Imagine that you and a coterie of like-minded, humanitarian lovers of Earth, associates and friends were told that you had the power to provide a harmonious environment for all people across the planet to be fed, housed, clothed, educated and given the ability to provide for their families, and all the while, respecting Earth and her bounty by way of stewardship instead of exploitation?

Would you be interested?

Imagine you were told that most of the story you were told about what life was from infancy and early childhood through the teen-age years and beyond, that there had always been poverty, war and famine—that these world problems have always been there and always will be—that they are too complex and costly to really solve.

What if it were suggested that these worldviews and belief systems of what is true and what is not were actually partial, biased and fundamentally fictional, designed to protect the wealthy and to marginalize everyone else?

It would be startling, dis-settling and disarming to say the least. Because we really believed these ideas! As we see the world and the actions of ourselves and others, we assume that people in positions of authority and power actually know something about these, about governance and serving the People.

Many of us were raised certainly with this idea and belief that people in authority were competent and took their positions to serve others seriously. Yet, even in our early years, many of us were able to detect that “Something is rotten in the State of Denmark” as said astutely by Shakespeare in Hamlet. With all the money, technology and good will, our world appeared to be shaped by people who privileged profit above all else.

What we really find is that those in positions of political power are ‘learning on the job’: learning the particulars of the job and of themselves, who are they? How will they show up as a human being in the position?

Those in positions of economic power are also ‘learning on the job’. In fact, all of us—scientists, artists, employers, diplomats, refuse collectors, are ‘learning on the job’. Thus, not only feeling but embodying humility, you could say, would be the appropriate feeling-tone to all of us in our livelihoods and at home, with the openness to learn and improve ourselves, instead of self-righteousness and arrogance which are the more common attitudes leaders display It’s just a façade to disguise their uncertainty and insecurity. What’s healthy about humility? How about everything? It opens the door of the mind, it opens the heart. There is not an assumption that “I know” but rather “what more might I learn?” It’s an entirely different attitude and mindset that is not defensive, not critical or judgmental but allowing, receiving, inquisitive and learning.

According to the thinking of personal development and both emotional and intellectual intelligence, those with humility are open, growing and learning, sensitive and listening to their environment. This is a measure of overall spiritual health.

Why is this important? Well, a certain number of human beings lacking such humility and seeking to aggrandize all to themselves, the greedy Scrooges of the human race, have pillaged and plundered women, children and men, pummeled our beautiful and sacred Earth and have so damaged our eco-system that it is balancing itself out through her expression of extreme weather patterns that are destroying habitats across the planet, smiting us with droughts, floods and making life for so many so difficult. It’s become nothing short of Biblical.

What’s especially interesting is that the practical challenges facing human beings are really not insurmountable but solvable. Part of the belief system in which we were all indoctrinated, either consciously or unconsciously, deliberately or accidentally (that’s a whole other discussion), and as mentioned, was that the “world’s problems are complex, unfathomable and virtually unresolvable”. The psychological issues of why the world isn’t in more harmonious shape are probably the harder ones to resolve. Providing food, clean water, education and housing for all is a matter of will and some funding.

So interesting, because in the 1970’s, Werner Erhard’s students decided to challenge, then overthrow the assumption and ubiquitous belief in our society that global hunger was not fixable or reversible, that we should just accept and get used to it—it’s here to stay.

A bold number of people said “No! I don’t believe that! We will challenge that and end world hunger by the year 2000…” Well, they didn’t exactly succeed in feeding all but they got notably close to it. From their efforts, it became clear that it could happen, that the world was pregnant with possibility. The Hunger Project promoted the old adage that “where there is a will, there is a way”, which is nothing short of brilliant.

The heroes of society, over and again, have stood up and said that certain assumptions are only those, assumptions. They need to be challenged. Gandhi brought to bear the principle of non-violence, Martin Luther King, Jr. brought forward the powerful idea of civil disobedience to achieve a peaceful but equitable life for people of color. Nelson Mandela believed that apartheid was immoral and despite it being ingrained in the people of South Africa for generations and he being in prison for some 27 years, helped to make it illegal and to overcome the indoctrination.

