Shifting Our Perspective

The global, regional, and national challenges we face appear vastly different when viewed through the lens I've just outlined. The essential first step in initiating the necessary transformation to address our survival challenges is to adopt that perspective.

Unfortunately, this viewpoint is often dismissed by a small yet impactful minority. In the United States, this group has seized control of a malfunctioning governmental system, motivated by power and greed, manipulating an outdated constitutional framework. They are just sizable enough, having engaged in decades of increasingly unethical actions, to intimidate less experienced politicians who lack a clear vision.

This encapsulates the predicament facing the American political landscape. For generations, it has been evident that the system caters primarily to corporate interests, increasingly predatory in nature. This warped understanding of governance renders it nearly impossible to respond to the majority’s desires.

With one party having abandoned any ethical standards and the other paralyzed by fear of taking risks, only a major catastrophe could catalyze any meaningful reform. This dark future is looming closer.

Decades of entrenched rigidity, corruption, and media manipulation by corporate interests have stifled any semblance of democracy. While many citizens recognize the severe issues confronting us, there is no platform or representative advocating for rational solutions.

There are politicians who understand the need to maintain essential services and rights, but they often limit their critiques to minor issues. They cling to the belief that the American system remains functional and that compromise within traditional frameworks can reverse the accelerating decline.

However, these rules are now detrimental, and the prevailing nihilism permits widespread suffering and even death, deemed acceptable by a small ruling elite and their devoted supporters. The immense power of global information networks has ironically led to the indoctrination of groups into something resembling a death cult.

The result is a cycle of circular debates, so formal they have become mind-numbing rituals. The U.S. political landscape is so skewed that an irrational individual was elected president, circumventing the popular vote with significant foreign influence, steering the federal government toward self-destruction and paving the way for a full authoritarian regime.

Similar irrational resentments have produced disasters in Brazil, the Philippines, Turkey, Poland, and other countries, which are becoming failed systems that drag millions down while denying their reality. These reactionary minorities are interconnected through racism, xenophobia, willful ignorance, and hatred. They represent a form of collective insanity driven by the rapid shift toward new human social structures.

The singular focus on greed and the quest to satisfy it has left few avenues for cleansing corruption and expelling the wrongdoers from positions of power. The entrenched authoritarian ideology is devoted to an archaic economy focused on profit, which benefits the corrupt actors within the system, including leaders from both political parties in America.

While global information channels have begun to transform our world, they have also enabled the targeting of reactionary minorities with propaganda. In the U.S., this has cultivated generations steeped in racist indoctrination, rendering them incapable of comprehending anything beyond the reinforcement of their social, economic, and political fantasies.

This situation could logically devolve into armed conflict and civil strife, but the majority has largely prevented this by continuing their daily lives and trying to ignore the minority. The predominantly isolated minority, residing in suburban and rural areas, allows life to persist. The result is a rapid shift in urban areas that renders the minority's chants into meaningless noise.

This scenario unfolds wherever backward segments of the population fall under the sway of opportunistic fascists from the 20th century. These opportunists instill hate and fear, promising salvation based on outdated and tattered fantasies.

The prevailing sentiment seems to be that the older individuals causing this chaos can be ignored until they pass away. They dwell in their communities, consumed by hatred for others, oblivious to the unfolding reality. They also lack intelligence and have turned ignorance into a belief system. This perspective holds some truth; however, it is challenging to identify those who, driven by reactionary anger, lack an understanding of a rapidly evolving planetary culture versus an older form of human criminality. Yet, time is running out for all of us.

The significant risk is that those who recognize the necessity of shifting to a new perspective have traditionally been the ones guiding the change. These individuals are often entangled in managing a constant stream of fabricated crises and ignorant claims designed to confuse.

The overwhelming reluctance to acknowledge that part of the population is functionally insane and that the government is under the control of self-destructive criminals stymies effective action until the collapse becomes a personal threat to the majority. By then, it may be too late to salvage the existing nation-state.

Embracing a New Perspective

Change is occurring, albeit gradually. The challenge lies in the pace of this transformation. The majority of people worldwide are acutely aware of the climate change threat. Younger, more educated individuals recognize that this must become the foremost human priority. Delays, denials, and attempts to undermine progress are no longer tolerable. The global youth climate protests illustrate that even the youngest among us understand they are the ones most endangered by an aging, oblivious population holding onto power.

