creative capacity for change is engine of true freedom

I believe that the recently popular maxim ‘think global, act local’ actually got it half right. I believe it is symptomatic of our ego mania and arrogance that we thought we could ‘think global’. It defies the reality of our physical limitations in time space and flesh, and our perceptual inability to see more than only a partial view of the whole system, no matter how well connected we are to the information internet. When we mistake our partial view for a true representation of reality, well, mistakes will be made.

Similarly, it is time to acknowledge the limits of our democratic systems, upon which we rely to compensate for the smallness of vision of a single human: by pooling together our resources, using a system of representation, debate and legislation, we hope to create that composite picture of reality that is more accurate. We have clung to our pride in these systems, and rightly so, as more autonomy has been won for the human being from the rulers of this world, but it has only ever been piecemeal, and has come with a price: the levelling of reality into a kind of television-mediated supermarket of possibilities.

So the question recurs :

how do we influence a larger picture?