Sanity Poised for Comeback? Maybe! Maybe Not!

“A new civilization is emerging in our lives, and blind men everywhere are trying to suppress it. This new civilization brings with it new family styles; changed ways of working, loving, and living; new political conflicts; and beyond all this an altered consciousness ...” —Alvin Toffler

Toffler’s quote is especially prescient in that it describes, with concise precision, exactly why our country’s most cherished institutions have run off the rails and why there seems to be so much difficulty in getting things back on track. The big culprit here is stagnation caused by fear of change, lack of imagination, and a dearth of critical-thinking skills. Oh, yeah, and an overabundance of greed.

Only by thinking “outside the box” (to run an oft-used cliché deeper into the ground) can we begin to effect recoveries of the environment, the economy, and the decaying social infrastructures that most of us depend on. I’d say “thinking outside the buns,” but that would probably offend our leaders—and the wealthy corporatists that pull their strings—because their leadership style depends on keeping their collective head inserted rather far into their collective anal orifice.