How to Save the World

From Second Life denizen Acu (thanks to Cheryl for the quote):

I began the SL/RL (Second Life/Real Life) Relationships Group discussions as I sought answers around SL relationships, and only recently have I discovered that it is my relationship with SL that is now of primary concern and importance for me.

The question has always been, "Who am I and what am I supposed to be doing?" I grew so tired of the rigor of RL and the constant anxiety around fulfilling some societal, predetermined life purpose, that ultimately I was forced to surrender to something outside of myself (out of my realm of control) to give me guidance and direction. It was then that I found SL. The connections I have made here have filled me with joy, fear, pain. Through exploration and experimentation, I have experienced many of the fantasies and ideals I had convinced myself would fulfill my RL if given the opportunity. I learned, however, that many of these fantasies were more facades which only continued to distort my view of who I am and my purpose for being. Regardless of who I pretended to be, the end result was always the same...a feeling of being unfulfilled.

Krishna (as cited in the song Sojourn of Arjuna, by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones) says "A man must go forward from where he stands. He cannot jump to the absolute, he must evolve toward it. At any given moment in time, we are what we are, and we have to accept the consequences of being ourselves. And only through this acceptance can we begin to evolve further. We may select the battleground. We cannot avoid the battle."

I believe that I chose my life journey, prior to being conceived. That somehow I was predestined to walk this path of self-discovery over the infinite possibilities. To discover my "self"... who it is I am destined to be. As I've traveled, however, I have been waiting for this discovery as though it would just show up one day and set me free. I would have arrived at my destination, achieved the goal! What I am beginning to understand is that life is not a destination or discovery....it is a choice, a decision, a process of creation. I am learning that I can create whatever life I want in each moment if I can let go of needing to control the outcome. Letting go of the disappointment of things not turning out exactly as I had planned, but accepting and appreciating that I may be (co-)creating something new, which I would have never planned for or expected on my own.

From David Ehrenfeld (describing, in 1993**, the impending collapse of our civilization):

It is like a massive flywheel, spinning too fast for its size and construction, coming apart in chunks as it spins,

There goes a chunk -- the sick and aged along with the huge apparatus of doctors, social workers, hospitals, nursing homes, drug companies, and manufacturers of sophisticated medical equipment, which service their clients at enormous cost but don't help them very much.

There go the college students along with the VPs, provosts, deans and professors who have nor prepared them for life in a changing world after formal schooling is over. There go the high school and elementary school students, along with the parents, administrators and frustrated teachers who have turned the majority of schools into costly, stagnant and violent babysitting services.

There go the lawyers and their hapless clients in a dust cloud of the ten billion codes, rules and regulations that were produced to organize and control an increasingly intricate, unorganizable and uncontrollable society.

There go the economists with their worthless pretentious predictions and systems, along with the unemployed, the impoverished and the displaced who reaped the consequences of theories and schemes with faulty premises and indecent objectives. There go the engineers, designers and technologists, along with the people stuck with the deadly buildings, roads, power plants, dams and machinery that are the experts' monuments.

There go the advertising hucksters with their consumer goods, and there go the consumers, consumed with their consumption. And there go the media pundits and pollsters, along with all those unfortunates who wasted precious time listening to them explain why the flywheel could never come apart, or tell how to patch it even while increasing its crazy rate of spin.

The most terrifying thing about this disintegration for a society that believes in prediction and control will be the randomness of its violent consequences. The chaotic violence will include not only desperate ruthless struggles over the wealth that remains, but the last great violation of nature. What will make it worse is that, at least at the beginning, it will take place under a cloud of denial and cynical reassurances.