This Way to the Level Playing Field

1900:

If we aren’t sure about our direction in life we can imagine another place, another dimension, where people rather like us are doing things a little differently. They consult with conscience and try to be ‘doing good’. But it sounds sickly sweet, put that way. But it’s really just an extreme common sense plea for conscience. Restoring the balance between being intelligent and being too heart-driven.

The conscience is taken more seriously in some so called ‘less developed’ countries, whereas we in the West have forgone conscience in order to get ahead. We are ‘First Worlders’, and responsible for the bulk of environmental damage and animal exploitation. We’ve grown softened by pleasure and high living and grown hard-hearted in the process.

But, to our great advantage, many of us have at least developed a fuller consciousness of what we’ve done. We’ve taken the trouble to examine what lies behind the lies we’ve been fed. We are now super aware of the excesses of our human nature, our destructiveness and violence, but at the same time this has led to our becoming aware of our potential for repair. Superstitions and gods have given way to clarity of thought, so we no longer see ourselves as automaton being led by supernatural forces or in awe of earth-bound authority. In taking responsibility for our own destiny, many have become self-guiding entities working with the latest human knowledge, to come up with solutions. We’re on the brink of starting all over again.

However much we are all going to have to suffer, we’ll be better able to weather what is coming, now that we have enough awareness of what has happened. This much fuller awareness will help us strike a better balance between the genius of intellect and the guidance of conscience.

We could, in theory, turn things around so that the majority eventually get onto the same page, where we’re all pointing in the same direction. Impossible? Not really, when conscience is elevated to its rightful place, no longer squashed down by ‘the inexorable march of progress’.

On an individual level this might be where each of us wants to be, but we’d like everyone else to be there too, so that we’d have others to hold our hand, so that we aren’t operating grudgingly - not expecting reward or being in need of recognition. Aren’t we wanting to be working towards a level playing field, so that all interests are taken into consideration, equally?