Many of you have played the game Civilization. Throughout that game you get to choose all of these different paths, different religions, different worships, different societies, different economies. You can run with a caste system like originating in India. You can run with a slavery system which we had here in the U.S. All of these different systems — Communism, Fascism, Capitalism. All of these different systems are available to you, and we all know what they are. And with brief reading of the game we have an idea of how they work and the pluses and minuses to them.
Our wisdom of today becomes common sense of tomorrow. Today, that stuff from the early civilizations is common sense. We didn’t know that when we started the caste systems, when we started the slavery system, when we started all of these systems.
That’s a remarkable thing about learning. Once you do know, then you see it. And it’s clear. But it can be right there in front of you, and until you focus your intent on it, until you surround the thoughts and the ideas with words, you just don’t see it.
If you look at our world and our society and the amazing steps we’ve taken and the advances we’ve achieved, the amazing things we take as common sense today that we had no clue about just a short time ago, I’d say our society is doing pretty good. We’ve come a long way.
Now take that big perspective, that big look and look at yourself. We all know things today that we didn’t know a short time ago.
We’ve all evolved, our world and our society.
Last night I watched a lecture by Dr. Peterson again. He gave a very beautifully reasoned and well articulated description of psychological development and ethics, how ethics should be defined and how they are developed to withstand application by individuals, the family and society and are refined.
That’s what they are. Our ethics are developed over time. Our knowledge is developed over time. We’ve done it collectively. We do it individually. The best thing about knowledge is that once you know something, you don’t unknow it. The mind is one muscle that once it expands, it never contracts in theory.
The great thing about having that knowledge is that when you are aware of a flaw you can watch for it and you can change it. When you are aware of a positive trait you can watch for it and reinforce it. We need to do that with each other in society and compliment each other when we’re doing something good. Reinforce the positive behavior that we see in others so they know they are on the right path and they carry that on to others.
Do it for yourself. Remind yourself that you’re doing ok. We all are. We all have a lot of room to grow, to improve, both individually and in society. But when we stop and recognize that our society is imperfect, but it’s come a long way, give ourselves some credit. We’re imperfect, but we have come a long way. Once we start paying attention to this, think how beautiful we can start to make this place be. Each of us can work on ourselves a little and help each other out and let each other know when we’re doing good and politely let each other know when we’re not. Together we can keep walking through the positive with new wisdoms of how to treat each other and how to get along.
In the future we can look back and say, “Hey, have you heard about a time when there were wars, a time when people used to kill each other. I don’t understand that.”
We’ll be able to say, “Yeah, that used to happen a long time ago”
We just need to start recognizing and start doing a little more, start paying attention and accept where we are but be grateful for where we’ve come from and look forward to what we can possibly achieve and what we can possibly become.
Let’s do it all together.
Live without fear. Search for joy. Let’s make a better tomorrow.