written 28 December, 2025
published 4 January, 2026
The beginning of a new year is a time to consider new stories, redefining our perspective, which changes our experience and expands possibilities. Looking at the edge of a piece of paper, it seems vanishingly thin and useless, yet from another perspective, the page is vast enough to write a complete story. What if we consider new perspectives?
Our culture deifies the rugged individual as separate, locked in eternal competition. Yet the world is actually whole, interconnected at a level well below our material senses. To realize we live in constant relationship with other lives, just try to hold your breath. Our individuality, which is essential to being a person, is only relative, not absolute. What if cooperation is more important than competition?
Capitalist theory believes the "free market" inexorably balances resources for the greatest good. But the historic track record shows this is a fairy tale, like Santa Claus, designed to comfort children and keep them behaving nicely. Capitalism is an essential transformative force, like fire, which has made the world a better place for humans. But unregulated fire storms can destroy decades of work in minutes, so to, unregulated capitalism eventually consumes everything ever built. What if we treat capitalism with respect, like adults, and regulate it, so life can flourish?
Elon Musk, the first trillionaire, with a paper wealth beyond imagination, lives oblivious to the tens of millions struggling to find affordable health care, housing, or even sufficient food. Despite being a technological genius, he is a disturbed individual, addicted to horse tranquilizers, who thinks the world is underpopulated, and has stated that empathy is the downfall of civilization. What if our culture viewed such massive wealth as a sign of mental disorder, like a hoarder, oblivious to the filth and decay that surrounds them? These people need help, for all our sake.
Western religions teach life is "one and done", with a single chance to learn to live a moral life. What if we have many lives, as believed by more than 3 billion people? What if we have all been both men and women many times already? What if misogyny is form of self-hatred?
Nobody likes having a selfish bully cut ahead in line. Does such bluster endear them to you? Our president, the poster child for the selfish bully, has created a national policy of "America First", becoming a world class bully. However, America, only 4 percent of the global population, already consumes 24 percent of the global energy and resources. Will America taking even more endear us to our previous allies? Will this impress the other autocratic bullies in the world?
Like it or not, all individuals, and all countries, live on the same planet. At some point, the fact of this common reality will prevail, either by global cooperation or global collapse. What if our national policy decided to honor this connection, rather than flaunt our apparent separation? What if we cooperated such that that all life flourished? What if we worked to "Make Earth Great Again"?
Imagine working to insure every person, domestically as well as globally, had access to clean drinking water, safe sewage disposal, affordable electricity, healthy food, energy efficient housing, sufficient health care, and education up to their ability. Is this any more insane than the idea we can continue killing the planet for profit?
Our culture teaches that individuals are small, insignificant, and powerless. Looking at the stars in the night sky seems to support this, and most of us have internalized this story. What if that is incomplete? As Joni Mitchell said, we are "billion-year-old star dust", arising from the same energy and material as the rest of the universe. What if we have access to more power than we can imagine, held back only by the old stories of limitation we have been taught?
Have you ever watched your body heal a skin wound? Do you notice that most of what you eat is gracefully digested? Our bodies are continually recycled, on timeframes ranging from a few days to a decade, while our sense of self endures. All this happens without our conscious mind being involved. What if that innate wisdom has even greater capacity in life?
What if the chaos we are now experiencing is just the falling away of an old order, defined by exclusive gain, limitation, and separation? What if we are the ones we have been waiting for?
