Can We Repair the Damage, Imagine a Way to Revive America?
Last edited Mon May 4, 2020, 03:22 PM - Edit history (1)
What makes me ask "Now what?" comes from yet another history that we seem to repeat. Thing is, we seem to only be able to understand how to go forward by learning -- over, and over -- the lessons of the past. Over and over, by seeing what applies to today differently.
From "How Do You Know If You’re Living Through the Death of an Empire?"
https://www.motherjones.com/media/2020/03/how-do-you-know-if-youre-living-through-the-death-of-an-empire/
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Historians will look back at some enormous disaster, either ongoing now or in the decades or centuries to come, and say that it was just the icing on the cake. The foundation had already been laid long before then,
in the text of legislation nobody bothered reading,
in local elections nobody was following,
in speeches nobody thought were important enough to comment on,
in a thousand tiny disasters that amounted to a thousand little cuts on the body politic.
It took a long time, decades, for the true reality of the change to hit the Romans whose writings have survived to the present day. Aristocratic Roman officials in Italy maintained the same kind of administrative structure their fathers and grandfathers had, writing the same kinds of administrative letters for Ostrogothic kings of Italy that they had for emperors beforehand. The pull of the past is strong. The mental frameworks through which we understand the world are durable, far more so than its actual fabric. The new falls into the old, square pegs into round holes no matter how poor the fit, simply because the round holes are what we have available.
We don’t have to wait decades for all this to sink in. The nature of the problem and its scale are clear now, right now, on the cusp of the disaster. Maybe those future historians will look back at this as a crisis weathered, an opportunity to fix what ails us before the tipping point has truly been reached. We can see those thousand cuts now, in all their varied depth and location. Perhaps it’s not yet too late to stanch the bleeding.
If this history of our forebear empire is anything to go by, now what?
Should we let our future randomly happen while we stay busy earning a living & raising a new generation, voting? Or can we do those things while building a new future at the same time?
Are there lessons to have learned that can help us envision it?
Lessons to help us plan it?
Who can be involved in imagining and/or planning any future envisioning?
Should we imagine roles we could make for that future?
Would these roles help or limit our imaginations?
Does Earth and climate change frame our imagining?
= new reply since forum marked as read
That's the best way to start. 
People tend to feel better and regain their sense of purpose and sense of themselves when they do good for others. Maybe that applies to nations too. When we once again become the America that helps other nations, takes strong moral stands on important issues and leads the way, maybe that could do wonders for our sense of ourselves and get us back on track.
people arrive via FB than actually do. FB and MJ (and possibly Google Analytics too) track these inflated numbers. FB may charge them more and/or encourage them to advertise more on FB than is warranted and/or MJ may decide to do that on their own.
It's no advantage to MJ that I'm aware of, someone else may know of something I don't, however.
Also we're making FB look more powerful than it already does 
