http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-g-brant/al-gore-urges-us-to-think_b_49371.htmlSteven G. Brant
05.25.2007
Al Gore Urges Us to Think Differently
I saw Al Gore interviewed by Charlie Rose last night at the 92nd Street Y in NYC. Here's what I took away from the evening (in addition to my autographed copy of his new book): Al Gore knows that We The People are going to have to think differently if we are going to get out of the mess we are in.
And he knows that this is a systemic challenge, not just the result of a few bad people who are "doing it to us" from their positions of power in Washington.
Al Gore has -- I believe -- transcended the victim mentality that so many people (to the delight of the legal profession, which encourages this kind of thinking) have bought into here in America. He knows that we have a socio-political system which is designed to work, but that there are a great many factors -- not just some "bad people" -- that are preventing it from working the way our Founding Fathers intended it to.
This is not to say that Al doesn't think that bad people sometimes do bad things which effect the rest of us. Charlie asked him about the Supreme Court's decision regarding the Florida recount. I loved Al's response. He said that in America the only alternative to going along with a final decision by the Supreme Court is armed rebellion. Al knows it was a bad decision. But he also knows that the only option -- other than going along with that decision -- available to him was not a viable option.
Here are two things I took away from what Al said last night:
End of excerpt
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thinking differently. A very challenging task in a society that for the last fifty years has been bombarded with nothing but sound bites and subliminal emotional images that bypass their ability to reason. How do we get people to think differently when many people have never thought but one way to begin with? When those born in the television age know nothing but these images? Is the ability to reason learned or inate? This does go much deeper than just Bush and Cheney. They are simply a malignant symptom of a disease that has infested the bloodstream of America for many years. It is going to take a serious debriefing to bring enough people around to see that the path we are on now is not beneficial to our future and goes to the very core of our human nature, and that it does now require a new way of thinking in order to find our way back from the abyss.
That will require those who see this to be the missives to help change and to be the change. Al Gore has the wisdom of our Founding Fathers and is doing this country and the world a great service by helping this dialogue to take place in the hopes it will catch on to others who will in turn do this as well. He is Thomas Paine, Paul Revere, and Carl Sagan all rolled up into one. And he is doing this in such a way that people are responding to him because he has no political manipulations behind it, and because I believe deep down many people in this country see what he is talking about and do want to be that change, but they don't know where to start.
Therefore, by Al Gore and others stepping up to bring this enlightenment to the masses people hopefully will see that the consequences of war are really the causes, and that policy changes based on reasoned thought that is based on facts and not emotions (fear being the dominant one) actually bring about the alleviation of poverty, disease, and the spreading of education that will bring about the results we seek socially, politically, and environmentally. Perhaps we will then be on our way back instead of continuing the behavior that has perpetuated the destructive cycle that we find our culture in. And that is surely something to hope for.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
