I believe that it is important to not only identify but to put in perspective the breakdowns that we face. That takes work and just doesn't fit in a tweet. There are threads that tie them together and those threads can help us choose the tools to better address them, for just pointing out a problem is only a first step. Incremental changes will not do the job, we need breakthroughs in our thinking and our ways of being to truly make a lasting difference. The ultimate question we must answer is "If life were perfect what would it look like?" Only when we start hammering out a common answer to that question together can we start the work to achieve it. Anything less is just a patch that merely covers up the problem.

We live in two worlds. One is the world of experience and the other is a world of stories we create and believe in. Experience is ephemeral. It is the stories that persist and give meaning and purpose to what we do, how we live, what we remember, and what rules we create and who we obey. It is the story that gives continuity to our lives but also constrains what we believe is possible and even what we can experience. Our lives exist mostly in those stories. It's important to remember that the root word of "authority" is "author." An authority is nothing more than the person with the story that we've accepted as the REAL one to believe. There have been many authorities over time and many that have been important in keeping us alive and otherwise making a positive difference in our lives but if we look at them we find that many of them, even the successful ones, were often contradictory and all were eventually replaced with new authorities. It's just the way that works. No one has the final word for the universe is much more interesting than our words can say and all of its resources are there for every one of us in their entirety all of the time, not just a chosen few.

We have a lot of tools at our disposal to craft a better way of being. We only need to choose to do so. That may require giving up cherished ideas and notions to be able to build a new paradigm that may not need them. I'm reminded of the Phlogiston theory of heat and the notion that the Earth was the center of the universe around which everything revolved. Both ideas worked but were ultimately replaced by simpler ideas that worked better opening entirely new possibilities that could not have been imagined before. It was well within the technical capabilities of many ancient peoples to build phonographs, airplanes, and batteries. The only reason they didn't was that they didn't have and believe in a working story that allowed those possibilities. They couldn't see a way. What do we not see today? It takes breakthroughs to think new possibilities before they can ever be manifest.

All of which brings me to a quote that I recently heard by YouTube producer Hank Green: "You have no obligation to your former self. They are dumber than you, and they don't exist."