Dreaming of the big picture

Young people, the ‘twenty- and thirty-somethings’, looking ahead to the future and to the bigger picture ... they might dream things will be alright (or not), but for them to be involved in the eventual outcomes, to imprint themselves on the course of events, they’d have to visualise it first. How would they like it to be? That’s only the beginning, the visualising, the dreaming, the ‘big-picturing’ - the most significant step is jumping from wanting-things-to-happen to seeing the probability-of-them-happening. This ‘probable’ world may be entirely different to the sort of world we know today (and therefore it would seem improbable) so it needs to be brought on.
The technologies may change dramatically, and that’s all-absorbing for inventors of cars or planes, but another change happens with the inventing attitudes. This more than anything else moulds the future.
A young person’s interest might starts out with the adult world trappings of comfort and wizz-bang discoveries but down the track the really noticeable progress is surely made by attitude changing, towards greater empathy. That allows entry into a world not immediately obvious - suddenly we feel for starving children, the oppressed, and suddenly we’re all wrapped up in it. The need for help seems obvious. Empathy takes the place of indifference. Cooperation looks so much more intelligent than making war.
Without a picture of how-things-should-be (or could-be) we’re left with only the status quo and the future looking even worse than now, all grim and depressing. We dose ourselves with fresh ‘grimness’ on a daily basis. We say ‘it-all-looks-black’. The grim school of thinking is the junk food of fatalists.
And yet optimists and interventionists might seem like wishful thinkers. They ‘probable-ise’ a picture of a future-to-come. For example, vegans see men and women of the future as being, at the very least, fed on plant-based foods (and wearing non-animal clothing). They see these future people not as freaks or food fad-ists.
So, looking ahead, optimistically, probable-ising, we see the ‘majority’ (of mostly younger people) is routinely plant-fed, and the very word ‘vegan’ is already archaic since the food that people are normally eating is so obviously plant-based that it goes without saying. And meanwhile the ‘other stuff’ is still available on the black market (as illegal substances always are) and is regarded as disgusting.
In that probable-world we won’t think twice about living more sanely (more harmoniously) within a cared-for environment. And again, it will be so normal we won’t even need to comment on it. We’ll have progressed ... as humans do. But big deal! Cars take over from carts, word processors from typewriters, however this is daily food we’re talking about here.
When change involves our food, our diet, our whole way of looking at what we ingest, then we’ll see evidence of a shift in the collective consciousness. And that shifting-of-attitude won’t be anymore remarkable than the revolution which took place last century, in moving bodies quickly through space by stage coach then in the natural progression of things by jet aircraft.
From today’s perspective it’s obvious what’s happening here - that if plant foods play such a major role in the coming events it won’t be so much about the health bonus of plant foods but about them characterising ‘the kindness factor’. Foods and clothes and other ‘activities’ will be bathed in the sort of kindness which ... oh, it’s such a slushy word, and yet if the kindness factor is to gain momentum it will have to be forged in the heart and carried carefully to the head, to make it work.
To help, there are the little bonuses it carries with it, transformatory bonuses nonetheless - it reduces stress and brings on other health benefits, it solves malnutrition problems in the world and it contributes hugely to restoring oceans and soils, and all because we come to be kinder, we choose to pay attention to the importance of ethics entering our every thought.
The empathetic shift inspires whether others understand or approve of it or not. By way of this one inspired move, humans will surely mark their progress as a species. There is a so-obviously-better system for humans (for living on this planet) and it will simply fall into place as soon as it’s considered. Surely that is the genius of human evolution, for us to have been brought to this ... the creating of circumstances whereby something happens (“we create our reality absolutely”, to quote a famous phrase). For our own part, there’s no need for pushing and shoving, just considering. In the end there’s no need for campaigning or protesting or even spelling things out for one another. We can let it all happen naturally … wwwwunce ... oooONCE the initial attitude changes begin. (I hasten to add that the initial Animal Rights demonstrations and protests which gave most of us the wake-up call we needed at the time, sparked a revolution of consideration. The protests marked the beginnings of major attitude change).
Once the bigger picture is currency and fashion takes it up, there’s be no stopping us wanting, demanding and entering a new era of humanity.