A Plan, A Plan, My Kingdom for a Plan, by Ray Zwarich
The always brilliant Mr. Lawrence writes:
“Confront power effectively and solutions to all else, from the climate crisis to war, famine, corruption and so on, will follow”.
And:
“We can no longer begin with an assessment of what is possible in the present context and work toward it. We begin with what is necessary, and the work comes down to making the necessary possible”.
And:
“…the enormity of the task is a measure of the urgency with which we must assume it”.
These are TRULY profound statements, but to how many will they appear as nothing more than pleasing platitudes? How many of us are serious about confronting the danger we are in?
Addressing the first of these profound maxims, “Confront power effectively”. The truth that I see is that few, if ANY, are serious about undertaking that task. People are only interested in winning personal esteem, they are only interested in serving their own egos, by demonstrating how cleverly or wittily they can talk, and/or write about our dangerous predicament, and/or about the nature of the immense powers arrayed against us.
Everybody just wants to flap their jaws, saying essentially the same things, writing essentially the same articles that I’ve been hearing and reading for over 50 years now. Everybody wants to win glory for themselves, everybody wants to inflate their own egos, by talking about the SAME problem, saying the SAME things about it, over and over, ad infinitum.
Everybody is too busy showing off how well they can talk about the problem to trouble ourselves with talking about how to SOLVE the problem. And if anybody does want to talk about solving the problem, the first thought in all minds is protecting their own turf, guarding their own ego-trips, rather than honestly evaluating any presented proposals for a solution with cold, sober Reason, instead of with the hysterical fear that they might lose some personal esteem if somebody ELSE’S plan should gain collectively reasoned favor.
In actual fact, the immense powers confronting us are not currently being ‘effectively confronted’ by anyone. The so-called ‘left’ is fighting the so-called ‘right’; the so-called ‘right’ is fighting the so-called ‘left’, and thus BOTH factions into which the Common People have been ‘engineered’ are just far too busy fighting each other to fight the Elite powers that contrived, and engineered, and completely control both ‘the left’ and ‘the right’. (Divide and rule. It’s worked like a charm for 10,000 years, as it very obviously still does).
Why? Why isn’t this obvious to ALL? Because our ‘sick’ engineered culture has trapped us in a state of mind in which every ego is competing with every other. We have been ‘engineered’ by a cunningly engineered and cunningly imposed culture to lack the ability to work together effectively in pursuit of collective goals.
A team of ‘stars’ is not an effective team. A basketball team completely comprised of all Michael Jordan caliber ‘great’ players will not be a winning team if every ‘star’ always wants all the glory for himself. A team of merely ‘good’ players, who all know how to work together in true ‘teamwork’, every player playing a ‘selfless’ role, unconcerned about glory, only thinking about the success of the team’s objectives, will beat the team made up of squabbling ‘superstar’ players, all competing for personal glory, most every time.
Confront power effectively? Sheesh! I have a plan that I am very confident will work. I’ve been avidly trying to present it for years now. But no one will listen. Literally, NO ONE WILL LISTEN. People are just too busy trying to inflate their own egos and win glory. Even just listening to someone else’s plan makes their egos jealous for giving away any morsel of precious ‘personal glory’, any morsel of even merely attention and/or consideration.
Who else has a prospective plan? I for one am EAGER to hear it. Let’s have it. Put it ‘on the table’. But no realistic and concrete, step by step plans, one step leading to the next in a planned and properly prioritized sequence, no realistic and reasoned plans to ‘confront the power’, are EVER even presented by anyone.
Why?
Could it be because when anyone tries to even present an actual plan, they will be immediately and generously paid in resounding derision, attacked as ‘enemies’ of the jealously guarded ‘turf’ of pet ‘ideologies’?
Thus we NEVER hear ‘effective’ plans even presented. All we EVER hear, (or so it seems), is the hot air of ideologies specifically designed to inflate individual egos, specifically designed, by own own avowed Enemy, to thus render us collectively powerless, incapable of cooperative collective action.
How about we put any plan we think MIGHT be effective ‘on the table’, to be evaluated with realistic Reason? Ya think maybe if we put our collective heads together we could honestly evaluate any and all plans, and somehow integrate them in a way that we think will EFFECTIVELY confront the immense powers arrayed against us?
I have a plan. A step by step plan, made up of real and very specific concrete steps, each one a stepping stone to the next. I am very confident that it will work. Sure, it needs ‘input’ from our combined ‘collective’ mind. Sure, it can be much improved from such collective effort. But we’re not only NOT capable of engaging in effective collective thought, to evaluate any plans or plans, we don’t ever want to even HEAR them. Our individual egos, jealous and always fearful, refuse to consider anything that does not serve themselves.
Ego, I go, you go, ergo ALL go.
I have a plan that I am very confident will, (or could), be effective, but even after years of trying to present it for collective consideration, NOBODY, quite literally NOBODY, wants to even so much as hear it. All I get is derision, because my plan does not conform with the rhetoric of contrived and competing ideologies that only serve to inflate the egos of the people who ‘religiously’ adhere to them.
Oh DRAT!!… Here I spent too many words addressing only the first of Mr. Lawrence’s three PROFOUND maxims, to address the others now. Oh well, a time for every purpose. Tomorrow will be another day. Each one is ‘brand new’, and teeming with infinite possibilities.
Mr.Lawrence can count me as an ‘optimist’. I believe that every morning “my boot will be well found”, (apologies to me old best buddy, Jack London