Not Knowing is a Good Place To Start

Right now there are thousands, maybe millions, of people unhappy about where our world is headed, and uncertain about what to do about it. There are so many people feeling the same feelings and thinking the same thoughts – and yet, so many of us are alone. Millions of people in their silos are perhaps opening up their computers to hear the latest news, or perhaps desperately trying to avoid the latest news.

Imagine the possibilities if we could connect with one another, if each of us could bring one little thing, and thereby amass all the necessary building blocks to chip away at the iron-clad plans of billionaires and sociopaths.

It would take a lot of patience. We have tried to reach out before, and encountered mass silence.

We have considered reaching out before, and suddenly been inundated with all the work and all the needs of the people around us – urgent needs that have either been created by people of power who have undone the supports and life’s work of the suddenly vulnerable, or by general neglect of government systems.

Keeping people who care about other people busy with the urgent, daily needs of those in our communities, is one way to keep those people from finding ways to figure out responses to the more widespread issues, the true illnesses of our society that are causing the symptoms we are trying to respond to.

A few dozen random decisions by a powerful few, made to disrupt lives, keeps us guessing and off balance as we try to adjust and to determine our best response to the deluge of misanthropic ventures that come our way.

However, if we don’t reach out, if we give up on one another, then we’re giving in. It may take a while for someone to find our little messages in bottles, but, eventually, they may be found. In some way, we may find little ways to find each other, to become a small network that grows into a big network, to become a set of disruptors ourselves.

And, if we don’t know what to do right now, if it feels like blowing into the wind, that’s okay. If we know that we don’t know, we are already ahead of those who assume they know the answers to the struggles we face today, those who amass money and military might and economic levers and assume that they can tell everyone else what life should be and what place we all should occupy, at the behest of conquerors. If we know that we don’t know, let’s at least reach out, let’s discover that it’s not just you and I, but that it’s us. Bit by bit, let’s talk it all through.

Let’s be patient with one another, because powers that be have tried to take away our time. Let’s share, little bits, with one another, because powers that be have tried to take away our resources. Let’s learn from one another, because powers that be have tried to take away our abilities to gather and to communicate. Let’s do all of that, bit by bit.

Let’s learn what opportunity looks like, so that when it arises – and it will arise – we can be ready for it.

There is always something unacknowledged by those who assume that they know everything. There is always something left unconsidered by those who assume that they control everything. Nature itself will respond to these powers that be. Nature, though it may seem to be against us, may also be our ally. Human economic and military powers assume that nature can be controlled. We have seen nature at work, and we know better. So many military campaigns and plans have been disrupted by storms, from the attempted annihilation at Dunkirk to the invasion plans of Barbarossa.

We know that we don’t know. What we need to know first, is that we are us. Not just isolated individuals, we are.