And then became the President of South Africa with a peaceful transition from Apartheid.

Could the same thing be done for the assumption that world peace is not possible? After all, there have been wars among tribes, clans, families and nations for millennia. Animosity, uncurbed anger, wrath have been raging in the human being, hormones wailing, since the beginning no doubt, of the species.

But so has love, kindness, understanding, patience and compassion been raging and available. What will we allow to win, and do we have a choice? I’d say “you betcha!”

There have been many of us for decades working toward establishing a new belief around peace, kindness, compassion and love. We believe that we can build a new consensus around this, that peace is possible the world over, both internally and externally, not episodically but sustainably.

How does overcoming a long-standing belief that sells short the power of the human mind and spirit happen? It happens by people believing in the new vision more than accepting the old one. It’s evolutionary. It is like the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis, new life through a new vision being born.

As the old movie title says: “A Star is Born”, well, now we need a new movie.

It begins in the mind and heart. These two connected fields can become wholly unified. One lives as though the reality of the desired outcome has already materialized. Mandela didn’t waver and say, “well, I’m not so sure this will work, or Gandhi hesitating during the march at the salt mines. There is clarity of vision, living as though it were already true.

Hence, Mandela’s brilliant comment, “It seems impossible until it is done”. And Gandhi’s words of wisdom: “Be the change you want to see…” They are embodying their vision and living it as true.

You could reasonably ask “it seems so easy. Why is the world as chaotic, imbalanced, irrational and so unjust to so many? Why so much suffering of so many?”

It begs the question: why do people behave as they do when they perpetuate harm on others and seek to aggrandize themselves at the expense of others? Is this a design of Nature or is it something within our human control?

The principle of Occam’s Razor comes to play: the simplest explanation is often the most accurate. This can also then lead then to the simplest of solutions.

Applying this principle, I will say that when people have lost their sense of connectedness to all of life, I mean all of it, they ‘stray’ and lose this vital thread. They then act in ways that are selfish, self-interested only, greedy and this can quickly lead to a ‘dominator model’ which Rianne Eisler speaks eloquently of, a struggle for power and control, harming the masses that are treated as pawns in a nasty, pathological game to which we have all become accustomed, that has been normalized through history and yet is as pathological today as it was in the past.

This straying happens for any number of reasons, which I will suggest, is largely a result of deep, inner doubts of self-worth, self-esteem, self-image. These result from beliefs that were formed pre- or post-natally when the being was completely impressionable and was not feeling loved but feeling anxiety, stress at the very beginning, even pre-natally. Depending on the individual’s aspirations, this could lead to a dictatorial or totalitarian state and too often has in which fear and intimidation rule.

Or this kind of self-doubt, question of self-value emerges in the early years of childhood, sometimes during the teenage years but usually as an expression of the earlier wounding and trauma.

This kind of thinking of identifying current belief systems and assumptions, taking a meta-position in respect to them (i.e., standing ‘outside’ of them, ‘looking in’), and then unwinding them, dis-engaging, are the kind of recommendations being made by leading biologists and neuroscientists for decades, such as Dr. Bruce Lipton and Dr. Joe Dispenza. Their work bears down on how belief systems affect not only consciousness but one’s body—immune function, genetics and epigenetics, all the way to the breathing mechanisms of the cell. They and practices such as Neuro-linguistic Programming gives us some objectivity toward one’s programming.

I suggest that the most powerful of our society, be they in any field, who wield power for their own and colleague’s self-interest at the expense of the rest of humanity and all sentient life, are truly the most wounded of all. Their lives are virtually an effort to overcome the emotional pain and lack of self-worth from childhood, and they clumsily seek to resolve it by defeating others, climbing to ‘the top’ of a mythical ladder, destroying lives every step of the way.