Governments that fail to act decisively and urgently to eliminate fossil fuels and transition to a sustainable global economy must be replaced.

At this juncture, the responsibility falls to the populace of those governments. Given that we have, at most, fifteen years to mitigate the severity of climate change, immediate action is imperative. Ideally, we should witness significant change by the end of 2020.

Socially and economically, it will take at least a decade to phase out fossil fuels from our global economy. Is this achievable? Perhaps not, but it certainly won't happen if we don’t start now.

The initial phase should occur at the national or regional level. If a country can successfully achieve leadership change through existing electoral and governmental structures, or if it already has a responsible planetary government, it can take the lead in the global movement.

This can be demonstrated by prioritizing climate change and carbon reduction as the highest national goals. A failure to make concrete changes aligned with the latest Paris Agreement should lead to trade sanctions and isolation.

Governments that are not replaced by 2020 will necessitate international legal actions. They cannot be permitted to maintain power. This will require global consensus on sanctions and isolation, with the option of respecting requests for military support directly from the affected population.

Determining the timing of these actions will require robust public backing. I propose that decisions must be reached by the end of 2020 or early 2021. At that point, a global organization must be established or selected to assess national actions in light of international objectives and to declare the status of each state regarding carbon reduction and sustainability.

A New Form of Governance

The aforementioned actions will inevitably lead to the emergence of new types of governance that genuinely reflect the policies necessary to safeguard the populace that owns that government. This notion of public ownership aligns with the core democratic principle where the population serves as both the owners and managers of the government acting on their behalf. This represents a radical shift from the current paradigm. Existing governments, rooted in 18th and 19th-century models, are governed by minority elites who disregard the needs and demands of the populace.

How this evolution unfolds will be fascinating to observe. I suspect that the new governance model will be virtual, with direct online democracy managing at least the broad policies of the state or nation. This will necessitate the transformation or complete dissolution of various authoritarian regimes and a redefinition of executive leadership.

I struggle to envision how this can occur without substantial online, mass mobilization to seize control of nations whose demands for sustainable and equitable policies are unmet. We have witnessed early examples of this, often successfully suppressed or sabotaged by existing power structures, such as the Arab Spring and mass movements in China.

If these transformations are attempted by anything less than a majority, the changes may not endure. We will likely need to implement direct democratic management to set policies and goals in collaboration with all other sovereign entities globally. The authority necessary to alter nearly every facet of human society—from unchecked greed to full sustainability in a globally interconnected civilization—cannot be achieved without active engagement from a majority in each state.

What will happen to the dysfunctional, malevolent, or simply irrational segments of the population? The objective should be to establish stricter criteria for full citizenship. Universal rights should apply to all, entitling individuals to a reasonable and livable minimum resource allocation. However, with direct, online democratic governance, there must be minimum educational standards for those managing their nation.

This approach should also encompass a new moral framework. The rise of scientific understanding in fields like quantum physics and universal interconnectedness is fostering a rational morality. Sentient entities, as observers, also act and embody new concepts of purpose within the physical realm. In simple terms, we are inherently significant in this universe and must wield that understanding responsibly.

All citizens should possess full formal input and automatic voting rights in their primary administrative government. Educational criteria (determined not by traditional metrics but by reasonable standards that can be assessed) should be established for direct voting rights on global policies. Perhaps an internationally developed and administered certification for planetary climate policies could be implemented. The survival of our species undoubtedly alters our perspective.

Taking Action

We must engage in dialogue. Begin and persist in discussing how we can effectively govern our states, nations, and communities to endure in a complex and perilous planetary climate. We possess the power in our numbers to enact these changes. Resistance from the existing governmental system is not merely a difference of opinion; it is a direct threat to human survival.

We must reclaim this power globally. If we fail to do so, the incompetent minorities and existing ruling elites will continue to obstruct progress until we face annihilation. The silver lining is that we are living in the first era where mass, direct democracy is attainable.

We must make it work. Our civilization may depend on our ability to succeed.