cookie cutter image for what this future should look like. Instead, the future should be a place where all of us and all other living things will have the ability to try to create a life that each of us would want to live. To make this work, there are a few things that this future must include. These would be based on our principles of options, respect and balance.
Every one of us who is willing and able to work should be able to get a job at a living wage, to have a comfortable and affordable place to live and to have the ability to travel to work, school, shopping and entertainment easily without needing a car. Our overall cost of living should be much lower, and we should have an overall higher standard of living, while at the same time better protecting our environment and all the living things with whom we share this world. We should also have more opportunities and more freedom to live our lives as we choose, which we would be better able to do with living wages, while at the same time being better protected from crime and other dangers.
For a long time, especially since the late 1990s, I have been thinking about and analyzing the way in which our world works and identifying our various problems. My goals have been to become more knowledgeable and better informed, to find the real causes of our problems and to come up with actual workable solutions instead of the temporary patches that are so often proposed. However, temporary patches are often needed until the real root causes of a problem can be reliably identified and some permanent solutions can be found and implemented.
I believe that the solutions that I have come up with can work. They are not some quick temporary fixes like many individuals and groups have often promoted. However, these solutions will require a deliberate and comprehensive restructuring of some parts of our political system, economy and communities so that they will all be more responsive, resilient and sustainable, and will work more simply, efficiently, honestly, and equitably for everyone.
Taken together, I believe these solutions would make our world a much better and brighter place than anything we have had before and will work better for all of us and all living things. These solutions should just need some final details, some more supporters, and an agreement on the best possible plan to implement them.
The paths that we have taken in the past have brought us to the current state of the world, which has a multitude of problems, and is very unstable and unsustainable. Some of us are on a path that is making progress in making our lives better and more sustainable. However, too many of us are still on some wrong path. Unless many more of us change our path, it looks very unlikely that we will be able to solve our current problems, let alone solve all the new problems that we seem to be headed towards.
Therefore, we must all move towards a better path. What our future will end up being will depend on which paths we take into the future. If we take the right paths, our future could be much better and brighter than it has ever been. If we take the wrong paths, our future, if we have one, may be very bleak.
Of course, we may all have different ideas about what we want our future to look like, but I believe that all of us want our future to be better and brighter. Therefore, we should all want our society to follow paths that will help take us all towards a future that will allow each of our lives and the lives of all living things to be better and brighter. In fact, we can create a better and brighter future where we can all have the liberty and freedom to live our lives in a way that we feel is best for ourselves, while still allowing others to live their lives in a way that they feel is best for them.
Given the size and complexity of our society and of our world, it may be difficult for anyone to fully comprehend the impact that our individual paths will have on our society’s overall path. Therefore, we need a plan that will help guide our choices so that we can all follow the best paths for ourselves and for our world while compensating for those of us who continue to follow some wrong paths.
To start with, our plans need to be based on a solid foundation of good options, mutual respect and the right balance of our freedoms and obligations and justice for every living thing. This will give us our best chance of creating a better and brighter future, for ourselves, our descendants and all the other current and future inhabitants of our planet. Basing our decisions on this solid foundation will help guide us in making the needed political, economic, social and other changes that will lead us on the path towards a better and brighter future where we can all have a higher and more sustainable standard of living, while we better protect our environment.
With this solid foundation in mind, I have come up with many ideas that I have put together into a plan for making the world a better and brighter place for all. I am convinced that we can use these ideas and this plan to guide our future path, so we can make our way towards a much better, brighter and more sustainable future for all of us and for all the living things with whom we share this planet.
Within the pages of this book, I will try to describe some of these ideas. In doing so, I will also try to describe what some of our current problems are, why many of our current solutions are not working, and why I believe my ideas can make our world a better and brighter place for each of us and for every living thing.
It has been said that the devil is in the details. This is especially true when talking about complex things like our political, economic, immigration, health, and social issues. A good sounding solution or idea may not look so good after we start working out the details. The opposite may be true of a bad sounding solution or idea. Of course, there are some solutions and ideas that are just so bad that no level of detail would make any difference.
The bottom line is that we need to work out the details of most of our solutions and ideas before we know for sure whether they are truly good or truly bad. I have tried to work out enough of the details for each of my solutions and ideas to be sure that they are good. However, I am not an expert in everything or even in most things, so I may have missed something. If so, please let me know via the email link below.
In the following sections, I will try to provide some information that will describe where we are in the present and where we can be in the future.
Present -
Preview of where we are in our present.
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