Learning from the past

Repairing the earth means repairing ourselves at the same time. The most productive way is by learning to put ourselves ‘out’ a bit. But we need to learn from our collective past mistakes, the social habits we’ve adopted unthinkingly, things we do because others do them. Now, since we can’t know what is up ahead (any more than we can reach out to the stars) we have to actively bring the future into present reality by finding significance in past events. At first we see the mistakes, then we see the simplicity of (probable) solutions. Maybe we see one simple sparkling idea that stands out from the rest, which can rearrange the connections in our synapses to allow us to think differently. As soon as we change our thought patterns, we can change our whole nature, to what we want to be. I suppose I’m referring to doing lots of things altruistically, where we’re no longer constrained by the tight confines of self interest. Altruism is doing ‘unto others’ what we would have them ‘do for us’ or where we want for ourselves what we want for others.
This might be the greatest lesson to come out of the war torn twentieth century. Looking back on what happened it is hardly believable that so many humans could have participated in such barbaric behaviour, how they could have allowed things to turn out the way they did. And yet, albeit in different forms, the same barbaric behaviour exists today. And in the future others will look back and find it all unbelievable, that it still happened in the twenty first century. And yet at the same time they too might not be able to see what they are involved with, perhaps something equally barbaric. How do we, in the middle of this particular era of barbarism, stop, take stock and consciously alter course?