Member-only story
Ideas For A Better World
More different people, more deeply connected
At the risk of sounding arrogant or naive, or both, this is my vision for a better world.
We are all people, we can all be different and we can all connect. Against the inertia of uniformity, difference; against reactive isolation, connection.
This is a world of writers who are readers and readers who are writers.
It is short-sighted to think that an individual’s vision of a better world could or should be a solution for everybody else or even for a majority of us. It is short-sighted at best and sinister at worst.
However, this is a principle that almost all of us have been brought up with: that there are those who can lead, whom we should follow to make things better for everybody, even for those opposed to our particular idea of what better means. We all grow up under the umbrella of a belief system, and later we study the great leaders and the great thinkers, deciding whose assertions to make our own, and then convince others of.
The appeal of universal principles, or ideologies, or religions, is understandable. It lets us off the hook. We’re suddenly not responsible. We don’t have to come up with the idea. We can simply follow one.