It seems so paradoxical that the people who have what in society we call the greatest successes are those who seem to be the most wounded. The striving to ‘win’ at all costs is a neurotic and worse, pathological impulse to un-do the pain of the past with the idea that “I’ll show them that I’m great”, when in fact what they are saying is “I’ll show me that I’m great because I don’t really believe it.”

Beware—the wounds are hidden or seek to be covered. The suffering rarely appears in public. Mansions, yachts and these days, rocket ships camouflage the depths of confusion and pain. It is easy for the public to be misled by outer appearances.

These are not bad people, they are expressing the archetype of the wounded. I would say that they are profoundly confused even when appearing coherent in sound bites on TV. Why do I say this? Any human being would not exploit another to near death just for money unless they were profoundly incoherent and confused. Or destroy the eco-system for money or power. These are signs of illness, not of success. It is up to us, all others, to understand this very important point. These are not our heroes, these are destroyers of the good, of Nature, and are best rehabilitated before they do any more damage.

Women and child laborers all over the world working for less than a dollar a day, putting their lives at risk in factories, in mines, in fields, in highly toxic conditions just so the wealthy can become wealthier is a daily drumbeat of society, making the wealthy wealthier at extreme expense of others.

But what if we could help them believe that they are worthy, and even great, without harming others through oppressive labor practices, polluting practices and the like to prove their worth?

My suggestion is that love, the power of mind and heart coordinated together in humility, these pathological leaders in government, its agencies and the titans of industry could really gain access to a loving world, and lead a healthier, much more spiritually satisfying life.

My assertion is that the healing of these wounds, these traumas can really be done. Their seeking to grasp power for themselves, their proclivity to perpetuate violence and war, to harm others and to harm the Earth, to be bent on destruction instead of creation can truly be psycho-emotionally resolved and come to an end. We have the understanding, we have the tools. The art and science of trauma resolution is growing by the month and can be applied to those who need it most.

By loving life & embodying gratitude, these utterly beautiful and simple actions or better, practices toward become healthy habits, can truly allow people to be at peace with themselves.

They can forgive their parents, families, others for whatever they perceived as injustices done to them (which may be very real) and with sufficient practice, they will have ingrained in their brain a new neural network of a different way of being, thinking and living.

This new sense of appreciation of life would allure them back from the ‘straying’ spoken of earlier and their re-connectedness to the magnificence and preciousness of life as a sacred expression of the Universe would not allow them to act in any aggressive way. They would instead dwell in wholeness with generosity of heart and mind, possibly even pocketbook, toward other much less materially fortunate.

The touching song Amazing Grace comes to mind: “I was blind, but now I see….”

The funny thing about this is that it is our true and organic nature is to be kind, loving, building networks just like the ants and bees. The Scrooge-like, greedy, self-interested style of “devil may care” is an aberration, a deviation from the norm of our species.

Abnormality is a function of trauma, of errors in upbringing, schooling, of interpretation. There is a sense of longing for love instead of experiencing it. There is a deep desire in us to belong, that is, to be an appreciated part of the tribe, of the whole.

As a result of our natural proclivities and the acquirable skill of becoming who you want to be, it doesn’t take as much time or effort to re-align—it just seems that it does.

Force begets resistance. What if there is no force, but just intention and seeing life as a beautiful gift to be cared for and cherished?

This kind of thinking changes everything. When an inner change of this magnitude occurs, it shows up in the outer world as peace, kindness, cooperation and service.

We look at the problems plaguing our society: war, pandemics, corruption, self-aggrandizement at any expense, addictions, poverty, famine, and it looks overwhelming. But as above, de-constructed, each and every one, looked at objectively and with compassion and thoughtfulness, dig deep to get to the root of the trauma, each can be addressed creatively and resolved.

I would say that this is what it takes, truly a long and persistent work, but no longer a mystery. Solved! We have the tools, techniques and understanding to create a better world.